Mick Underwood
Mick Underwood is a British musician who began his career as a drummer by taking lessons from Jim Marshall, of Marshall amplifier fame. It didn't take long for him to be noticed by other local musicians, when as young teenager, he had already formed a group called The Outlaws with Ritchie Blackmore. They were mostly a studio band that would back up various people coming to record in the studio. This was a fertile musical environment for Mick as he would learn many different styles of music at this time. Shortly thereafter, he received a big break when Jet Harris from the popular English band The Shadows, asked him to go out on a tour. Packaged on this particular tour was American music superstars Little Richard and Sam Cooke. Mick would eventually network himself with other musicians such as Ian Gillan, Roger Glover, Jimmy Royal and many others. He also toured with Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins during this period.
In the early 1970's Mick formed the three piece power trio Quatermass. The group consisted of Keyboards, Bass and Mick on the drums. They would do a few tours of America. Their hit song was "Black Sheep" which was eventually covered by Rainbow - with Ronnie James Dio. In the 70s, Mick worked with Paul Rogers of Free and also did some work with the band Strapps. Near the end of the 70s and into the early 80s, Mick was the thunder for Ian Gillan's band "Gillan". He recorded on some of Ian Gillan's top albums, such as "Mr. Universe, Glory Road and Future Shock." Today, Mick enjoys a solo career with his band Mick Underwood's Glory Road. I recently chatted with Mick about his musically productive career.
R.V.B. - Hello Mick. This is Rob von Bernewitz from New York. How are you doing today?
M.U. - Good mate... how are you?
R.V.B. - I'm doing good. We have a little bit of a gray - rainy - kind of an England day here today. What's going on by you?
M.U. - It's really good here - (Hahaha) We've got a good weekend planned. There has been a good bit of weather that's come in. It's been nice for a few days. It's getting warmer for this time of year... which is great.
R.V.B. - It's been warm here also but I'm not complaining though. We've had a couple of hurricanes but thank God they didn't come up here. Some of the other parts of the states didn't make out too well.
M.U. - I've followed that quite closely from here. We've got loads of reports and films of it and it's terrifying.
R.V.B. - Now there is fires going on, on the west coast. Well Congratulations on your career. One thing for sure is that you do surround yourself with excellent musicians.
M.U. - When you look back on it, you say "God, these are the top echelon." They're great players and they're great to work with. As a musician, when you play with great guys, it rubs off on you... and you play better.
R.V.B. - That's true... you're a product of your environment. The time period of your career has produced an incredible amount of great music. What was in the air over there that created all of this great music?
M.U. - I really don't know? I agree with what you say. Looking back on it now - at the time when I was first getting into playing - Ritchie Blackmore lived about an mile and a half from where I lived. Ian Gillan - who I really didn't know until Episode Six times - lived about two miles away, on the Council Estate. I met Ritchie when I first got behind a drum kit. When you look at it in a close proximity in the West London area... Jim Sullivan was just up the road... it was unbelievable where they all came from.
R.V.B. - Was there anything that sparked you into becoming a drummer? Why not a guitar player, or a singer, or a bass player? What drew you to the drums?
M.U. - It's something I could always do. I had a feeling for rhythm. I loved music... I really did. I had a natural bit of spark for the drums. I didn't have a drum kit or anything like that. It's the old story of banging boxes and things like that. (Hahaha) You've must have heard people say that? The idea of actually really getting into drums didn't really hit me until I was in secondary school... when I was about 12/13. I really wanted to do it. I always liked playing on boxes and make believe drums... if you like. (Hahaha)
R.V.B. - Was there anyone popular at that time who you wanted to emulate?
M.U. - Well the original part of it was I was just fiddling around. Sandy Nelson - the American drummer - I really loved what he was doing. He was making great sounding records. I really liked rock and roll. I would come out of school and go to a cafe and play the records in a juke box. Jerry Lee and whoever was about really... Buddy Holly. I just loved that music. I tried to figure out the guys playing the drums and how they were doing it. And watching stuff on TV. We had good rock TV shows in those days. You could see these guys play and see "That's how he's getting that bang here on the snare drum. That's how he's doing it." The initial part of it was just like that really... very basic.
R.V.B. - I read that your parents were very supportive of you with this. The drums are not a quiet instrument.
M.U. - (Hahaha) You're right there. They both were great. My dad was quite interested in the whole thing when I was 14. That's when I got my first drum... my 14th birthday. We went up to the west end of London and found this music shop. We went to a few shops and we found this 2nd hand snare drum. The guy who owned the shop gave us a decent deal on it. Once I got that, I fiddled about on it. He said I really think you should get a few lessons on it. We fixed it up and it was quite incredible really. You got to learn to play a little bit. Eventually I added a few other bits and pieces from friends, like a bass drum but it was all very old primitive stuff.
R.V.B. - You know that when you're a teenager you take what you can get. A blue tom tom... a red bass drum... color didn't really matter.
M.U. - Color didn't matter at all. It wasn't about that at all really. These things came out of the arc. (Hahaha) These things were really ancient, but they were drums. You could sit there and play them... or try to anyway.
R.V.B. - I see that some of your early lessons were with Jim Marshall.
M.U. - Yes. My dad said "You need some lessons." I looked in a local paper and found that there was a guy called Jim Marshall, over in Hanwell, that was a teacher. We went over to see him. My dad said "We'll have a look at him." We went into his house and he had a little studio set up upstairs. He was a really nice guy. In the initial meeting, we thought he was incredible. He got me behind his drum kit. That was the first time I sat behind anything that actually had a high hat pedal and cymbals on it. He said "We'll just have a go." I went absolutely bloody murder with it.
R.V.B. - Hahaha
M.U. - He said to me dad - and he had a lot of pupils there... I was green as grass with what I was doing. I had no idea of the technicalities of it... rudiments etcetera - He said "I've got X amount of pupils. I've got one who's a natural and your son is another one." Looking back on it we said "We'll get some lessons." We weren't a wealthy family. My dad was a bricklayer and my mom didn't work when I was in school.
R.V.B. - It's great that they spotted your natural ability at a young age. It didn't take you long to network yourself even as a teenager.
M.U. - I started playing in little groups around then. There was like six guitarists going through the one amp that I had. We would record with the mics back in those days over the acoustic guitar. (Hahaha) It was as primitive as that. It gave you a chance. You could sort of have a little bit of a go. Not long after that, things progressed a little better... things did improve. That's when I met Richie (Blackmore). I was playing in a youth club and a girlfriend said "You should meet my boyfriend. He's a guitarist." It turned out, we did. He lived just up the road from there. I started working with him in the very early days. We started playing together. He could play really well. He was like a real guitarist. He was a trifle older by a few months. We got along well, and we were playing Shadows things... instrumental stuff. We were basically just trying to learn what we were about. Looking back in hindsight, that's exactly what we were doing.
R.V.B. - You had a rich talent pool in a local area. You were very privileged with that. What was the turning point where you may have said to yourself "Hey... maybe I am good at this. Maybe things are going to work out. Maybe I should look at this for a career?"
M.U. - That's a good question. During that period of time, I left school. I was having the lessons with Jim. They were very, very good. They taught me how to read rudiments, and to get around the drum kit. One thing kids learn when they play an instrument is speed... how fast they can do it. That counts too in the final analysis. It is important for drums. When I was working with Ritchie and various early bands, people would be coming to watch. They'd watch him and they'd watch me as well. They would say nice things. They would say "You're playing great." Things like that. That kind of turns you on a bit. It goes to your head. It didn't go to mine anyway. I was always down on myself, to be honest with you. You start thinking "This is quite interesting." We met some very, very good pro musicians that lived locally as well... Big Jim Sullivan. He was a fantastic player. He taught Ritchie quite a lot. He might have turned up at a rehearsal. We started getting pro's coming down and saying nice things. It doesn't go to your head... you didn't mind. It makes you start thinking "I must be doing something a bit right here." Around that time, Jim Marshall started his music shop - which became a meeting place for a lot of the guys. You'd get a bit of a buzz... what's occurring... where things are happening. When I was at school, Jim came to me daddy and said "Can Mick leave school? I've got a really good gig for him." My dad wouldn't let me because I was a bit young then. I could of probably got out if I wanted to, but I didn't. You get a bit of feedback and that there's a bit of possibility.
R.V.B. - Eventually, things were happening so quickly that you had no choice. You hooked up with Jet Harris from the Shadows. That's a pretty big gig for a young kid.
M.U. - It was a massive gig. From a professional point I was as rural as can be. I was still at school. A guitarist that I played with also got into the Jet Harris Band. They wanted a drummer so they put me up for it... and I got it. That was a bit squeaky-bum time. It was a bit heavy to think, it was the real deal. I was just as green with grass with that. It was a very, very, very fast learning curve. It was fun. It wasn't just your basic band. There was brass and everything else in there. I really had to try and get me stuff together on that. It didn't last that long. It lasted about three months or so. I was coming out of school and we were on tour with Little Richard and Sam Cooke with package tours. It was like the big jump over the bridge, if you know what I mean.
R.V.B. - What were your feelings about seeing American icons such as Sam Cooke and Little Richard for the first time?
M.U. - I loved it. I was big fans of them... especially Little Richard. I mean Sam Cooke was wonderful as well. I also got to know their band really well. Sam Cooke had his own band on tour. I got on really well with his drummer, who was a fantastically great guy. He took me under his wing. I became "My man Mick." He was a really nice fellow. He gave me a few tips here and there.
R.V.B. - That led to The Outlaws. That was a very creative time period for you. Were you still learning your chops as you became more established?
M.U. - Yeah, I was a bit more established. I didn't know any of the band. They came about at the end of the Jet Harris gig. I was talking to Screaming Lord Such and his band. The drummer Carlo is a really nice guy. He said "What are you doing now Mick?" I said "I don't know?" (Hahah) He said "Why don't you talk to Joe Meek." - a record producer. I gave Joe a call and he said "I'm actually looking for a drummer. The Outlaws don't have one now. Would you come up and audition?" I went out and did the audition and Chaz Hodges - who was a bass player - and there was a guitarist as well. They were basically a recording band but they did quite a few gigs as well. We were a session band who was backing a lot of Joe's artists on record. I thought "That's great... A. I like the band... B. It's quite convenient here... it's in London." I had something else that was a possible offer but I didn't really fancy moving up north. So I took that and they wanted a guitarist. I knew Richie was probably available. I called Rich and said "Do The Outlaws fancy you?" He said. "If you're doing it, I'll do it." That's how that came about. There was quite a big influx. Suddenly, half the band were new people to them. It worked out quite well.
R.V.B. - So I guess that working at Joe's studio as a backing band gave you a nice variety of music to ingest?
M.U. - It was a nice... apprenticeship is not the right word but it gives a flavor of what I'm talking about. Suddenly, from not really doing anything in a recording studio, you're in there a lot. It's all new fresh stuff and you got to create that yourselves. I've got to pull the drum part out somewhere. Richie's got to play his stuff and we got to get the groove right. It's a huge learning curve because you might be doing three different artists in the same day. One would come in and do their stuff and then we would have a cup of tea. We would come back and the next guy would be in.
R.V.B. - What a fantastic way to learn!
M.U. - It doesn't get better than that. I look at it with great thankfulness that I actually did it. It wasn't always easy because Joe was a very mercurial person. If something upset him, everybody knew about it. It was fantastic work. If you look at the list of stuff you've done over those years... some people haven't done that... it's incredible.
R.V.B. - I understand that an early version of "Hall of the Mountain King" was developed there?
M.U. - Yes and no. There was a band called Nero and the Gladiators here... which was a really good prize. They actually recorded "Hall of the Mountain King" as a single. There was a track that we did as a different name.
R.V.B. - Was that Satin's Holiday?
M.U. - Yeah. This was after The Outlaws. Ritchie, Chaz and I were on this session, backing u these three girl singers. We got the session done pretty quickly. We were at Olympic Studios in London. Kim Fowley was one of the producers. We had about half an hour of studio time left. He said "Just bang an instrumental out." So we just knocked one out. It was a one take job. It wasn't something that we played anywhere. (Hahaha) The Outlaws didn't exist at that time either. We cut two tracks in a short length of time. I forget what they called the band when it came out in the states. It was very similar to what The Gladiators had done... a bit different... but basically the same idea.
R.V.B. - What was your first real good drum kit?
M.U. - I had my mash up kit that I did my first bit of playing on. I upgraded marginally, when I started doing gigs. That kept me going until I started playing with a local semi-pro band. I went to a Premier kit then which was brand new. I used that kit with Jet Harris. When I joined The Outlaws, I was still using it. Then we had sort of a deal where the management people said "Go out and buy some gear." This is when we started going out on tour with Jerry Lee Lewis and Gene Vincent... and such. I got a much bigger Trixon kit... made in Germany. There's an awful lot of photographs about me because we were doing a lot at that time... filming and all that. I kept that kit right up to the mid-70s. Then I changed to Eagle and Premier.
R.V.B. - How was your experience of playing with James Royal and touring with Johnny Cash? That had to be a fantastic experience for you.
M.U. - Jimmy Royal goes back to the Marshall days. He came from that area. He's an absolutely great singer. He was doing a couple of weeks at a London night club. He needed a band and I went with him on it. After we did that stint he said "I've got a tour coming up with Johnny Cash. Do you want to do it?" I said "Yeah." It's work, isn't it? You take what you can get to get paid. With that band, we went on the road with Cash. I can't tell you what a lovely tour that was. It was a fantastic tour. I'm not a lover of country music but I always thought John was a bit rock and roll as well.
R.V.B. - He had an outlaw flair. His wife June came from an amazing musical family.
M.U. - The whole lot of them... yeah. When we met up with them... we were all traveling with them on the same coach while doing the shows. They were just fantastic people. There was no sight of John at all, on the bus, but all of us were friendly with him. You could talk to him. June took the band under her wing. We were part of the team for her. She kept saying that she was getting letters from her daughters and aunts. She said "They didn't ask how I was doing. They were asking how the band was doing." (Hahaha) Of course Carl Perkins was on the and he a real hero of mine from the rock and roll days. The Tennessee Three were fabulous guys. The drummer used my kit actually... the Trixon kit.
R.V.B. - Were you playing crossover country music on the support end?
M.U. - Not really. Jim was basically a rock singer but he had a great soul voice as well. What we did seemed to go down alright. It seemed to be a good mixture. They had quite an aggressive country band. They are not all fiddles and that kind of country. They rocked up things a bit. They had Carl Perkins in the band.
R.V.B. - You make a good point. So Episode Six! That was the makings of an early super group.
M.U. - Episode Six had been going on for some time. I knew their manager slightly. I've spoken to her in the past. Their drummer that they had, was another guy who I had known. He also came from the Jim Marshall area. They'd fallen out a bit with him. He was a good player. They wanted a change. It was a strange little story because I had been up in town doing a little film thing. There was one of these film sessions going with several artists up there. They were promotion stuff. I had been up there with Jimmy Royal. I think we filmed "Morning Jewel". I had nothing to go on with after that... nothing in the book at all. Peter Grant, who was Gene Vincent's tour manager when we were working with him. I knew him pretty well from working with him in Europe. I've always gotten along brilliantly with him. He was a big guy... a big fella. We were having a drink - after filming - in a bar in the area. He came up to me and said "Hey Mickey... how are you? blah blah blah. What are you doing now?" I said "I don't know at the moment? I've got nothing in the book." He said "Jimmy page has got to fill some dates for the Yardbirds. He's putting a band together. Are you interested?" I said "That sounds great." i didn't personally know Jimmy Page but I know about all the stuff he'd done in the studio. He said "Give me a call. It's around a ten day tour in Scandinavia... as the Yardbirds." A day or two later I got a phone call from Ian Gillan. I didn't really know him but he lived locally to me. He said "Mick we need a drummer. He said Kerrison is gone. We fired him." They were quite a good gigging band. So I called Peter Grant back and said "I won't be available but good luck." The upshot of it was, that was the band that turned into Led Zeppelin. I was very pleased to be joining Episode Six because they were a good working band and did loads of radio broadcasts. I'm a massive fan of Zeppelin. That would never have come off with me anyway. (Hahaha) It sounds like a bad move but I actually think it was the right move.
R.V.B. - In hindsight, you get an opportunity with an established band that had some good credibility... you have to go with it.
M.U. - That's exactly how I looked at it. It was a one off tour - and a short tour at that - or with a band that went elsewhere. The ramifications that came on later with Episode Six and the Deep Purple side of it. That was never meant to be anyway... with me. Apart from that, I don't look back on that as a missed opportunity, it was the right move. That was how it should be. I Looovvve Zeppelin... fantastic band. It wouldn't have been the same with me in it. It would probably nowhere near as good.
R.V.B. - Don't say that. You could ever tell.
M.U. - No... the chemistry is there... wasn't it. It doesn't mean if someone else was there on the drum kit, the chemistry would have been there. Bonzo was just amazing. He was the man for the job and he did it well.
R.V.B. - When the 60s came to a close, you had your success. Were there any gigs from the 60s that totally stand out in your head?
M.U. - Well the Cash one was good... as we discussed. The bit that I found that was fantastically exciting was right at the end of the 60's. It was the band Quatermass. It was an amazing setup. Have you heard any of that at all?
R.V.B. - I have the vinyl record in my collection.
M.U. - When we put that together - Episode Six was split - because Ian and Roger had joined Deep Purple. The band without Ian and Roger... the band was declining anyway because I think we were beginning to drift out of the area where things were happening... you know?
R.V.B. - There were a lot of changes going on.
M.U. - There were. There were a lot of changes. Ian had gone into Purple, with a little bit of my help... Roger as well. So we needed a bass player and we needed a singer. It was looking like it was going to be a pain. Gloria (Bristow), who was the manager of Episode Six got John Gustafson... who was from Liverpool. He was a really great singer and a superb bass player. Keyboards wise, I brought Peter Robinson for the them to have a look. He was in the band during the Jimmy Royal days. He was the most amazing keyboard player. We started rehearsing and we hadn't done too much. I was getting a bit itchy and I spoke to those two. They felt the same and we had an amazing report between the three of us. We'd have jams here and there when we could. The potential was huge. We came away from Episode Six and went on from there... and formed what became Quartermass. It was a massive, massive change of everything for me. Anything could happen with that band. It could go anywhere at any given time. A lot of it was just off the top of our heads when we were playing. The album is the basic idea of what the band was about but live, it was something else again.
R.V.B. - It was like artistic rock.
M.U. - Yeah. It was different in as much where we were one of only a few bands about where we didn't have a guitarist. We played with the idea of getting a guitarist. We did try out a fella', who was actually superb.
R.V.B. - Who was that?
M.U. - A guy by the name of Allan Shacklock. He was in Babe Ruth. He came out of the Royal Academy. With the band, we didn't actually go with the guitar... we just had the trio. We just improvised as we were jamming. It was a bit mad, but it works. You never knew where it would go. There were times where that sort of stuff doesn't necessarily come off, but usually it was spot on. It wasn't rehearsed to death. That band did really quite well. Unfortunately it didn't last too long... basically because of financial backing. We did a super American tour. We did the Fillmore's etcetera.
R.V.B. - How long was the tour? Were you here for a couple of months?
M.U. - It was something like six weeks. All of the gigs were big.
R.V.B. - Who were some of the bands that you shared the bill with?
M.U. - In New York, The Kinks were headlining. They were a totally different fish than we were. We headlined at the Whiskey. That was superb. The gigs were amazing but we didn't have any financial backing. To do the tour, you need money to get a hotel. You can't book one if you're not guaranteed to get paid.
R.V.B. - I'm sure that you need product distribution also.
M.U. - Well the album was out by then... with Capitol... I believe.
R.V.B. - What are you happy about with Quartermass? I know it was short lived but it was a great time period of creativity for you.
M.U. - It was a massive learning curve. I had to play stuff that I had never played before. I'm talking about putting stuff into my playing... it was stretching me. We weren't just knocking out 12 bars. There was all sorts of stuff going on. I learned a great deal there... working with those guys.
R.V.B. - Things continued on for you in the 70s. You had some interesting projects. I see that you toured on a bill with Deep Purple.
M.U. - Quatermass split up, because of financial reasons and we got burnt out a little bit. There was never the money there to do things properly. If we got more of a chance with promotion and all the rest that goes with it, I think we would have done well. The next project I went on to was with Paul Rodgers. Free had split. He was forming a band with him playing guitar and me on the drums. He's was doing some pretty nice stuff.
R.V.B. - Needles to say but he's a great singer.
M.U. - Super singer and great writer. He played good guitar.
R.V.B. - He plays good keyboards also.
M.U. - He was only playing guitar with us. We were only a trio. He spent the summer at his place in the country near Guildford. He's got a nice little place with a barn. I was living there for the best part of the summer. He was with Island Records. They were paying for all of us to live and work. We recorded just about a complete album. We toured with Mott the Hoople, and did a lot of gigs. It was very pleasant to do. It was great raunchy music. At the time Paul Kossoff was not so well. He has some drug issues and other things. They wanted to try and help him and they reformed Free. So our stuff was knocked on the edge. A lot of the songs that were written, appeared on the Free album. We did some BBC Broadcasts. The band was called "Peace". There are some things available on YouTube. They're pretty good, actually. It was totally the reverse of Quatermass. We were back to the rock and roll roots. The feel of the band was good... I liked it. It was a shame that it didn't get a chance to get on with it.
R.V.B. - You had a lot of talent in that band.
M.U. - It really did work. I understood the reasons why Free got back together. It was just a shame that we wasted a lot of time there. There are things that survived and are available... some broadcast stuff. The songs on Free album... we had done the original writing. The album was called "Free at Last".
R.V.B. - What is the story behind Strapps?
M.U. - I met this Australian singer called Ross Stagg. He needed someone to pay with him. He was doing some pretty odd stuff. I got involved with that. I didn't think the bass player in the band was up to it. We got a good keyboard player in. The band rehearsed quite a lot. Ross was a good writer. It a bit strange and wasn't really my cup of tea. I don't know how to describe it really. Anyway, we did the first album. We got a record deal with EMI and Roger Glover produced it for us. We were mates and he did a good job. We did the album and just went on from there. We didn't get the success that it deserved. It was a bit ahead of its time in some respects. It was a bit odd. Gradually the audience got worn out along the way. After the first album, we turned into a really good rock band. We got some good work with that. We toured in support with Purple... toured in support of the Ian Gillan band. My friend John Gustafson was in it playing bass. The Ian Gillan Band was a great band. Nothing broke for us... nothing actually clicked for us at that time. I went on with it for a while. A little bit later on, Ian asked me if I would join the band Gillan. I did take that and went off with that.
R,V.B. You had some very good years with the Gillan band. Lots of great songs were born. How did you enjoy those years?
M.U. - I absolutely Loved them. I loved the guys in the band. We're all still friends now. There's no sort of naughty's. The only person I haven't spoken to since the band finished is Ian Gillan. He disappeared in communicado'. We didn't actually fall out at all.
R.V.B. - That band was stacked with great musicians.
M.U. - That's the way it fell really. The class of players like: Colin Towns... John McCoy. He was a fabulous bass player to work with. We never sat down and decided "Ok you're going to do that." We just started playing and it locked in. Colin goes to the outside... amazing. His writing is amazing as well. Bernie was "WHEW! Mr. exciting." It really sold the thing over. It was a good band... everyone did their stuff. I thought the material was exceptionally good. It was a band that just absolutely kicked.
R.V.B. - So what do you have going on these days?
M.U. - Last year I had hernia surgery and it kept me away for a bit. It's all done now. About four years ago, I was thinking of what the hell to do? The music business in this country is pretty shitty... quite honestly. You got bands who are playing in pubs and you got tribute bands. All stuff that I'm not very interested in... to be frank with you. The Gillan stuff is gone. That's in the past now. I was doing it and didn't much like it. I thought I'll put a band together and do some Gillan stuff. That was the original plan for that. Of course, you've got to get good players for that and I managed to get them. That's what I'm doing at the moment. I don't really feel like going around playing a load of other peoples covers. It's not something that's working massively. To be honest, I'm done going out on the road. I wouldn't enjoy that too much. I'm too bloody old. (Hahaha) I do like playing and I love the guys that I'm working with... and we do the stuff well.
R.V.B. - What else do you like to do with your time? Go to the movies... take walks...
M.U. - I walk here and there. I have a trip to the pub now and again, and have a drink. It's difficult to play the drums like you can with a guitar when you can just sit there and play. You can't do that... you'll destroy the neighbors. I like to listen to music... try a bit of writing now and again.
R.V.B. - Are there any bands out there now where you might take a liking to?
M.U. - Not many. I'm not saying that they're bad players. They're great players out there, but a lot of it doesn't quite touch me. A lot of the commercial type stuff, I really don't like much at all. Bernie Torme has got his band and that's great. What he's doing is really good. Purple has got a new album out. I haven't heard it yet. I should think that would be very good.
R.V.B. - I think they're calling it quits soon. It might be their last tour.
M.U. - That's what they're saying, aren't they? But They've said that before. (Hahaha) I wouldn't be a bit at all surprised. It's going to take some doing for Ian. Ian's my age... a couple of weeks older.
R.V.B. - He was going at it hard and touring the world consistently. At his age that's not easy to do.
M.U. - Yeah. Just the traveling, let alone the gigs. Whitesnake would do maybe two shows on their UK tour - with us - we would do maybe 30, or 25. It was good to do it. Even now, Gillan has such a great fan base in this country now. It wasn't the old bullshit in and out, we might come to your town. It's different with the drums. Everything has got to be working right.
R.V.B. - As a drummer, you have to keep fairly physically fit.
M.U. - That's true. I'm not so bad. It depends what came up. (Hahaha)
R.V.B. - You should be proud of all your accomplishments, which you have many of. You've had a diverse career... it was fantastic. It was a pleasure to speak with you. I appreciate you taking this time. Keep up the good work.
M.U. - Thanks very much Rob, It's been a pleasure talking to you as well. Thanks for asking me.
Interview conducted by Robert von Bernewitz
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For more information on Mick Underwood visit his website. www.mickunderwood.com
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