GARY O’TOOLE: REVISITED 2
Talking to Gary in 2023 (Part II)
text: ahand83/photos: MGS
You started playing with Steve Hackett in 2000. I believe the first recording you did with Steve was the ‘To Watch The Storms’ album. You already talked about the track ‘Mechanical Bride’. That track has big drum fills all over the place. I wondered how you worked on that drum part?
If I’m in the studio I will actually write out a complete song. Steve would often get Roger (King) to do a demo. He send us the demo and it had all these bits and pieces in it. We just nailed everything. I didn’t really have to be too creative straight away, I just needed to make sure I had the structure of the song correct. Steve said: “We’re going on tour first and then after we’re going to record ‘Mechanical Bride’.” I remember on that tour we opened the show with that track and it was quite a big thing. SH liked the strobe lighting to be in full effect and I hate strobes. I just do. I saw a friend of mine have an epileptic seizure and it was told that it could have been because of strobe lighting. It made me averse to it and I never felt comfortable with it at all.
I believe you’ve worked as a session musician for many different artists, one of them being SClub7? That’s something totally different! What are your reasons for doing different jobs?
The big thing about being a professional musicians these days is diversification. You’ve got to diversify. It’s very easy to say “we’ll absolutely do it this way” but it doesn’t work out like that. I’m just going to be a professional musician and play drums for bands I like. Uhm, no! (laughs) So you got to get involved. I’m an author, I’m a teacher, I’m a lecturer and I’ve obviously played drums on a bunch of albums. You have to get involved in everything that’s possible, actually. This way you find out much about the business and then sometimes you have to do other jobs. I think, shortly after I turned professionally fully I had to go back and work in a Mark’s and Spencer’s stacking shelves, just to pay the bills! As much as I didn’t like it I knew I had to. Being a professional musician is in here (points at his chest). You’ve told the universe: “This is what I’m doing, I’m a professional musician. End of it.” You then get involved in it as much as you can. In the early days it was obvious who the bad guys were, that were actually taking money off of musicians. They were usually management or record companies, while the musicians were actually making all this stuff. They were completely being screwed! These days it’s companies like Spotify and Apple music, that’s the way it is.
That’s a real shame, but what can one do?
I think there are things you can do. These days I think musicians are learning from the likes of Taylor Swift, who’s actually let people choose between buying a record sold by the record company or a completely new recording and new arrangement that’s fully hers. And they can’t stop her. She remixes it, remasters everything and then sells it on here website. And it’s brilliant, that’s the way to do it. So you basically cut the record company out of it. She’s able to do that because she’s got a huge consumer base already. I remember the band ‘30 Seconds To Mars’ doing an album, they recorded it and then gave it away. On the back of giving that album away, they were then able to book a tour of stadiums. But they had a consumer base in the first place. So they too were able to do that, to afford it.
I think Steve Hackett’s doing the right thing by selling his new music and live albums throughout his own website. So there’s no management involved, no record company apart from deals with Inside Out. It probably makes him some more money than his previous albums. What do you think?
I can’t say too much about that because I don’t know. What I understand is that the way to do it is to actually have control over it yourself rather than to hand over control completely to somebody else. As soon as you cut somebody else in, Inside Out or anybody, than a slice of that pie disappears. And it comes down to your negotiations skills as to how big a slice, what percentage of it goes away. I’m not really at the point right now where I need to worry about that.
I’m playing with an artist now called Steven Del Petty who’s a blues-rock guy, and he’s great! It’s a little trio with myself, Will Mortimer and Steven Del Petty. Steven’s written some great songs. We worked together some 10 years ago and we kind of crossed swords. We’ve now managed to put that all behind us and it’s just great to work with him. There are plans afoot to get us to go out to Spain probably towards the end of the year, for two weeks, and I’m just trying to make sure my ex-wife’s going to be able to look after the kids. That would be a nice little trip.
Speaking of trips: You travelled the world with Steve Hackett and maybe other musicians as well, I don’t know. Is there a particular gig or country where you played a gig that you still remember very well, because of a special reason. Is there a gig that stands out in your memory?
There are so many to be honest. I always wanted to play the Royal Albert Hall in London and so doing that was great. A few years previous we played the Shepherd’s Bush Empire which holds about 1100 people. Then we moved up to playing the Hammersmith Apollo (which everyone in London knows as the Hammersmith Odeon but we always refer to it as the Odeon) I got to play there and we sold it out three times. It was absolutely wonderful because I remember the feeling of being in the stalles waiting for a band to come on, people that I loved to watch. And then being there, on that stage, was so special.
When we got to do the Royal Albert Hall, that was bizarre as well, in another way. We’d been around the world and we’d done everywhere. Yet the Albert Hall is the only venue where they say: “You can’t go on stage unless you’re wearing a hard hat”, like you would on a building site. It’s because there were people putting lights up above our heads. I was like: “This is every gig. This happened all the time!”(laughs) They were all for safety regulations.
I can imagine the Royal Albert Hall is a very prestigious gig to play? I mean it’s a famous concert hall, partly because of its beautiful ceiling…
Yeah, that was great, just wonderful. I remember many moons before, around 1985/1986 I played with a jazz-funk outfit called ‘LW5’ and we were on the ‘Black Music Festival’ when we played Wembley. Top of the bill that night was Chaka Khan. That was huge! So there are points where I’ve seen things that have been amazing.
I remember different countries for different reasons. I loved Germany. It was the food, it was the people. I feel the same about Argentina, about Buenos Aires. Tokyo… There are so many beautiful places and they’re all beautiful for different reasons. I really enjoyed my time on the road, I thought it was fantastic. But when the family calls it’s really important that you… You know, there are so many people that actually ignore their family, their kids. I didn’t want that to happen to mine, I wanted them to feel that dad’s there for them. So, I’m happy.
So being a dad probably takes up most of your time? We talked about your drumming school last time we spoke, and about writing music. You said you wrote some pieces but also that it takes a lot of time. What is your main goal when it comes to music these days? What is most important to you?
Well, I’ve kind of gotten to this place where I really care about writing. I kept on fighting back the urge to just put drums on the back burner and focus on writing. And I’ve done this with some friends, but I guess I’m finding it difficult to make the transition because I just love playing. The thing is, I will go through things and I’m trying to push myself to go into different areas. Because I think I’ve kind of stayed in the same place for a little while.
A few years ago I started having these video lessons with Peter Erskine and that has been fantastic. I will send him a video, he will respond critique in my performance. These days he’s just stepped off the curriculum from artists works and said: “Try this, cause this is more interesting.” He’s trying to actually push my ability to the next level, which is fantastic. I’ve got a few things to actually play for him. He’s got this great song called ‘Eighth Miracle’ which is in 15/8 and goes back into 4/4 but it’s really nice. I’m looking forward to doing another take on that on that for him. So I’m feeling like wanting to expend playing the weird and wonderful.
But I also want to be able to record, to put lyrics and song structures together. Every time I say I’m going to do this something else comes up. But I want to write, I want to sing on the stuff that I write and I want control over that music so that I can say “It really is me.” It’s not just because it’s something that is in 15/8 or it’s in 11/8, it’s got to be musically saying something and it needs to be personal. I need to get it together as soon as possible. In the meantime I got to earn a few quide, so I got to advertise for drum lessons. You know, I’m teaching online. I do feel that once I’ve gotten financially in the position… And I’m interested in a bunch of different things, investments and that. If those come to fruishing then I’ll be looking to record my own stuff. I will be looking to do the things I care about. And do them correctly!