Denny Seiwell performs on the ‘Just Jazz’ Dwell Live performance Collection at Mr Musichead Gallery on August 15, 2018 in Los Angeles. Photograph: Brandon Williams/Getty Photographs
Denny Seiwell’s drums will be heard on data by James Brown, Artwork Garfunkel, Billy Joel, and plenty of others. Nevertheless it’s as a founder member of Paul McCartney’s Wings that he’ll all the time be most generally identified. He’s a craftsman as revered in jazz circles as he was on the peak of his prominence in rock.
Born in Pennsylvania, Seiwell on July 10, 1943, Denny was launched to the drums by his father when he was simply 5. After highschool, he performed with the Navy Jazz Band and was then taught in Chicago by Roy Knapp, tutor to such drumming greats as Louie Bellson and Buddy Wealthy.
New York periods
Denny made his title as a session participant when he moved to New York, additionally enjoying usually on the Half Notice jazz membership with the Zoot Sims and Al Cohn Quintet. As McCartney moved ahead together with his post-Beatles profession, and after a debut, McCartney, that featured solely Paul and his spouse Linda, he recruited Seiwell for the masterful Ram album of 1971.
Just some months later, McCartney was again in a band, and Denny was in it. Seiwell had simply performed on Joel’s debut album Chilly Spring Harbor when Wings, that includes the 2 Dennys, Seiwell and Laine, launched the Wild Life album.
‘Such a good working experience’
“We had such a good working experience and an artistic endeavour,” Seiwell informed One thing Else! in 2012, “that he asked me to come – to leave my position as a sessions drummer in New York – and move to England and form the band Wings with him. And we put Wings together.”
Following the addition of Henry McCullough, the group went again to fundamentals and hit the highway for a tour of British universities, then for the Wings Over Europe journey described right here. Seiwell additionally performed on Wings’ 1973 album Pink Rose Speedway, together with on the most important hit “My Love,” and he featured on drums that 12 months on their memorable theme track for the James Bond film Dwell And Let Die.
After he left Wings, Denny labored with such artists as Donovan and Joe Cocker, performed on data by Garfunkel, Brown and others and on such soundtracks as Grease II and Waterworld. “Now that I’m retired from the mainstream recording,” Seiwell mentioned in the identical 2012 interview, “I’m just having more fun and I’m going back to my roots in jazz.”
‘Why don’t we do the monitor I’m best-known for?’
After recording 5 McCartney songs for his first album with the Denny Seiwell Trio, Reckless Abandon, September 2018’s Boomerang included a brand new model of “Live And Let Die.” “I thought for this one we should have at least one McCartney track,” he informed Billboard, “and it could most likely assist with gross sales, so I mentioned, ‘Why don’t we do the monitor I’m best-known for,’ which is ‘Live and Let Die,’ and we knocked it into form, attempting to maintain as a lot of the report as we might in our unique.
“It’s a fun tune, and it didn’t take very much time to whip that into shape,” he mentioned, including that Paul had permitted of the entire Trio’s interpretations. Seiwell mentioned that McCartney described his tackle “Live And Let Die” as “very cool.”
Purchase Paul McCartney and Wings’ music on vinyl or CD now.
