Jan. 6, 1973: Drinking wine with Gary Mallaber

 

First time I’d used a Q&A format for a story, but in this wine-drinking interlude with Gary Mallaber, it seemed just right. 

Jan. 6, 1973

Gary, Local Rock Drummer, Builds His Career 

GARY MALLABER grew up in Buffalo’s golden age of rock ‘n roll and drummed for some of the city’s best bands – Stan & The Ravens, for one, and later Raven, an immensely talented fivesome which evolved from that Stan Szelest group, went to New York City, got one LP on Columbia Records, then disintegrated in mid-1970.

          From that came a lucky contact, a spot on Van Morrison’s hit “Moondance” album. Since then, Gary’s spent more and more time in studios, more and more time on the West Coast.

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HE’D FLOWN back for the holidays last month, fresh from a tour with Paul (“Old Fashioned Love Song”) Williams, when I caught him in the North Buffalo apartment he keeps with Ronnie Zalewski, drummer for Barbara St. Clair & The Pin-Kooshins.

          He’d been looking up old friends, practicing daily (he has one drum set here, another in Los Angeles), sitting in with ex-Raven guitarist John Weitz’s band, doing some studio things in Rochester with another former Raven, keyboard wizard Jimmy Calire.

          Day before, he’d gotten half a dozen bottles of fine French wine, totally unexpected, as a Christmas present from Paul Williams. We settled into something homier – Gary’s grandfather’s homemade wine, mixed with a dash of ginger ale.

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L.A.’s BECOME kind of a second home for you. When are you heading back and what’s coming up?

          “I have to be out there by the fifth. I just got a call yesterday from Jesse Ed Davis and he’s putting together an eight-piece band to play a place in San Fernando Valley,” he said.

          “He’s gonna do five nights and the last two he’s gonna record for his new album. Then I’m supposed to play on a cut or two for the new Jackson Browne album and for Paul Williams’ next album.

          “I’m flying out there standby, which is the only way I can afford it. I’m not gonna drive across country any more, man. I can’t take it, here to California in under 48 hours.

          “Within the last two years I’ve done it seven or eight times, three or four times all by myself, you know, drinking coffee all the way, throwing down a quick McDonald’s, salting your mouth and keep driving. I did it most of the times in desperation. I had to be there and I didn’t have the bread to fly, even standby.”

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HOW COME California instead of New York City?

          “Van (Morrison) moving to San Francisco did it. That move to California was inevitable. It had to be. To stay in New York and do studio work is good, but it’s hard to live in Manhattan. If you can survive there, you can survive any place. And there’s more recording going on now in L.A.”

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YOU’VE PLAYED WITH Steve Miller, a cut on the new America LP. What’s gotten you into all this studio work?

          “Mostly that Van Morrison album. A lot it’s come through the people at Asylum Records – David Geffen and Elliott Roberts. I’ll be on two or three albums coming out between now and March. Ned Doheny, Rod Taylor, most of the people I’ve been working with are new people.”

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HOW DO YOU figure coming up from Buffalo influences you? Did it make any difference?

          “I tell people out there about starting out back here and I tell them there is a style, a way people go about things, a way they project their music.

          “I was playing in bars at 15, no 14, minding my own business and passing for whatever age I was supposed to be, and that opportunity to play, it was magic, it really helped. Other places you don’t get that kind of a chance.

          “When I was young, influences were great. I was bombarded with music. The Hound, I useta glue my ear to the radio. Most stations would keep all the really good rock ‘n roll off the air, but The Hound played it. This useta be a breakout city. A lotta hits got started here.

          “When I was a freshman in high school, there were jazz concerts in Kleinhans, Sunday afternoon jams at the Pine Grill. You’d be able to hear it and see it goin’ on.

          “Let me tell you, man, this city has really got some good players. I wish we had a facility back then where we coulda worked at the recording aspect of it. The only thing we lacked was the facilities. If you could do it, there would’ve been a lotta hit records out of here.

          “Right now if we had a place in this city, one 16-track studio where you could do the whole shot – recording and mixing – where we could go and be fairly honest with people, you could get people to come and play. It’d work if you’re out front with the people you’re dealing with.

          “But it’s an almost unwritten law of the music business that an artist has to get ripped off at least three times before he gets anything. It’s happened to me a number of times. I just try to minimize it.”

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MOST OF THE records you’re on, you’re playing laid-back and quiet. Has your style changed any since those days with Raven?

          “All my experience has shifted from gigs to studios. Getting to really listen to myself has changed my sensitivity and made it better.

          “Most of the people will want you to play something they’re familiar with and that’s OK. Then you’ll hit someone that’ll want you to interpret and that’s two steps along. And once in a while you get a chance to be totally free.

          “With Van, he doesn’t like me to play too hard. It unbalances the sound he wants. That’s probably why it’s best that I don’t tour with him. He’s got such a way with words, though. In a century or two, they’ll look back on him and he’ll be one of the giants.”

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WHAT ABOUT having your own group? Ever thought about getting one together?

          “Yeah, I’ve thought about getting a group. But I’d like it to be something that’s working all the time and I don’t think I really wanta control people. Plus last year I played with nine or 10 different artists in and out of studios. I don’t want to give that up.

          “I’m not the type of artist that likes one thing and can’t stand anything else. I can appreciate a really fine-written ballad as well as a 10-minute cut of total freedom. When I write songs, I write on the piano and they come out laid-back ballads.

          “But in music or the arts, there’s no one way to do anything. When you’re working with really good players, there’s such an individual hearing, individual thought processes going on.

          “In this record with Ned Doheny, we used players that were really sensitive. The songs were ready, I mean, you didn’t have to make up for anything that wasn’t written. It was all there. And we had a brilliant engineer, John Haney, who’s worked with Judy Collins. And the music really worked.”

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WHAT WAS the Paul Williams tour like?

          “It was great. We’d go on and do 45 minutes, then the Fifth Dimension would come on and do an hour and a half. We were the perfect warm-up group for them.

          “We’d fly together and our bus rides to the airports and halls were just insane. We were in a constant state of laughter. But every time we got up on stage we did good. Nobody had a bad night.

          “What kicked the whole thing off was that week Paul did at the Troubadour in October. We went on ahead of Helen Reddy and we blew her off the stage. She was really mad.

          “Paul, he’s a golden person, he’s one of the greatest cats in the music business. He made us feel great on the road.

          “We were in Vancouver on Thanksgiving and he took us all into a French restaurant and told us go ahead. When somebody does things like that, you want to bend over backwards for them.”

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FOOTNOTE: Van Morrison may have provided the launch for Gary’s stellar career as a session man, but his biggest impact came with the Steve Miller Band. The drum tracks on Miller’s hit albums are testament to just how creative and tasteful Gary can be. His line of credits is endless – at one point he was booked so heavily that he had three sets of drums circulating among L.A. studios – and he’s especially proud to have gotten the call to back up Bruce Springsteen on the “Lucky Town” album. He has a video on his website entitled “Working for the Boss.”