Imagine you finally land your dream gig, a spot in the band, and within weeks your boss tells you to pack up and go home. That is exactly what happened to drummer Kenny Aronoff, and what he did next changed his whole life.
Aronoff told the story while flipping through record bins with a host named Domino in a video from the Musora and Drumeo channel, and it is a tale every underdog will love.
“You’re Not Playing On The Record, Kenny. Go Home.”
He had been in John Cougar Mellencamp’s band for only five weeks. The band headed to Cherokee Studios on Fairfax in Los Angeles, and in two days, he says, he was fired from the session.
The news came at a meeting in a famous hotel on Sunset. “You’re not playing on the record, Kenny,” he remembers John telling him. “Go home.” John even offered to pay him for the rest of the week.
“I was mortified. I was humiliated,” Aronoff says. Most of us would have taken the money and gone quietly.
He Refused To Go Home And Offered To Sleep On The Couch
Aronoff did the opposite. He told John he would go into the studio anyway and watch the other drummers play his parts. He would get better, he said, and learn from them, and that would be good for the band.
Then he asked the question that mattered: “Am I still your drummer or what?” John stuttered a little and said yes, but he would not be playing on the record. Aronoff says he stayed, told John he did not even have to pay him, and offered to sleep on the couch.
It was a gutsy move, and it kept a door open that most people would have slammed shut.
The Next Album Won Two Grammys And Jack And Diane Hit Number One
That stubbornness led to the next record. “That led me to the next record, which won two Grammys,” he says. It gave him a number one hit single, Jack and Diane, and a number two hit, Hurts So Good. “We were the biggest thing since sliced bread,” he says. “All of a sudden, my whole career was launched.”
The chart story has its own twist. Hurts So Good sat at number two for six to eight weeks, he says, and the song holding the top spot was Eye of the Tiger, from one of the Rocky movies. Then, he recalls, they checked what listeners were asking for off the record, and it was Jack and Diane. The song shot up to number one, and Hurts So Good climbed back up too, putting two singles in the top 10.
People were asking, he says, “Who are these hillbillies from Indiana?”
“If Someone’s Got A Better Drum Beat Than What You’re Playing, You Play It”
Working with Mellencamp was not easy. Aronoff says John told the band to come up with creative parts, and then said the line that stung: if anyone has a better drum beat than yours, Kenny, you play that one. “I remember thinking, what a jerk. But he was right.”
So he treated it like a competition. He went home, listened to all the great hits, wrote down the drum beats and named his notebook the Book of Beats. On one song he even skipped the drums at the start and played a simple tambourine drone, a part that set him up to be heard when the band kicked in.
He also remembers that John was no easy opening act. People told him not to smoke on stage, and he walked out smoking anyway. Eventually, Aronoff says, the plug was pulled on them because John did whatever he wanted.
Thousands Of Records Later, The Hardest Session Of His Life
Aronoff has played on what he guesses is thousands of albums. Handed two minutes in the record shop to name artists he has worked with, he rattled off Neil Diamond, Rod Stewart, Peter Frampton, the Grateful Dead, Paul Simon, Debbie Gibson, Stevie Nicks, Billy Joel, Elton John, Don Henley and Carole King, plus Sammy Hagar, whose band he is in right now.
He also tells of being the 30th drummer on a John Fogerty record that had been in the works for five years. He and Fogerty cut two songs, again and again, over several days. Aronoff says Fogerty appreciated that he wanted to get it right just as badly. “Teams win Super Bowls and World Series, Stanley Cups, and NBA titles, not individuals,” he says.
His hardest session was a tribute to jazz legend Buddy Rich, where he played Big Swing Face with a big band right in front of him, which he calls the loudest thing he had ever played with. Neil Peart greeted him, and the band looked at him like a janitor. They got only four takes.
The iconic jazz drummer Freddie Gruber listened and said, “The kid did good.” Aronoff says he nailed it with an out-of-body feeling and an improvised solo at the end. “It was the luckiest moment of my life in a recording session.”
What Kenny’s Story Teaches The Rest Of Us
Look at the pattern. Humiliation, then stubbornness, then hard work, then a number one record. Aronoff did not argue his way back into the studio. He found a way to be useful, to learn, and to stay in the room.
He also prepares carefully. He says he is a very detailed chart writer who writes out every note and practices the song, so that when the red light goes on he can finish in one or two takes. “You guys can go have some drinks,” he says. Preparation is what lets a nervous player look calm.
If your own career has ever stalled after a bad day, his story is a nice reminder. A firing is not always the end of the song, sometimes it is just the intro, and the hit comes later for the one who stays.
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