PORCARO, JEFF'S FIRST SESSION
The magazine "Modern Drummer" published an article in 1990 with Jeff Porcaro. In the next section he talks about his very first session, at the early age of 17:
My first session was with Keltner with Jack Dougherty. It was a
rehearsal band, and Hal Blaine was the drummer, and then the contractor
called to see if I wanted to do the rehearsal band on Saturdays.
I did
about five of them. I knew they were planning to do a record, and they
stopped calling me for rehearsals, so I figured they were going to use a
studio guy for the album. Then Dougherty called me and asked if I had
ever heard of a drummer named Keltner. At that time, my biggest heroes
were Keltner and Gordon. I said yes, and he said, "He just got off the
road with Joe Cocker, and you and he are going to do the rehearsal band
for a couple of weeks. So we rehearsed a couple of times before the
session.
I was 17 and didn't even have my driver's license, so my mom
drove me to the session at A&M. I borrowed my dad's black diamond pearl
Ludwig set, which was just like Keltner's, because I wanted to be just
like him: I wore a vest like Jim Keltner, I tried to get the heaviest
boots I could, because like everyone else has said, you just wanted to
emulate your heroes. Just before I got through the door, I was so
nervous, I threw up right in the corner.
Thank God the tune was this
uptempo samba, because my stick was going so fast. I remember Jim sits
down next to me, and he looks over to me and says, "Man, do you read?"
I go, "No," and he said, "I don't read that good either, you do the
fills and I'll just keep time." I'm going "Right!"