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Hear Buddy Rich behind the scenes


mrthirsty

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Hey, Guys:

Mr. Thirsty is right, but before you go to listen ... be forewarned!

This has a lot of choice and foul words in it. I am not saying you guys are not old enough to hear it, just that you should be aware in case you are sensitive about this sort of thing.

 

Buddy did (obviously) have an ego and an anger management problem. I actually have these three acts of Buddy's saved on my Mac and play them when I want to remember how *NOT* to treat folks!

 

In another thread on here, I told the story, but will again, about being in college at the University of South Carolina. We got a call at about 2pm from the Percussion Professor, Jim Hall, that Buddy was doing an impromptu concert in the "horseshoe" (an area of trees between frat row) at 4pm. Obviously, we all dropped what we were doing to rush over!

When Buddy's bus pulled up, he hopped off carring a bat and softball and we played about an hour of softball with him before the concert! It was a blast.

Apparently, the bass player was his drum tech. During the second number, he went for the swish cymbal above his floor tom, and when he did, it had been placed too close. His knuckle sliced open and the blood was flowing, but Buddy did not even miss a lick. He did however, call the Bass player ever name in the book for the rest of the song and for two songs after that. Was probably the guys last show!

 

Goes to show, even guys that can be assholes can make it. I prefer the softer "kill them with kindness" approach. Has always worked better for me!

 

Percussively,

DJ

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i was, and still am, a huge fan of buddy. this four act play pops up every once in awhile to remind me of what a poor human being he was. that truly breaks my heart. he gave me so much joy and hope as a young drummer.i do wonder if somebody just one time would have just kicked the shit out of him after one of his tantrums if he may have stopped treating people like that( don't let anybody say anything about him studying karate.If the right person connected.....). Sometimes people need to be humbled. nobody could humble buddy on the stage. but as a human being? i wonder if he had changed after his heart attacks. that tends to humble people. our own mortality. what a concept. my 2 cents. later - tom
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It really was a disappointment to hear how out of control Buddy could get with his temper. I wonder how all the various musicians could tolerate that kind of atmosphere on and off the stage, it must of felt like having a gun to your head while you were playing. There is absolutely no good reason to treat people like that no matter how good you are, if Buddy wanted to motivate his players to reach a new level he had the best tool to do it, THROUGH HIS PLAYING, but I guess maybe he thought acting like an ***hole was the only way to get his point across.
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  • 5 weeks later...
Those clips are hilarious. I too am sorry that Buddy had such poor temper control, BUT, oh well. Buddy is in my opinion, ... one of the first true Rock Stars(the first one i'm aware of was Charlie Parker, read Miles autobiography). Sure, it'd be great if he was this wonderful person at all times, but he wasn't, and that's probably part of what made him so great. I mean, he was always an extreme, took his temper to the extreme, but pushed his band, and especially his drumming to the extreme. Without that extreme, we may have never heard of him!
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Well, if you think about it, Buddy's personality, intensity and strong emotion is WHY he made it. Of course, unfortunately there's a 'downside' to someone who has that sort of intensity about them. They're just as intense about everything as they are about their musicianship.

 

But it's one of the reasons why Buddy is a legend and we sit on our little computers to this day and chat about him, instead of him chatting about one of us. http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/wink.gif

If you always do what you've always done, you'll always have what you've always had.
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