Tommy Aldridge Plays "Still Of The Night” | Whitesnake

[ParaDime77]

Absolute GOAT mode. Backing live track from the 2004 DVD. There is being a drummer, a percussionist and then a performer. Tommy is all three.

https://youtu.be/Mzvu8ZmQhVg?si=RwhEgk40lkoda3GA

[Jason Jennifer Leigh]

Awesome!

Thanks!

[FreddyFender]

Tommy's awesome, but his little ass kid plays it better.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5omDdJiigY

[Jason Jennifer Leigh]

I wonder if he was a Tommy Lee influence.

[skinni]

amazing

[Bono Nettencourt]

Absolute GOAT mode.

Indeed.

[tym]

Absolute GOAT mode.

Indeed.

Not even close. As far as putting on a show, Tommy Lee kinda wins that battle. Dude did some fun stuff on some tours. When it comes to talent, again, not even close. Neil Peart if not one of the best drummers, is by far the best drummer to sit behind a kit. Seen people say Neil was one of the few drummers that never used a click track. Jesus that dude was a monster.

Aldridge is an ok drummer. To say he is the Goat?? Not even close. Now this dude. Thats some talent. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/h4eFCGiuwDk

[Playboyliquor59]

Tommy Aldridge is a great all around drummer, one of the best. Neil only could work with rush which is fine. I’ve said this before but I saw tommy lee record drums for the jacks mannequin album “everything in transit” when I was working at Maverick. Tommy played it so tastefully, it was effortless. I don’t even think he even listened to it before that day he came in and just killed it. Didn’t over play, just understood the mission and did it so tastefully with zero direction.

[ParaDime77]

Absolute GOAT mode.

Indeed.

Not even close. As far as putting on a show, Tommy Lee kinda wins that battle. Dude did some fun stuff on some tours. When it comes to talent, again, not even close. Neil Peart if not one of the best drummers, is by far the best drummer to sit behind a kit. Seen people say Neil was one of the few drummers that never used a click track. Jesus that dude was a monster.

Aldridge is an ok drummer. To say he is the Goat?? Not even close. Now this dude. Thats some talent. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/h4eFCGiuwDk

Thanks for the highjack!

[veritas]

He did an other one of these a few months back for Over The Mountain. It’s like … yeah we know you can play dude, do some videos of songs you actually recorded ffs. Bark At The Moon would be a start. Much like Sarzo he really is mostly a professional scab. I’m amazed at how few original albums the guy actually played on.

Well, Bark at the Moon would not be a start. It's a reasonably well-kept secret that most (if not all) of his drum tracks on Bark at the Moon were removed and re-recorded because they weren't good. It's why they started the tour with Carmine Appice.
The comparison with Sarzo is a good one: great live player, not a great studio player.

Silly that he is doing drumming videos for songs he didn't record.

[veritas]

Pretty sure that’s just a rumor. Nothing on BAAM sounds like Carmine and everything sounds like Aldridge.

I have pretty solid information it's not a rumor (and I'm no wanna-be "insider" -- this may be the ONLY inside information I have ever had). I have bored the board with this before, but I have a very close friend who worked for NBC New York and was close friends with Tony Bongiovi who owned the Power Station studio in New York (and was Bon Jovi's cousin. She actually saw Jon Bon Jovi sweeping the floors at Power Station and incessantly playing that Runaway riff on the keyboards at night). She knew I was a huge Ozzy fan and actually got Ozzy to sign me an autograph on power station stationery in 1983 during the mixing.

She told me this while it was happening in Fall(?) 1983: Tony Bongiovi was mixing Bark at the Moon at Power Station and the drums were a mess -- they sounded terrible but they also were off time and many were "unfixable." She told me they actually brought in a session drummer to re-record and fix many of the drum parts at Power Station.

I always thought it was Carmine Appice and that would make sense because he replaced Aldridge on the tour. But he always denied doing it -- until recently.

Check out what he said in a 2019 interview:


“I didn’t even ask to join Ozzy they called me. I was in France and my manager said Sharon Osbourne‘s looking for you. So I called them and they asked me to join the band and I said well I might be interested. I have known Ozzy for a long time. And I said what happened with Tommy Aldridge. They said they fired him. They recorded a new album and they wanted me to go into the studio and fix the drum sound and help finish the album with Ozzy vocals plus I would also get an associate producer credit, So I said ‘Okay, this all sounds good.... I went into studio to finish the Bark At The Moon album they did with Tommy Aldridge and help the poorly recorded drum sound using some of my techniques. Me and the producer probably re-mic’ed the drum sound but we could not help the timing. Tommy Aldridge‘s drum timing was bad. ’

https://sleazeroxx.com/carmine-appice-r ... e-moon-lp/

As far as I know, he had previously always said he just came in for the tour (probably because of an ironclad agreement with Sharon and fear of being sued). But this time he said more, and it's consistent with what my friend told me back in 1983. We can debate what it means to "fix the drum sound and help finish the album" or "using some of my technique or re-micing" . I know he says "they could not help the timing" but she was pretty clear it included extensively re-recording drum parts because Tony Bongiovi said they were "unfixable." It seems weird they would get a different drummer to re-record the actual drumming, and my guess here is that Carmine is still being a little purposefully vague (and rarely diplomatic) and not outright saying he re-recorded stuff. But maybe it was a disconnect and when she thought they were re-recording parts, it was just Carmine helping "re-mic" and adjust the recorded sounds? I dunno. But something definitely was done to Tommy's drumming on that album, even Carmine admits that.

Take that as you will.

It's somewhat amusing how many people fall over themselves with Tommy Aldridge because he is aggressive live and looks good, but there is a reason he is on so few studio recordings.....

[FreddyFender]

Pretty sure that’s just a rumor. Nothing on BAAM sounds like Carmine and everything sounds like Aldridge.

I have pretty solid information it's not a rumor (and I'm no wanna-be "insider" -- this may be the ONLY inside information I have ever had). I have bored the board with this before, but I have a very close friend who worked for NBC New York and was close friends with Tony Bongiovi who owned the Power Station studio in New York (and was Bon Jovi's cousin. She actually saw Jon Bon Jovi sweeping the floors at Power Station and incessantly playing that Runaway riff on the keyboards at night). She knew I was a huge Ozzy fan and actually got Ozzy to sign me an autograph on power station stationery in 1983 during the mixing.

She told me this while it was happening in Fall(?) 1983: Tony Bongiovi was mixing Bark at the Moon at Power Station and the drums were a mess -- they sounded terrible but they also were off time and many were "unfixable." She told me they actually brought in a session drummer to re-record and fix many of the drum parts at Power Station.

I always thought it was Carmine Appice and that would make sense because he replaced Aldridge on the tour. But he always denied doing it -- until recently.

Check out what he said in a 2019 interview:


“I didn’t even ask to join Ozzy they called me. I was in France and my manager said Sharon Osbourne‘s looking for you. So I called them and they asked me to join the band and I said well I might be interested. I have known Ozzy for a long time. And I said what happened with Tommy Aldridge. They said they fired him. They recorded a new album and they wanted me to go into the studio and fix the drum sound and help finish the album with Ozzy vocals plus I would also get an associate producer credit, So I said ‘Okay, this all sounds good.... I went into studio to finish the Bark At The Moon album they did with Tommy Aldridge and help the poorly recorded drum sound using some of my techniques. Me and the producer probably re-mic’ed the drum sound but we could not help the timing. Tommy Aldridge‘s drum timing was bad. ’

https://sleazeroxx.com/carmine-appice-r ... e-moon-lp/

As far as I know, he had previously always said he just came in for the tour (probably because of an ironclad agreement with Sharon and fear of being sued). But this time he said more, and it's consistent with what my friend told me back in 1983. We can debate what it means to "fix the drum sound and help finish the album" or "using some of my technique or re-micing" . I know he says "they could not help the timing" but she was pretty clear it included extensively re-recording drum parts because Tony Bongiovi said they were "unfixable." It seems weird they would get a different drummer to re-record the actual drumming, and my guess here is that Carmine is still being a little purposefully vague (and rarely diplomatic) and not outright saying he re-recorded stuff. But maybe it was a disconnect and when she thought they were re-recording parts, it was just Carmine helping "re-mic" and adjust the recorded sounds? I dunno. But something definitely was done to Tommy's drumming on that album, even Carmine admits that.

Take that as you will.

It's somewhat amusing how many people fall over themselves with Tommy Aldridge because he is aggressive live and looks good, but there is a reason he is on so few studio recordings.....

Cool story - thanks for sharing.

I believe they decided after the record was done they didn't like Tommy's double bass playing and decided to delete the second bass drum. I assume there was bleed from that second bass drum that they had to try and minimize with EQ and as a result the tracks sounded like shit.

but you wouldn't bring in a drummer to fix a technical issue with drum recordings - you'd bring in another engineer that knew their shit.

If they actually flew Carmine out, he was there to play - maybe just sat there and did something like retracking the kick only in spots? If he redid entire tracks, I find it hard to believe he wouldn't be telling everyone who would listen that it was him on BATM.

Timing/tempo issues never jumped out at me when listening to BATM, so they were fixed one way or the other. I guess we'll never know.

[Bono Nettencourt]

Yeah, that's what I read too - they tried to only record one bass drum and it ended up sounding weird.

[veritas]

Carmine was in France at the time. They flew him in to New York to the actual studio.
Seems odd to incur that cost and expense of Carmine to just re-record a kick drum (remember Carmine was not cheap and a pretty big deal at the time, coming off the Rod Stewart years and other high profile stuff).

He also claims he helped re-mic the recorded drums (?) in the room and helped record Ozzy's vocals ("two or three lines at a time") .....

I know Carmine is a blowhard and everyone thinks if he had re-recorded drum parts on Bark at the Moon he would have blurted it out years ago -- but not so. For years, he denied doing anything other than the tour. As far as I know, it's only been in recent years he admitted to actually being in the Power Station and "helping" the drum sounds on the actual record.

He's a loudmouth - -but he's not stupid. He is well aware of Sharon's litigious and vicious nature, and I think he stayed quiet for many, many years on this to avoid her bullshit. Why now he's starting to bleed more details out, I'm not sure....

[Bono Nettencourt]

Time wounds all heels. Jimmy Bain and Bobby Rondinelli kept quiet about being the ghost rhythm section on LAFS for about 25-30 years. Guess after awhile there's nothing left to lose so might as well tell your interviewer a good story.

[veritas]

Time wounds all heels. Jimmy Bain and Bobby Rondinelli kept quiet about being the ghost rhythm section on LAFS for about 25-30 years. Guess after awhile there's nothing left to lose so might as well tell your interviewer a good story.

yep....