Tuesday 16 October 2012

Rick Allen

Hi again!
My latest project is in my social studies class. It's a lot of fun and I think it's entertaining us all to learn about pop- culture through the decades.
My group ended up with the 80's automatically I assigned myself the music section. I listen to a lot of music from the 80's so it wasn't very hard. I did get some interesting information though.
Have any of you ever heard of Rick Allen? If you haven't he is the drummer for Def Leppard and you should search him up when you have the chance. He's really a very interesting person. but why is he special and how did I find him? Well I remember heard about him watching switched at birth earlier today and he caught my attention because I am a huge fan of the drums because I play a little bit and I know how talented you have to be to play really well and it's amazing what people can do. Also, a drummer with one arm? What isn't interesting about that? So the little geek inside me decided to investigate further. I snooped around online, asked some people who knew about tons of bands and other people who had been to a Def Leppard concert. What I found was truly amazing. So this drummer only has one arm but why? and how can he play? that's what I wanted know. So here's the story I finally came up with.
Rick Allen was driving impaired (what is with rock stars!!?) and he got into an accident. The result of that accident was the loss of his left arm. 3 or 4 months after he got out of the hospital, his band mates came to visit him at home. They stood outside for a moment before coming in and heard someone drumming to one of their songs. They went into the house prepared to Fire him politely (come on the guy lost his arm! how could they expect him to play?) and saw that he was the one playing the drums so well. Needless to say they didn't fire him and he still plays at their gigs today. Now he plays the drums barefoot so he can feel the difference of the pedals beneath his feet. He can play the drums so well one-handed because of the way his drumkit is set up so he uses a pedal instead of actually striking a splash or a snare or whatever.

I just wanted to share that with you because I found it so interesting and It's the coolest homework I've had this year to put up.
See Ya Later!

1 comment:

  1. Rick Allen is one of my favourite drummers of all time! I got to see him with Def Leppard in 2003 when they came to Vancouver. He really is amazing.

    ReplyDelete