Interview - Rick Allen - The Giving Arts - Jun2018

[Shawn]

www.thegivingarts.com/rick-allen/

"No sooner are Rick Allen and I seated upstairs in a midtown Manhattan restaurant, than the affable drummer of Def Leppard is indulging me on topics ranging from Thomas Dolby (who played keyboards on Pyromania under the pseudonym Booker T Boffin), to our mutual approval of the Rolling Stones’ recent set list in Ireland, to Joe Elliott’s home being a venerable Rock n’ Roll museum. He’s a charmer, warm and inviting with an infectious laugh and a healthy curiosity in you, and from time to time he’ll punctuate a good point – yours or his – with a wink of an eye.

But when I ask Allen a casual question about a tour rehearsal he and the band took part in the night before, his reply immediately takes the levity out of things. “Well,” he says, using his lone arm to pull himself closer to the edge of his seat, “yesterday was a bit of a hit to my nervous system”.

I am here to discuss resiliency with Allen, and the role it has played in his life, his music, and the valuable work he does on behalf of wounded war veterans, many of whom suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

But what might get lost amidst the laughs and winks and his general good nature – not to mention the wave of adulation he receives when he is introduced by Elliott on stage each night – is that one of the reasons Allen is so well equipped to work with sufferers of PTSD, is because he is one of them himself.

I start off by asking Allen what was difficult about the night before…

It’s just the process of putting the production together…the amount of energy that was going on. I mean, there’s no audience. All it is, is just the pressure of knowing that we’ve got to get this right. Meanwhile, I’m looking at the crew and everybody, with just mountains of equipment hanging above my head. It’s like I was catapulted back into this crazy world again, after having spent all this time at home. Yesterday was very mental.

I wondered if that was something that would go away completely once he got settled in on the tour.

When all the details are taken care of, and I’ve got all the right balances and can hear everybody on stage and the drum kit’s playing nicely, then sure, it does go from anxiety and tension before I play, to just being in the moment. And when you’re completely in the moment, you’re in your heart, and when you get in there, you just play. You don’t think, ’hit drum’. You just hit drum.

I was curious to know how bad things could get for him in one of those settings

Being in that rehearsal situation yesterday, with all the production and everything, could have been potentially bad, in terms of a trigger. Just the anxiety of it all, and the sort of jangling of my nervous system. I had to walk off for a bit. I’ve learned the art of healthy retreat. Healthy retreat is very important for me.

Are the guys in the band aware of what’s going on with him when he has to step away for a while?

Oh, yeah. And you know, it’s not just me. Joe will go spend a fair amount of time on the back of the bus, and I’ll do the same. Maybe I’ll put some music on, or maybe just go sit and think of all the people I love. I’ll do anything other than become stimulated by the world I find myself in, in terms of Def Leppard world. I just need to get away from that sometimes. Once I get away from it, I can be appreciative of it. I can be grateful for it. But sometimes it’s the thing you’re in all the time that pisses you off, you know what I mean?

I commented that it probably helps that his bandmates saw firsthand what he went through decades ago, and asked him if he could bring me back to Dec 31, 1984.

I was with my girlfriend at the time and had just had a falling out with my family. I was a little bit angry when I left the house, and I think that kind of set the tone for the day. And the fact that I encountered some jerk in front of me…I don’t know whether he was jealous of my car (a Corvette), but this guy just wouldn’t let me pass. This kept going on, and going on, and going on and I lost my temper. My car was a left hand drive, driving on the opposite side of this winding rural road in England, and I didn’t see the corner coming up. When I finally did, I knew I had a problem and that I wasn’t going to make it. That was really the last thing I remember.

I asked him what he remembered once he regained consciousness.

It’s interesting, it’s almost like some protective mechanism comes into play and you just blackout. I think when you experience extreme trauma there’s an incremental shut down of your senses and the first thing to go is feeling. I couldn’t feel anything at all. I actually stood up out in the field after I came to, and I remember saying something about being a drummer, or “I lost my arm”. The arm was still in the car. I flew through the sunroof, and that’s when I lost it. I’m still not sure whether I said or thought those things about drumming and the arm. It was such a dreamlike state that I couldn’t discern what was real or not real. I just knew something really bad had happened.

Since there were no cellphones at the time and he was out in the middle of the country, how was he found?

I was very fortunate. Two people pulled up behind me, an off duty cop and a district nurse, in separate cars. What are the chances, out in the middle of nowhere, that they both just showed up? They were those angels on earth that people talk about. I really believe they saved my life. Until that moment, I didn’t know them, and they didn’t know each other. They actually became a couple through the thing, and ended up getting married. It was a whole love story."

The Complete Interview with Rick is HERE.

Photo by Ross Halfin