Fact #110198
When:
Short story:
Jerry Shirley, drummer for Humble Pie, is born in Waltham Cross, Essex, UK.
Full article:
Jerry Shirley, drummer of Humble Pie, interviewed by Johnny Black for Classic Rock magazine, 2013...
1969 was certainly the breeding ground, or the stud farm, for the birth of what came to be known as heavy metal. I think they'd really been around for a while but they were just called loud.
We never ever saw ourselves as a heavy metal band. We were a really powerful hard-rockin' blues band, a swing band taken to the nth degree.
Humble Pie started at the start of 1969, I believe...
New Year's eve of 1968, I was in a band called Little Women and we were playing a pub in Tottenham. Unbeknownst to me, The Small Faces and Spooky Tooth were playing a big gig at Alexandra Palace (The 'Giant New Year's Eve Gala Pop and Blues Party'). I think Alexis Korner was there too.
Just after midnight, when I got back to my parents' house, the phone rang and Steve Marriott, who I knew, asked me if he could join the band that Peter Frampton and I were forming. My first reaction was disappointment because that meant no more Small Faces, and I loved that band.
Peter and I both tried to talk Steve out of it until we were sure he had absolutely made his mind up to quit The Small Faces. What convinced me that it could work was when he said he'd got a bass player who would come along, and it was Greg Ridley from Spooky Tooth, who was just about the most respected bass player of that sort of laid-back funky Motown-Stax playing in England.
Within a couple of days we had our first rehearsal in my mum and dad's living room in Nazeing on the edge of North London, and it sounded fantastic. We knew we were onto something really good. We rehearsed the song We Can Talk About It Now and we had it done and dusted in ten or fifteen minutes, no more.
What did Humble Pie feel it was aiming at in terms of a musical style?
Anything and everything that pulled our chain. If we liked it, we did it. We were particularly trying to emulate the way The Band had developed. We were trying to be The Band Mk II. Dylan's band. You might think of them as very countrified, but there's one track on their first album called Chest Fever, which is pretty heavy stuff, not metal, but heavyweight.
I remember hearing the album for the first time, which Townshend had brought over from America, to give to Ronnie and Steve (Ronnie Lane and Steve Marriott) to listen to as an indication of how the future would be. And he had underlined Chest Fever to make sure we'd listen to it. So we did, and was huge, such a great ... everything about it, the feel, everything.
We didn't realise that Clapton was also setting off to pursue the same direction, inspired by The Band.
Now, a few months ahead of us, Led Zeppelin had recorded their first album and it had just come out and, as a matter of fact, Peter was listening to the first Zeppelin album, with Glyn Johns who eventually became our producer. Anyway, Glyn had just finished co-producing it with Jimmy Page, although all he got in the end was an engineer credit, way to go Jimmy, but Peter was sitting there being blown away by Zeppelin. Little did we know how big it was going to become, but in many ways it was also where we wanted to go. We didn't want to sound like Led Zeppelin but we wanted the same cohesiveness in the playing, and the bigness of the music.
You don't have to be heavy metal to be big sounding because, if that was the case, Phil Spector would have been heavy metal. And so would The Band, and that is ridiculous.
Anyway, that was the moment when Steve called Peter from Ally Pally and told him he'd just left The Small Faces and wanted to join the band that Peter and I were putting together.
The most important thing for Steve and Peter was that the band shouldn't be thought of as a supergroup, but, inevitably when it got on the front page of the Melody Maker on 26 April 1969, the headline was Pop Giants Supergroup Formed.
When did you become aware that heavy metal bands were emerging?
No. We were so wrapped up in what we were doing, that we'd heard of Black Sabbath but didn't know much about them. We knew a little more about Deep Purple because we'd done gigs with them in Europe. The first one, The Bilzen Jazz And Rock Festival, in Belgium, was a disaster.
For some reason we went on after Deep Purple, which was a nightmare because at that point they were tight and strong, powerful, each one of them had chops to die for. They were just steaming along. Ian Paice was a faultless drummer.
We went on last, 2.00 in the morning, it was cold, it was raining, the power kept going on and off, or dipping up and down which horribly affected the tuning of the Hammond organ. Most of the guys backstage were rooting for us and Aynsley Dunbar, I'll never forget, had his group Retaliation at that time, and he was so kind to me, because the weather had really screwed my drums around and I was still very young, 17, and unaware of what to do in circumstances like that. My snare drum had gone all over the place and Aynsley showed me what to do, it needed tuning up higher because of the weather, because I'd forgotten to tune it back up from having had it in the studio where we'd tuned it down to try to get a certain type of sound. I'd just forgotten.
So Aynsley jumped in to help me out, and Jon Lord jumped in to help the lads sort out the organ and the piano. It was lovely. Jon Lord, though, was particularly sweet. He took me aside, because I think he could see that I was upset by it all, and he said, "Don't you worry Jerry, these things happen. It will get better quite quickly.' There was a real camaraderie back then. Of course, some would take the piss and fuck with you, but most people were great.
The following couple of nights, we opened for Deep Purple at The Paradiso in Amsterdam, and Jon's words proved true. We really started to kick ass. We didn't blow them off or anything, but we did get much better very quickly and the audience responded. And Jon came over and said, 'See? I told you so.' He was a perfect example of what a professional gentleman should be like.
HIPS Vs. HEADBANGING
One thing that changed when the metal bands came along is the way the audience danced. As a drummer in Humble Pie, I played to make people's hips move, our music had to swing. It's because the old black slang euphemism for sex was rock'n'roll, so if a drummer makes it swing, it is literally making the hips move in the same way as a couple having sex. But with metal bands the kids don't do that. I think they may have picked up that head-banging movement from watching the bands lining up and swinging their heads together in time to the music. If you can't move a woman's hips ... a lot of heavy metal loses the swing.
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1969 was certainly the breeding ground, or the stud farm, for the birth of what came to be known as heavy metal. I think they'd really been around for a while but they were just called loud.
We never ever saw ourselves as a heavy metal band. We were a really powerful hard-rockin' blues band, a swing band taken to the nth degree.
Humble Pie started at the start of 1969, I believe...
New Year's eve of 1968, I was in a band called Little Women and we were playing a pub in Tottenham. Unbeknownst to me, The Small Faces and Spooky Tooth were playing a big gig at Alexandra Palace (The 'Giant New Year's Eve Gala Pop and Blues Party'). I think Alexis Korner was there too.
Just after midnight, when I got back to my parents' house, the phone rang and Steve Marriott, who I knew, asked me if he could join the band that Peter Frampton and I were forming. My first reaction was disappointment because that meant no more Small Faces, and I loved that band.
Peter and I both tried to talk Steve out of it until we were sure he had absolutely made his mind up to quit The Small Faces. What convinced me that it could work was when he said he'd got a bass player who would come along, and it was Greg Ridley from Spooky Tooth, who was just about the most respected bass player of that sort of laid-back funky Motown-Stax playing in England.
Within a couple of days we had our first rehearsal in my mum and dad's living room in Nazeing on the edge of North London, and it sounded fantastic. We knew we were onto something really good. We rehearsed the song We Can Talk About It Now and we had it done and dusted in ten or fifteen minutes, no more.
What did Humble Pie feel it was aiming at in terms of a musical style?
Anything and everything that pulled our chain. If we liked it, we did it. We were particularly trying to emulate the way The Band had developed. We were trying to be The Band Mk II. Dylan's band. You might think of them as very countrified, but there's one track on their first album called Chest Fever, which is pretty heavy stuff, not metal, but heavyweight.
I remember hearing the album for the first time, which Townshend had brought over from America, to give to Ronnie and Steve (Ronnie Lane and Steve Marriott) to listen to as an indication of how the future would be. And he had underlined Chest Fever to make sure we'd listen to it. So we did, and was huge, such a great ... everything about it, the feel, everything.
We didn't realise that Clapton was also setting off to pursue the same direction, inspired by The Band.
Now, a few months ahead of us, Led Zeppelin had recorded their first album and it had just come out and, as a matter of fact, Peter was listening to the first Zeppelin album, with Glyn Johns who eventually became our producer. Anyway, Glyn had just finished co-producing it with Jimmy Page, although all he got in the end was an engineer credit, way to go Jimmy, but Peter was sitting there being blown away by Zeppelin. Little did we know how big it was going to become, but in many ways it was also where we wanted to go. We didn't want to sound like Led Zeppelin but we wanted the same cohesiveness in the playing, and the bigness of the music.
You don't have to be heavy metal to be big sounding because, if that was the case, Phil Spector would have been heavy metal. And so would The Band, and that is ridiculous.
Anyway, that was the moment when Steve called Peter from Ally Pally and told him he'd just left The Small Faces and wanted to join the band that Peter and I were putting together.
The most important thing for Steve and Peter was that the band shouldn't be thought of as a supergroup, but, inevitably when it got on the front page of the Melody Maker on 26 April 1969, the headline was Pop Giants Supergroup Formed.
When did you become aware that heavy metal bands were emerging?
No. We were so wrapped up in what we were doing, that we'd heard of Black Sabbath but didn't know much about them. We knew a little more about Deep Purple because we'd done gigs with them in Europe. The first one, The Bilzen Jazz And Rock Festival, in Belgium, was a disaster.
For some reason we went on after Deep Purple, which was a nightmare because at that point they were tight and strong, powerful, each one of them had chops to die for. They were just steaming along. Ian Paice was a faultless drummer.
We went on last, 2.00 in the morning, it was cold, it was raining, the power kept going on and off, or dipping up and down which horribly affected the tuning of the Hammond organ. Most of the guys backstage were rooting for us and Aynsley Dunbar, I'll never forget, had his group Retaliation at that time, and he was so kind to me, because the weather had really screwed my drums around and I was still very young, 17, and unaware of what to do in circumstances like that. My snare drum had gone all over the place and Aynsley showed me what to do, it needed tuning up higher because of the weather, because I'd forgotten to tune it back up from having had it in the studio where we'd tuned it down to try to get a certain type of sound. I'd just forgotten.
So Aynsley jumped in to help me out, and Jon Lord jumped in to help the lads sort out the organ and the piano. It was lovely. Jon Lord, though, was particularly sweet. He took me aside, because I think he could see that I was upset by it all, and he said, "Don't you worry Jerry, these things happen. It will get better quite quickly.' There was a real camaraderie back then. Of course, some would take the piss and fuck with you, but most people were great.
The following couple of nights, we opened for Deep Purple at The Paradiso in Amsterdam, and Jon's words proved true. We really started to kick ass. We didn't blow them off or anything, but we did get much better very quickly and the audience responded. And Jon came over and said, 'See? I told you so.' He was a perfect example of what a professional gentleman should be like.
HIPS Vs. HEADBANGING
One thing that changed when the metal bands came along is the way the audience danced. As a drummer in Humble Pie, I played to make people's hips move, our music had to swing. It's because the old black slang euphemism for sex was rock'n'roll, so if a drummer makes it swing, it is literally making the hips move in the same way as a couple having sex. But with metal bands the kids don't do that. I think they may have picked up that head-banging movement from watching the bands lining up and swinging their heads together in time to the music. If you can't move a woman's hips ... a lot of heavy metal loses the swing.