Interview for Disc And Music Echo

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DENNY Seiwell hasn’t done a drum solo in years, but he’s a mighty fine drummer. He’s the heartbeat of Wings, and doesn’t do solos because he reckons that’s just a phase for immature drummers to go through.

“Anyway, drums generally sound abominable on their own.”

Probably the last solo he had to do was when Paul McCartney auditioned him for Wings in New York, in a run-down little practice studio with a terrible old set of drums. Denny had just gone along on a friend’s recommendation, and had no idea the McCartneys were waiting at the other end.

“He just asked me to play — he didn’t have a guitar, so I just sat and played. He had a certain look in his eye — he was looking for more than a drummer, he was looking for a certain attitude too. I just played… I always say that if you can’t get it on by yourself you can’t get it on with anyone.”

He was good, and he’s been with the Macs ever since.

A hugely tall, gentle American, Denny was once a drummer in the American Navy — a fairly relaxed number, which also got him 18 months’ professional musical training at college at the taxpayers’ expense. It was when he was stationed with the Navy at Villefranche that he met his French wife, Monique. Most Admirals in the American fleet have their own bands, and Denny was in one of these; one summer they toured South America where he really fell for Samba rhythms; another they were based in Chicago so he hung out round the negro quarter and played in clubs.

The only other permanent band he was in before Wings was a Bill Graham-founded one called Pleasure Principle. They went to San Francisco to play the Fillmore, and waited and waited for Bill to check them out “but he was playing basketball instead, so we disbanded there and then.”

After a stint doing showband things in his home area of Pennsylvania, where cabaret artists would just appear with their sheet music which the band had to play off first time cold, Denny drifted into New York session work, which included one of the Melanie albums, John Denver things and a TV commercial with Carl Perkins.

Once when he was doing a session for James Brown’s company in the next door studio to James, the musicians got into such a good set that James Brown rushed out of the next door studio into the sound booth and started putting vocals over the top of it. He swore he’d put the results out as a single, but Denny is still waiting to hear it.

“I do miss those sessions really, the musicians were great, just drifting in to play with people, although the sessions could leave you with a very unsettled feeling. You’d leave saying to yourself ‘if we’d had another three hours to do that song we could have really done it well’. That was the thing that got you, you could never get involved.”

Denny always had a great affinity for New York and its musicians — he dislikes the West Coast and its atmosphere.

“Every time I went out there I couldn’t stand it, there’s an excitement about New York that makes it worthwhile.”

But when McCartney called up one day and said how did he fancy the idea of coming over to the farm in Scotland to play a bit, Denny went.

“Paul didn’t say ‘come over and let’s form a band’, he just said to come over and hang out, and if it didn’t work out it would have been a nice vacation anyway.”

But Denny’s still with the Macs through Ram and Wildlife and the first gigs and now the new album. He still muses on the old jazzers, he used to mix with opinions on the Beatles; they always claimed the Beatles were musically inept.

“But everyone in America loves Paul and the Beatles because they never got enough of them there — American papers wouldn’t have been so harshly critical of our European tour either, although people are getting a little less frantic on reviews now. But it didn’t take much foresight to realise it would happen, what with Linda on piano.”

That Denny gave up session work to be with the band speaks for itself; he says that it’s a much more communal band than the public will ever know — most people still tend to think of it as Paul McCartney and back-up band.

But Denny Laine is beginning to write things, and Denny S is thinking about it:

“I never have any lyrics in my head, but being a part of the band makes me want to write. I play enough piano, I’m always doodling around on it.”

He is also glad that the band will probably be including old Beatles songs, like “Eleanor Rigby,” onstage.

“We thought we ought to establish Wings as a band first, but now we’ve left it long enough to be able to include things like that. I mean, Paul’s still writing incredibly well now — beautiful ballads like ‘Woman Oh Why’ or the Bond music.”

Denny always quite rated Ringo as a drummer, but his main influences have been Elvin Jones “for just bashing the hell out of everything” and Mel Lewis for “playing utter taste, he never played anything that didn’t fit and I loved him for that.“

“Most drummers have a tendency to get a bit flash — good drummers never play a lot of fancy stuff. Buddy Rich is a fantastic drummer, but Elvin Jones plays a lot less and swings a lot more. Drums have to put a heartbeat, a pulse, into a song.”

Obviously Denny, like the rest of the band, is desperate to get back on the road again. Their performance improved so tremendously during the European gigs, that he is anxious to keep the live gigs going to improve even further. But at the moment, the recording is finished and the endless process of pruning down and sorting out the masses of material — enough for four albums — into a double album package is very time consuming.

Denny has always wanted to get into producing though, and sees this as a good opportunity for learning. He thinks of Wings as a very permanent engagement, and that’s about the highest compliment you can get from a good session musician.