Lee Kerslake is a body drummer. He doesn't play
his kit from the wrist or from his strong fore-arms. No, the powerhouse
of Uriah Heep puts the full weight of his shoulders - of his whole torso
- behind each crushing baet. It means that his playing is simplistic and
terse but the all-important drive is monumentally stunning.
Lee's body drumming can best be seen during a
number like "Circle Of Hands". It's on this album, and it's easy to
picture him rocking from side to side. He rolls to the right on the
downbeat throwing his whole frame's weight behind the bass drum beat and
cymbal crash then he sways back over to the left on the up-beat heaving
his weight behind the snare-drums off-beat. It needs that sort of
muscular, physical power to work the engine room of a band like Heep.
The rest of the band is only too aware that it
was the immediate musical empathy between Lee and bassist Gary Thain
that turned Uriah into a compact, weighty unit that's able to sell
albums and fill concert halls.
I've always found Lee to be something of a
Jekyll and Hyde character. Off-stage on American tours, he's been known
to go missing for several days always turning up in time for the next
gig with the barest of explanations - often bizarre but somehow
believable. The Lost Weekend just isn't in it. It's that his Hyde
manifestations, his Jekyll is equally surprising. Lee Keslake - Family
Man.
Backstage at a London gig: Lee staggers off
after the encores, towels himself down and is immediately engrossed in
playing with his young son, jutting out his chin for the toddler that
he's cradling in his arms to punch. The little 'un is developing a very
fair left hook.
But sit Lee behind a kit - either in a studio
or in a concert hall - and he's transformed. He concentrates with an
intensity unusual for a drummer who plays fairly simple fills. It's a
concentration of power rather than technically flash. Well, you need to
be a mite beefy to propel a band as thunderously loud as Heep. And Lee's
as beefy as Brovil.
