Drummers You Just Can’t Beat: # 3 – Dave Abbruzzese
He’s played on a few records, and hooked up with some interesting and talented players (he’s even been hired and fired by Axl Rose) but the truth is I haven’t followed Abbruzzese’s work all that closely. The truth is I only care about one record that he made. And the timing of it (his timing across it obviously – he’s the drummer) but the time and place and space that record occupied in my life.
I can’t stand Pearl Jam. They very quickly became ponderous – but I can’t lie, I was caught up in what they did for a while. It arrived at the right time for me. I was actively seeking music away from what my older brother and my parents played – they had great taste, their records served me well, many of them still do. But in Nirvana and Pearl Jam I found the first music – well, outside of any rap records – that wasn’t stuff for the whole family. My Pearl Jam
and Nirvana tapes (yes, tapes!) were for me only. In my Walkman. And then, a couple of years on, in my car. I had a big blue Volvo I used to drive and Pearl Jam’s Ten album went everywhere with me for a while. And just as I got sick of it the band’s second album arrived, Vs.
In between Ten being recorded and Pearl Jam becoming a very big deal the band had hired a new drummer, Dave Abbruzzese.
I first remember seeing – and hearing – him on the band’s MTV Unplugged special. It was easy to hear – and see – straight away that this was a very creative drummer. He was a hard-hitter, but he added these beautiful colours, splash cymbals particularly – his sticks danced across them, they provided clever punctuation. He used interesting cymbal sounds a lot. Yet, crucially, he never overused them.
There’s a huge drive in his sound too – listen to Go, Animal, Rearviewemirror, actually half the Vs. album at least – but there’s this wonderful way he had with a groove, twisting, turning, swirling, churning – take Daughter, a frankly ghastly song, overplayed, undercooked but the star of that song is Abbruzzese. No surprise, he’s the star of the album – he was the star of the band. What he does on this song is drive it on, anchor it, support it, make the flow – do all of those things a good drummer should do – but he also creates the energy in the song, makes the dynamics, the song rises and falls with him, because of him. More than that he is the energy in and of the song – the breath that gives it life.
What I realise – listening to Vs. – is that Pearl Jam’s songs are almost entirely without nuance. That’s the real problem with this band. Sure, the singer’s guilty of influencing a generation of truly awful soundalike wannabes (and even if that’s not really – truly – his fault it still, kinda, is his fault!) and there’s no humour in Pearl Jam, and no give, no suppleness, nothing lithe. But when they did have nuance – briefly – it was with Abbruzzese steering the ship.
I can listen to Vs. still. And when I do I am able to listen out – almost – only for the drums. If I try to listen to anything else that’s going on instead of the drums I hear that same band I know from everything else they’ve done: fucking dull, almost comical – and yet still and always with a line of moisty-palmed mouth-breathers ready for any and every show and album and mention.
Abbruzzese shines so bright on Dissident, his tribal flourishes make W.M.A. (frankly a nothing song without his playing), he creates the cut and attack to Blood and Rearviewmirror and then he plays the same trick on Elderly Woman Behind The Counter in a Small Town as he did on Daughter – but to be fair the band played the exact same trick in (re-)writing the song. And in Abbruzzese’s case at least it’s a worthwhile trick.
Even the training-wheels funk of Rats – surely a Chili Peppers pisstake? – works only and always because of Abbruzzese.
I can listen to Vs. for the drums. And only for the drums. What’s more, I’m convinced it’s the drums – the playing and the player – that makes this album. He turns a bunch of hideous rehearsal-space noodling into songs, well at least as close as Pearl Jam would come to making a complete album of (completed) songs.
They had good drummers after Dave – Jack Irons (ex-Chili Peppers) and Matt Cameron (Soundgarden). No complaints there, sure. But it’s the way Dave Abbruzzese never quite plays drums-as-lead-instrument but makes each song because of what he’s doing.
Listen to how he makes the cymbals speak to each other on Elderly Woman – it’s like a card-trick, like watching close-hand magic.
And then the big sloppy, sloshy 4/4 on Leash – a basic thing but it gets a little wiggle in its stride in the way he splits the job of the groove between the ride cymbal and the hi-hats, he’s like a guy with plates in the air; adamant he’ll keep them all circling. There will be no spills, only thrills. No breakages.
Pearl Jam’s only great album – and I’m sure it’s really only great because I was a teenager when I first heard it (though I can still listen to it now, unlike anything and everything else that band has done) – closes off with a song called Indifference. It’s full of Eddie Vedder’s bad poetry and smug posturing. But listen beneath that. Just a little tambourine jingle. Barely a jingle actually. And a few sound-splashes from the cymbals. It’s a smoke-break for most drummers, Abbruzzese turns it into a hypnotic groove, makes the song, signs off on the album – closes the best (and only worthwhile) chapter in the Pearl Jam story.
Sure, he was still in the band for most of Vitalogy. But that’s an awful album. He couldn’t save them. But here he was a first-timer, first album with the band. Everything to prove. And he did just that. Pearl Jam was never good again – and maybe they weren’t with Dave Abbruzzese. But he sure was great with them. And he got them as close as they’d ever be.
