A diving instructor called Perry Boyer is giving me a crash course in drumming stagecraft. If you’re planning on playing with your sticks on fire, he advises, tie socks around them – they’ll light more easily. Also, he adds, remember not to “really play a lot with the sticks on fire”, lest you damage your kit.
Boyer, speaking by Zoom from his home in California, knows what he’s talking about. Forty years ago he was Punky Peru, drummer in Witch, a fixture on the LA glam metal scene that bore Mötley Crüe, Wasp, Quiet Riot and Poison to stardom. Witch should probably have joined them – they had the songs, the spandex and certainly the theatricality. But it never quite worked out: the wrong record deals, too many lineup changes, and the fact that, as Boyer puts it, “Me and Tommy Lee from Mötley were partying super hard.”
