a day in the life of Vinnie Colaiuta

[CLWarunki]

Here's a little insiders perspective on working with Vinnie by former Alice Cooper, Dream Theater and Planet X keyboardist Derek Sherinian:

"Bob Kulick called me and asked if I was interested in playing on a Prince Tribute record. I asked who was on the session, and he said Tony Franklin, and Vinnie Colaiuta.....Oh only Vinnie Colaiuta! I readily accepted the offer.

I go to the session the next day, Vinnie walks in with a pair of sticks (he just walked in from another session and was going to use the house kit ). Vinnie listened down to the track "Baby, I'm a Star" one time. He scribbled a few notes, and then we played the song down.

I remember looking at him as we were playing and saying to myself, "Derek, you are playing with the very best!" he nailed the track in one take, stayed and had a sandwich, and went to another session.....unreal!

It is a fact that Vinnie does more drum sessions than anyone in Los Angeles if not the world."

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[S.P]

thanks for sharing this Chris!

I love reading little stories like this! Vinnie has an awesome job and really deserves to get all the sessions he does. There's no one like him!

How long ago was this?

[Klemme]

They're a ton of those Tribute records beeing pumped out of L.A at the moment. I have a Pink Floyd tribute, where Vinnie is on too. He's on an Alice Cooper thing too. Him and Gregg Bissonette seems lay down the majority of the tracks on it.

[COLD MONDAY]

I wonder if this has been posted. If it has then i do apologize. Still its kinda cool..this quote is from Steve Vai on a session he did with Vinnie during the Zappa days......."I was just enamored with Vinnie. Back in the Frank days, his whole approach, when I heard Vinnie play, his phrasing - it satisfied something in my heart. It was easy to get certain rhythmic gratification from straight up-and-down-type players. Playing grooves, alternate grooves here and there. But Vinnie just came in and threw a wrench into the works. The guy is an alien. He was able to touch buttons with his sense of polyrhythms that no one has ever done. Frank's band was the perfect soundboard for that. I started transcribing his playing for The Frank Zappa Book. I mean, there's five to six different notations for the hi-hat! [laughs]

I'll tell you a really great Vinnie story. He's one of the most amazing sight-readers that ever existed on the instrument. One day we were in a Frank rehearsal, this was early '80s, and Frank brought in this piece of music called "Mo 'N Herb's Vacation." Just unbelievably complex. All the drums were written out, just like "The Black Page" except even more complex. There were these runs of like 17 over 3 and every drumhead is notated differently. And there were a whole bunch of people there, I think Bozzio was there.

Vinnie had this piece of music on the stand to his right. To his left he had another music stand with a plate of sushi on it, okay? Now the tempo of the piece was very slow, like "The Black Page." And then the first riff came in, [mimics bizarre Zappa-esque drum rhythm patterns] with all these choking of cymbals, and hi-hat, ruffs, spinning of rototoms and all this crazy stuff. And I saw Vinnie reading this thing. Now, Vinnie has this habit of pushing his glasses up with the middle finger of his right hand. Well I saw him look at this one bar of music, it was the last bar of music on the page. He started to play it as he was turning the page with one hand, and then once the page was turned he continued playing the riff with his right hand, as he reached over with his left hand, grabbed a piece of sushi and put it in his mouth, continued the riff with his left hand and feet, pushed his glasses up, and then played the remaining part of the bar.

It was the sickest thing I have ever seen. Frank threw his music up in the air. Bozzio turned around and walked away. I just started laughing."