The World of Drums and Percussion With Ross Garfield

Ross Garfield is known throughout the music industry as The Drum Doctor, and he's been taking good care of drums and drummers for over 30 years. His business includes drum rentals, cartage and consulting with producers, recording engineers and musicians to provide the optimum percussion sound possible. Starting out as a drummer himself, Garfield decided early in his career to focus on the instruments. Just as professional race car drivers compete with cars that are tweaked to perform at their maximum potential, Garfield services professional drummers with drums that are specially set up to fit their critical needs in the studio and in live performances.

The Drum Doctor has provided his special mojo to Jim Keltner, Josh Freese, Jeff Porcaro, Metallica, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Nirvana, to name a few. He has one of the most extensive rental stocks in the world, including contemporary and custom, acoustic and electronic drums, including a collection of over 500 vintage snare drums. Here’s what he has to say about how he finds the right sound for a song, advice for what young drummers should do to improve their chops, and stories about his work with the famous.

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MrB: One of the reasons I'm talking with The Drum Doctor today is that I saw a video that he did with Jim Keltner, an old friend of mine. In fact, I called Jim a couple days ago to talk about some stuff, and I mentioned that I was going to be talking with Ross, and he said, “Ross is one of my closest longtime friends, and he was the first person to show me how to tune my drums. He taught me how to do it.” I mean, that's pretty critical. One of the greatest drummers in the world, giving some props to The Drum Doctor.

What is so magical in a musical composition with the proper drums, with the contribution of the drums and percussion?

Ross Garfield: It's a very nebulous description, but what I try to do is find the appropriate drum and the appropriate tuning to bring out the right voice, so the drums have the right voice in the song. I'm actually trying to make it emote the right emotion from the listener.

It's important to me that the sound is specific to that song or that band, and with the understanding of the massive array of drums that I have, I can usually bring something that really makes the drum sound right in the song. And you know it when you hear it. There's a lot of examples. Metallica's “Black” album is one. Tom Petty's “Wildflowers.” We had probably five or six different snares on that record. Kendrick Lamar. I can go on and on.

If they let me have my say — and sometimes I don't get that — sometimes I'm just asked by a producer, hey, we want it to sound like this. And then it's my job to make it sound the way they want it. But if they let me out of my cage and let me do my thing, I can figure out the right drum from my inventory that will fit their song.

MrB: How can young people who want to be a spectacular drummer, a successful drummer, improve their playing ability and make sure that they're doing the best they can?

Ross Garfield: This is a really good question. Given that a young drummer is practicing, and he's getting his hands and his feet together, and he's getting to a point where he can actually play. I think the single most important thing that a young drummer can do is practice learning songs.

Let's say it's an AC/DC song, something simple with a simple beat, but if they learn it from the intro, the verse, the chorus, the break — if they can learn arrangements and keep track of the amount of bars in each piece of the arrangement, they'll have a leg up on probably 90% of the drummers out there, because most of the guys are just memorizing the song.

But if you understand how the arrangement works, and you start from a young age, thinking to yourself, okay, this song has this intro part eight times, and then it goes into this verse 16 times, and then it goes into this chorus 16 times, and then it repeats, and you have that ingrained in your head, that gives you the foundation to build on.

MrB: Good advice. We appreciate that.

Ross Garfield: I wish someone would have shown me that. But if someone had shown me that, I probably wouldn't be here. I'd probably be a drummer touring with somebody at this point, and it might have been to my detriment, because I've done very well with Drum Doctors. It really filled the niche.

MrB: Yeah, and a lot of people do hear the results of your work. Let's talk about a celebrity or two, and what you did for their sound. In fact, when I was talking to Keltner, he mentioned Billie Eilish, and something about she didn't use drums before. What did you bring to the Billie Eilish party?

Ross Garfield: They were great. They called me and basically told me they wanted me to be a part of the project. And they had the songs written for the most part with machines and samples, and it was my job to replace those samples or those machines with real drums and have their drummer play them.

So I would listen to the song, and then we experiment with different drums. We chose the right kick drum, then we chose the right snare drum and a lot of times, my first impression was a starting place, and they listened to it. And they’d say, let's try a deeper snare drum. Let's try one with more ring. It was a real good give and take with them. They're high-class musicians. They understand what makes it work.

MrB: Who played the drums?

Ross Garfield: Their drummer. I forget his name, but he's a really good drummer. He handles it well.

MrB: Look that up, kids. While we were warming up, we talked about the increased amount of lady drummers. You mentioned a few. Why don't you tell us about that change in the business?

Ross Garfield: I work with a fair amount of female drummers. First one that comes to mind is Cindy Blackman. I first worked with her with Lenny Kravitz, and Lenny has good taste. He found a young drummer who was really good, and she just kept on getting better and better. And I've worked with her in several situations, and now she's playing with Carlos Santana.

There are several others. Carla Azar is another favorite with Jack White and her own project Autolux. And she's another top-drawer drummer. Also did quite a few projects with her and T Bone Burnett scoring movies. There's a couple right off the top of my head.

MrB: Well, cool. We're happy to see that happening. Bringing that female touch in the percussion department must be a change in the music and has to be great.

Ross Garfield: It's definitely a male-dominated field, but the girls are coming up. It's weird when people look at somebody and say, Oh, well, how could she play this part? It's all about technique. Some of the best drummers I work with have such a light touch. It's not like you need a lot of strength to play the drums. The finesse is a beautiful thing.

MrB: I used to be an engineer back in the analog days. I’d learned in radio, but when I got into the studio, I learned a lot there, too. We had to record belly dancing records, mariachi bands, all sorts of stuff. It was a real learning experience.

If you're a studio owner and people are taking a long time to get the sound, that's fine, because the money is coming in, but it got ridiculous sometimes how finicky and how difficult it was to get a snare drum in the studio. Can you elaborate about the difference between live performance and studio performance, and how you have to work with musicians to make them sound good?

Ross Garfield: It's definitely an art. Getting the snare drum sound in the studio is far more important and tricky than live.

The snare sound in the studio is really the voice of the drum set. There's a little variation in the kick drum sound, but the snare drum sound is key. I take a long time preparing the snare drum and working on it to make it sound the way I think it should sound in the track.

Putting a wallet on it is not a bad idea. I mean, sometimes that's what you need to do to take out some of that overtone.

I use a variety of different muffling devices, starting with gaffer tape. I'm a big believer in gaffer tape, and I've gotten to a point where I like the way certain gaffer’s tape sounds better than other gaffer’s tape. I can hear the difference in the way the drum sounds to the mic. Sometimes you don't need any muffling on the drum, and sometimes you need a lot. It depends on the kind of music you're playing. And you have got to start with the right drum. So that's a big part of the studio.

Live is much more forgiving. Mostly the live drummers tend to want to have a nice crack on the snare, high pitched and dry, not too much ring. It's not nearly as temperamental.

MrB: Do you have a snare drum there?

Ross Garfield: I have quite a few.

MrB: Can you hold one?

Ross Garfield: Here's a beautiful little snare drum. This is a 1969 Ludwig Black Beauty engraved six and a half by 14. This is one of the most sought-after drums in the world, one of the best snare drums to record with, especially if you want something fat. This is a kind of drum you'd use on, say, AC/DC type of a sound, or Tom Petty, or the Eagles, maybe.

MrB: Can you tap your hand on it so we can hear a little bit?

Ross Garfield: This is a wicked snare drum. This drum was on the first three Stone Temple Pilots records. And just countless records. So this is something that I got hip to when I was a player, and I understood the beauty of how good this could sound, and getting a crack out of a snare drum is the easy part.

You can take any cheap snare drum, tune it way up, and get a nice crack out of it. And if you halfway know what you're doing, maybe you have to put a wallet on it, or maybe you have to put a little piece of gaffer's tape on it, but you can get that sounding good so you have the low end and the crack and have a nice body to it. That is really the trick.

This is a very collectible drum. Let me show you probably one of the most collectible drums. This is the Tama Bell Brass, the original drum that was nicknamed The Terminator.

Back when I first started out, I use to sometimes bring in a dozen snare drums to a session, and we'd have a shootout to see which snare sounded best in the band's project. And this one started winning auditions, even over the Black Beauty. So I knew that I had something special. And it weighs a lot, probably weighs over like 20-25 pounds, because it's cast brass or bronze, depending on how specific you want to go, they advertise this as bell brass, but in reality, it's probably a bronze alloy.

Regardless of that fact, it's a great sounding drum. This drum was on Nirvana's “Nevermind” record, and another drum like it was on the Metallica “Black” album. We've done a bunch of the heavy metal records. This is the original Terminator. I've turned down offers for this drum over $100,000. People are after drums like this. But this is like the godfather of all those.

MrB: What's the origin of this drum?

Ross Garfield: This is a Tama. It was made in Japan. This was the top of their line back in 1980. I believe that this one is one of the prototypes. I think that they made what I call a happy mistake when they made this one, because I've owned a dozen of these in and around between 1980 and 1982 and none of them has the kick that this one has. It's become so famous in the recording industry that I can't take it and leave it at a session. I'm afraid if I leave it there, it'll leave with someone else.

A lot of stories have been written about this drum to the point that I had people asking me to get involved with them to make a duplicate or work with other companies to get a re-release of this drum. And I went down that path with a couple of different parties, and I didn't like how they wanted to do it, and basically how they wanted to do it was to minimize their input so they could maximize the profit margin. So what I did is I worked on it myself. I've released a drum now that we call T2 which is Terminator Two.

MrB: Okay, the 100K sound. Can you think of anything else you'd like to share with our audience? You know the NAMM audience. They're all over the world.

Ross Garfield: They like stories. I thought of a couple cool stories that they might like hearing.

Here's one that involves Jim Keltner. Let's tie it all together. Jim is one of my closest friends, and we talk just about every day. I just worked with him tweaking out his set to go on the road with Bob Dylan.

One day I was getting a haircut, and that's a pretty rare occasion to begin with, but I was getting a haircut, and back then I had a pager. This is back before cell phones. My pager went off. I saw it was Jim's number, so I called him, and he said, Hey, I've got a gig this afternoon. I want you to take these drums up to Dave Stewart's house. Dave Stewart from Eurythmics.

I said, Okay, he goes, call this number. You'll talk to the people up there, and they'll give you the directions and figure it all out.

So I went back to the warehouse, grabbed a van, filled it up with the drums that Jim wanted, and I called the number, and an English man answers the phone. I'm thinking, oh, you know, it's probably Dave's assistant, because a lot of times I find that the English tend to like having English people working for them.

So I could tell it wasn't Dave Stewart, but I didn't ask who it was. He goes, here's our address. Just come down the street, It's the biggest gate on the street. Ring the bell, and they'll open the gate and drive up to the house.

So I drive up to the house, knock on the door, the door opens, and it's George Harrison.

It turned out that I had been talking to George Harrison on the phone to get directions out to the house. I deal with a lot of celebrities, but when the door opens and it's a Beatle, it sort of takes you back. I mean, the Beatles were like, the reason I started playing drums in the beginning.

So I said, Hey, you know, well, where would you like the drums? And he said, follow this driveway back. It's up past the tennis court. We have a studio up in the back. He goes, would you like a hand moving the drums? And I said, no I got it. He goes, come on, man, don't treat me like some kind of rock star. I'll help you if you need a hand moving the drums. I said, You know what? I'll give a yell if I need help there, George.

So I pull the truck around to the back and start loading the drums in. And as I'm loading the drums in, there is a circle of guys all playing their acoustic guitars. And it's Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, who am I forgetting? And then George showed up, and he sat down.

MrB: The Traveling Wilburys.

Ross Garfield: Traveling Wilburys. And I'm setting up the drums, thinking to myself, this must be what it sounds like in heaven, with all these voices, with all their Martin guitars. It was just pure magic to be in that room.

MrB: Well, you're a lucky man, Drum Doctor. I did want to add one thing to that story. Jim Keltner told me that they wanted him to be one of the Wilburys. And he said, No, no, no, I'm just a drummer. I'll be a side berry.

Ross Garfield: Right, I heard that story too!

MrB: That tells you who Jim Keltner is. And I think we figured out who you are, Ross Garfield, you drum physician, you. I appreciate it very much, and I think our audience does too. We'll leave it with that and on a high note. Thank you and so long, see you around.

Ross Garfield: Thank you, Mr. Bonzai. It's a pleasure.

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About the Author

Mr. Bonzai is an award-winning photographer, author and music journalist. He has written more than 1,000 articles for outlets in the United States, Europe and Asia. His photos and articles have appeared in Rolling Stone, The New York Times, Billboard, Mix and EQ, among others. He has also published numerous books, including Studio Life, Music Smarts and Faces of Music.