Pete De Freitas - Sean Moore's Drumming Hero
Pete De Freitas @ newwavephotos.com (February 12, 1983)
Ian McCulloch: Pete was the best drummer in the world. He had inventiveness combined with power and finesse. And he looked different to most drummers; he looked like a young Laurence Olivier.
Why did you suddenly recruit a drummer, Pete de Freitas?
Ian McCulloch: "Learning with the drum machine gave the three of us a triangular tightness. But Seymour (Stein, label boss) wanted us to get a drummer and Bill (Drummond, manager) was very aware that all the classic rock groups had drummers. He was recommended by (Zoo partner and Teardrop) Dave Balfe. Once we found Pete, we were ready"
Heaven Up Here was the best album to make. We'd moved into this bigger rehearsal space called Ministry. Les would come up with a bassline, always circular, which was part of that album's thing. It was all spiralling note sequences. A Promise just went around on one chord. We were developing live, doing a lot of improvisation and things were sparking off. I'd do an ad lib and someone would follow it. Pete spontaneously came up with the Zimbo (aka All My Colours) drum mantra. We weren't consciously trying to write songs. It was a turning point in knowing that we weren't post-punk. It wasn't anything to do with anyone other than us. Like, when we did Zimbo with the Burundi drummers at WOMAD (July, 1982) there was this great feeling of being so far ahead of rock music"
The Ocean Rain album was a great success, spawning three hit singles, but after touring throughout 1984 you were, by all accounts, exhausted. There was a plan to take a year off, but by April, 1985 you were back touring Scandinavia. What went wrong?
Ian McCulloch: "I thought it was dead hip, you know: at the height of our powers take a year off! Let U2 go and wave flags! Greatest album ever made? We believed it. And at that point we were running rings round the press. But the fact we came back in Scandinavia was a beaut. We were our own support band, onstage for three hours. We had some great laughs for the first time in ages. We discovered this new Easter Brew beer. It was like E! So we're totally off our heads by the time the ferry's docked. We're on supporting ourselves, I'm cracking jokes like there's no tomorrow, then we go off. Bad move. Thirty minutes later we're back onstage and during Gods Will Be Gods I'm singing, "The hole in my arse!". Even Will's looking at me just howling. I end up on the deck, take me kit off and the audience love it. But apparently Pete hated it..."
The Bunnymen were poised to become one of the biggest bands in the world, but the tensions which had been simmering below the surface began to reach boiling point. Eventually, they spilled over from a most unexpected source. At the start of 1986, Pete de Freitas went AWOL, resurfacing everywhere from Jamaica to New Orleans in a band called Sex Gods, while indulging in an orgy of drug abuse and destruction. De Freitas' deranged behaviour set in motion a chain of events which are among the most tragic in recent rock history, culminating in McCulloch's near-breakdown, the demise of the Bunnymen, and, finally, de Freitas' death. For a page all about what went wrong visit cobwebtheatre.com
The 1986 tour saw Blair Cunningham (ex-Haircut 100) filling in for de Freitas. But in September, Pete rejoined. Wasn't he reduced to session musician status?
Ian McCulloch: "No, he was cut in, but differently, because we felt he'd let us down. I think we cut his royalties to an eighth. But we decided we wanted him back and went out and got bladdered in Liverpool. I said I didn't want any weirdness any more. But he came back slightly changed. Something had been lost. He was trying to find something and came back with less. Everything was different after that"
In the book that comes with the Crystal Days box set, they say that he was the only member from a more well off background and because of that he never really fit in with the others. They also say that when in America, him and his friends spent all his money and he was a different person after he returned. This article details how bad it got after Pete was let back in the band - they were all drinking and some taking drugs and Ian McCulloch decided they should split up. However they continued with a new singer. On his way to the first band rehearsal, Pete was killed in a motorcycle accident.
But I didn't really want this article to be about the horror - just like I didn't want my Holy Bible article to be totally nihilistic so I've tried to include more positive things. The fact he replaced a drum machine is good enough for me. The above article says of Pete's drumming: a pillar of restrained intensity.
Here's an American interview with Pete at home.earthlink.net/~progress/INNERecho1.html They talk about playing at the Liverpool Cathedral. He said he doesn't like a certain kind of adulation he saw in the US (yet he later went back there with his new band the Sex Gods... maybe he was taking the piss) He talks about their flat in Liverpool. And he gives some good advice.
From an interview in Q magazine: netaxs.com/~jgreshes/q.html#q The group's fourth man, Pete De Freitas, a human drummer enlisted a year into their career, is ominously absent. "Phoned him last night" somebody mumbles. "Said he'd be comin', but he sounded weirded out"
De Freitas does arrive, in time, dressed in motor cycling gear and wearing the face of a mildly bewildered flowerpot man. Younger than the others, rather middle-class and a Southerner to boot, he's always seemed somewhat to one side in this instinctively insular, self-sufficient Scouse outfit. That impression was strengthened last year when he left the group to join a band called The Sex Gods, returning in some disgrace after a six-month "lost weekend" of American adventures and narcotic indulgence. He's been accepted back into the fold, though not with full band-member status.
In his exile with The Sex Gods, De Freitas played drums for The Colourfield.
For Pete De Freitas by Morrissey (maybe writing about James Dean)
He's just too good-natured and
He's got too much money and
He's got too many girlfriends
I'm jealous, that's all
Have you seen him go, though, oh?
Boy racer
Boy racer, oh
We're gonna kill this pretty thing
Boy racer
Boy racer, oh
We're gonna kill this pretty thing
He's got too many girlfriends
He thinks he owns this city
He overspeeds and he never gets pulled over
Have you seen him go, though, oh?
Boy racer
Boy racer, oh
We're gonna kill this pretty thing
Boy racer
Boy racer, oh
We're gonna kill this pretty thing
He thinks he got the whole world in his hands
Stood at the urinal
He thinks he got the whole world in his hands
And I'm gonna ... kill him!
Oh, no!
He's just too good-looking...
(With all due respect to Pete, I think he'd have liked this song somehow)
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