quote:
Porcaro played most of the drums on Pretzel Logic, Katy Lied - has no credits on The Royal Scam or Aja, then is back for some tracks on Gaucho.

Yeah, it's possible he cut tracks for some of those records but his takes never made the records. I honestly don't know the answer to that. I know he's on a track or two off of "The Nightfly".

I knew a guy once (who was pretty connected in the music industry) that claimed he had heard a whole cassette of the album Aja with alternate takes that Steve Gadd had played on. The only take that made the actual record was of course "Aja". The Classic Albums episode on the making of Aja gives a lot of insight on how they worked by that point. It's on youtube I think.

Porcaro was a freak of nature and was playing on master sessions in LA when he was 17 years old. He was the alpha in a very, very musically talented family.

This post was edited on 5/27/15 at 9:42 am

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Posted by Ace Midnight

Between sanity and madness

Member since Dec 2006

89780 posts

Posted on 5/27/15 at 10:07 am to nm1230

quote:
Porcaro was a freak of nature and was playing on master sessions in LA when he was 17 years old.

It is argued that he is the most influential pop/rock drummer of the 70s and 80s - and I find it hard to argue with that.

Started drumming at 7, was playing with seasoned musicians at 17, as you say, and by 20 was in great demand - played on "hundreds" of albums and you can pretty much name a big name who used session musicians at all in the 70s and 80s, and Porcaro sat down for them at least once.

I will occasionally dig around and find Jeff Porcaro somewhere - like on Pink Floyd's "Mother" - from The Wall - I've heard that song dozens of times. I often thought, "Nick's timing was tight on this" - then when I figured out it was Porcaro - I thought "NOW it makes sense!"