Revealing Science
Yes and Plastic Ono Band drummer Alan White left us on May 26.
IF THE ability to learn quickly is a mark of great musicianship, then Alan White had few drumming rivals. When John Lennon asked him in 1970 to join his Plastic Ono Band for a gig in Toronto (the Beatle had seen White play in a small London club the night before) the 20-year-old drummer learnt the parts on the Boeing 707 flying over, using the back of the seat in front as a drum pad.
In 1972 when Bill Bruford left Yes, White was drafted in with just three days to learn an epic set before playing to 15,000 fans in Dallas. The Plastic Ono Band rattled through rock’n’roll standards – as documented on the
Live Peace In Toronto album. But joining Yes involved speed-learning the intricacies of Roundabout and Close To The Edge with drum parts created by Bruford, one of the great technicians of the day.
White, born in Co Durham in 1949, began gigging locally on drums aged 13. Within a few years he had worked with Billy Fury, Alan Price, Terry Reid and Ginger Baker’s Air Force. But it was the phone call from Lennon that propelled him to the elite – a call that White initially assumed was a prank. White played on Imagine and Jealous Guy. On Instant Karma!, Phil Spector “used echo to make the drums reverberate
like someone slapping a wet fish on a marble slab”, as Richard Williams’ biography of the producer put it. Work for George Harrison followed, with White playing on All Things Must
Pass. “On the one hand they were The Beatles. On the other, maybe because I was so young and brash, I felt I could play with them,” he said.
In 1972 when Bruford quit Yes for King Crimson, White turned down an offer in the same week from Jethro Tull and signed up for a three-month probation period with Yes. The new boy in fact stayed for almost 50 years, drumming on more than 3,000 shows, and in the studio sometimes also contributing piano and songwriting. Amid multiple personnel changes and the death of bassist Chris Squire in 2015, White was the constant. His bandmates recognised White’s pre-Yes work on their 2019 tour when they included Imagine as an encore.
As well as a fine musician, White seems to have been a gent too. When Bruford quit, Yes’s management insisted he gave half his royalties for Close To The Edge to his replacement. Forty years later Bruford, still feeling an injustice, asked his successor for the money back. Sportingly, White agreed.
In recent years, with White’s health failing, Yes began taking a second drummer, Jay Schellen, on tour and Schellen is behind the kit on UK dates this year.
“They were The Beatles… I was so young and brash, I felt I could play with them.” ALAN WHITE