In the year 1986, I was 15 years old and attended my first Van Halen concert. I live in New Hampshire and the closest venue back in the 80’s was the Worcester Centrum, now called the DCU center. I saw a lot of my favorite bands there like YES, RUSH, Def Leppard, Eric Clapton and of course Van Halen numerous times. I was actually 13 when Van Halen rolled through on their 1984 tour and I begged my mom to let me go as I was already a mega fan since discovering them and playing drums in the summer of 1982. The 84 tour was just not in the cards for this 13 year old though. It was far and my mom thought that the next time they came around, I might have a license and could go since the town of Worcester is roughly an hour and forty five minutes away from where I lived. I remember pleading and saying that I had to see THIS tour. I guess I could sense the growing tension with David Lee Roth and the guys even though 1984 was the biggest year they had ever had.
Nonetheless in the late summer of 1986, my brother that is a little over a year younger than me got invited to see Van Halen and I quickly pushed my way into the invite as I was not about to miss this opportunity. I can still feel the excitement to this day as this was the first big concert I had ever been to. I was extremely fortunate to see Buddy Rich in 1984 but that was at a high school and even though it was an amazing show, it was not like seeing a concert in a big arena with the lights and all the fireworks. As much as I love Buddy Rich now, my 13 year old brain wasn’t able to fully take in all the stuff Buddy was doing and I honestly wish I had been a little older as I had only had two solid years of drumming under my belt and only a year behind a real drum set. Alex Van Halen though was my true idol and I had the giant poster of him from the 1981 tour tacked on my bedroom wall. I had no idea what to really expect when I saw the band but it was honestly like watching a super hero take command of a very large ship. As silly as it may sound now since I never use much more than a four piece set of drums, Alex played a monstrous set with the core of the set centered on Simmons bass drums and toms with an acoustic snare drum and an array of Paiste 2002 cymbals. I had thought the Simmons drums sounded pretty cool and unique when the album came out that March but that night at the concert, the sound of those Simmons drums coming from the PA rattled my teeth and just exploded with low end. One round house fill around the toms sent chills up my 15 year old spine and it was then and there that I knew I wanted a set.
Shortly after that concert the thought of building my own sort of tribute set focused on Simmons drums entered my mind. While Simmons drums were really popular in the 80’s, It really was a crazy idea as Simmons drums were super expensive and I barely knew the first thing about them as they were not something that I would casually see around the area that I grew up in. At the time only working pro’s had Simmons drums; not teenage kids in high school. The thought never left my mind though and after a few years of working crappy summer jobs and saving every penny, I had enough to buy what I thought I needed. I visited a big music store that used to be in Portsmouth NH called E.U. Wurlitzer as I had found out that they sold Simmons drums and I went to the store to bug the sales guy and find out as much as I could. The first obstacle that I encountered was the brain. A traditional Simmons set came with a brain that offered bass drum, snare drum and three tom sounds. It had never dawned on me that Alex could be using more than one brain to get his sounds from and I knew I would never be able to afford two units! I was also a little bummed as the new SDS-1000 was what was being offered and it was Simmons attempt at trying to make the drums sound closer to real drums. The SDS-1000 did not sound much like Alex’s set at all. After talking with the sales guy, it was decided that I needed to custom order five Simmons pads, a Simmons TMI and a Korg drum machine. The idea was that I would use MIDI out of the drum machine, assign the same tom sound five times to the TMI and then individually tune each tom to its own pitch. I went with this idea as it seemed to better suit my needs at the time. Because I was also pinching every penny, I ordered two Ludwig Rocker II bass drums from Thoroughbred Music in Florida as they were the cheapest Ludwig drum I could get brand new. For some odd reason I chose white for everything and if my memory serves me right, I think it was because the music store told me black Simmons pads were on back order and I did not have the patience to wait any longer. My mom must have undoubtedly thought I was certifiably nuts as this all cost a small fortune.
They day finally arrived when I could go pick up the Simmons pads and shortly after, the two bass drums were delivered to my house. I also got a Peavey KB 150 keyboard amp from my piano playing friend as he had upgraded his amp to the KB 300. In fact we both still have those amps and they weigh a ton! It certainly took me a while to figure everything out and get the drums set up in a comfortable position. There never really was a great way to mount the floor toms as I just had them on a floor stand and they would fall forwards if the tripod was not positioned correctly. I had to order clamps from CP percussion that would hold the black Simmons tom arms and had to use a make shift table to put the drum machine and the TMI on. It was such a huge mess as I had wires and cables going everywhere but it sure looked cool. The Simmons part really took some figuring out on my part as I had to figure out the whole midi thing and assigning the sound I wanted to the right channel. I also had to really mess with the sensitivity on the TMI as there was all kinds of crosstalk going on within the pads. I certainly did not want tom three to fire when I hit tom two. The bass drums were also hard to tune and I quickly realized that were just not great overall as most everything about them was cheap. One of my biggest memories of the set was that I dragged it all to my high school for a performance as I was in a music class and we were doing a showcase during school. Because I had not really paired up with anyone on a particular project, it was decided that I would do a drum solo. I stupidly figured it would be no big deal as I thought nobody would really be there and I would be mostly playing to an empty room. As I sat down behind the set with the bright stage lights in my eyes, it was quickly apparent that the ENTIRE school was there. Fortunately I made way through a solo and people seemed to like it. I’m not sure I have ever been so nervous though.
I used the set mostly at home but honestly I grew fairly tired of the limited sounds and the cables everywhere. I also joined a band in my senior year that played acoustic/electric rock and my trusty old Gretsch set seemed to work much better in that scenario. The one thing I’m glad I did though was recognize that I should have bought the Simmons bass drum and a Simmons rack. Those allowed me to play the set as it was meant to be played and later on in the early 90’s I started using the Alesis D4, which had a ton of great sounds in it. Ironically our local area music store called Daddy’s Junky Music had what they called a garage sale every year and they would always blow out used gear. It was there around 1993 that I managed to find three black Simmons SDS-8 pads along with the SDS-8 brain. I think paid roughly $40 for all of it as Simmons drums were pretty much a joke by 1993. I was truly shocked to discover that the SDS-8 brain was pretty much the baby brother of the SDS-V and had the EXACT sounds I had been looking for. It sure would have been nice to know that in 1988 as it probably would have saved me an enormous amount of grief. I will say that having that drum machine running through the TMI taught me about MIDI and that part was a good learning experience. Having overall electric drum knowledge was also a good thing. Alex Van Halen ended his Simmons period around 1991 as he still had a pad as part of his set that he would use at the end of his solo. I am partially in the minority of people that really liked the period between 1982-1991, where he had Simmons drums as part of his set up. I also knew that he needed to get back to acoustic drums as he has such an amazing sound from his acoustic toms and snare. I don’t play the Simmons drums much these days but they are set up in my drum room where that original bedroom poster of Alex hangs. I still think they are cool and they are a reminder of working all those crummy summer jobs to buy them. I guess stuff like that hold a little more value when you earn the money to buy them yourself. Where would we be without silly youth?