August 15, 2024 • 19 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, rarely does artistic rhythm rest as it does in Zoro the drummer. Hear from the man behind Maria's Scarf how his talent and temerity ultimately equipped him for a mountain of fun for everyone.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we returned to our American stories. Up next, a
story from Zorro the Drummer. He's worked for musicians the
likes of Lenny Kravitz, Frankie Valley, and Lisa Marie Presley.
But before he was a renowned drummer, he was a
poor kid from California named Daniel Donnelly. Let's get into
the story. Take it away, Zorrow.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
My life is very much like Forrest Gump. All the
things that were not supposed to happen to Forrest happened.
If you remember in the movie, you know he's in
the White House with Elvis. All these amazing things to
this kid, the unlikely kid that was pretty much me.
(00:53):
My mother, Maria, had the enormous task of raising seven
children alone in the area known as common in the Hood.
So I was straight out of confident. Like the rap
song says she was an immigrant, she actually came from
(01:13):
an aristocratic family. She was the daughter of a Supreme
Court justice. She had married my father about six months
of age. He took the only car we had and
abandoned us. So life was very difficult. We moved around
a tremendous amount because we were getting evicted for either
being late with the rent, and back in those days
(01:35):
in the sixties, they could kick you out if you
had too many people. All that has changed now. But
my mother tried to hold down as many jobs as
she could, but still wasn't enough, so we struggled a
lot just to make ends meet. In fact, there were
times when we moved when there was no money for
a U haul or anything to move from one apartment
to the next. So I would use literally my red
(01:57):
radio flyer wagon and we could load up furniture on
there if you stack it a certain way, and me
and my brothers would hoist it and haul it down
the street a couple of miles to the next place.
But at the same time, my mother had this incredible faith,
She had this vision and dream, and something pretty amazing
happened during the like when I was going into the
(02:19):
second grade. Even though we were poor, she always dressed
very dignified, and so she always carried herself as the
person she grew up being in Mexico, So she never
saw herself like that poor person. She carried herself in
a different way even though we were poor. But she
wore these scarves and she always looked fabulous in these scarves,
and inside of me was like a budding rock star,
(02:42):
which I had no idea was there at the time,
but there was this artistic flare about me. And I
asked her if I could wear her orange silk scarf
she was wearing. I asked her if I could wear
it for my second grade school picture. And she looked
down at me and she laughed and oh me, you
can't wear my scarf. The boys will beat you up.
It's not Mako. This is the United States. But I
(03:02):
wanted to wear it really bad. So I kept reasoning
with her, and I said, I don't care what they think,
and said, the scarf looks cool. Elvis Presley wears one,
Tom Jones wears one. I want to wear a scarf.
I want to be different. And so she knelt down
and tied her orange silk scarf around my neck and
then she whispered in my ear. She says, one day,
my precious son, you will do something fantasmical with your life.
(03:24):
Fantasmical was the word she used. It was a mixture
between fantastic and amazing and wonderful, and it was her
own own word that she coined. But that's how she
truly felt. So I grew up in this household full
of love, even though we were in abject poverty. And
I think during those years of being sort of heartbroken,
because I remember trying to send letters to my father,
(03:47):
he never responded to any of the letters or the
report cards of the pictures. So I grew up with
this incredible sense of rejection. It would have been different
if he died or died in the war. Then I
would just have to have dealt with this is no
longer can be. But there was always this glimmer of
hope inside this kid that something he would write or
do or say would make his dad respond. And so
(04:09):
he never did, and that sent a big spear of hurt,
pain and rejection in me, which became the fuel later
for me doing what I end up doing. Really, one
great thing that happened during those days we lived in
Compton was all of my brothers and sisters loved music,
(04:30):
and so I grew up in a house where everyone
was playing different records, all the great rock and roll records,
soul music and motown jazz. My mother loved big band
and Mariacci. And then I had the great fortune a
neighbor bought us some tickets, took me to go see
Diana Ross and the Supremes and the Temptations when I
(04:52):
was seven or eight years old, and I got so
excited from the concert that the next day I just
wanted to play drums onto the rhythm of soul music.
I didn't own any drums, but I was creative, so
I looked at my mother's cupboard and found some tupperware
(05:12):
canisters and some salad spoons, and then looked at the
trash cans and found like some Folger's coffee cans, all
Monroca cans, and I made a ghetto drum set, put
it in my red radio fire wagon, took it out
on Compton Boulevard, turned on my transistor radio to Wolfman Jacket,
how you doing made Away?
Speaker 1 (05:33):
And call it brown?
Speaker 2 (05:35):
And put on soul music. And then I just commenced
to pounding on the drums, and all the people around
me were digging it and throwing coins into my wagon.
Something sparked in me that day, and something came alive.
That rhythm and that drummer thing was calling to me.
(05:55):
We ended up moving to Grant's Pass, Oregon. It's beautiful
up there, there's mountains, rivers, lakes, trees, and they hated
us because my mother was Mexican. But this is fully
the American dream. My mother was tired of renting and
she had this dream of having a house one day.
(06:18):
So we scrimped and saved, all of us worked and
put a little tiny piece of down payment on a
little plot of land out in the middle of nowhere
in the country. But we didn't have any money for
a dwelling. We lived in our nineteen sixty two Chevy Nova,
which was hot as hell in the summer. No running water,
no electricity, no outhouse. But I remember, for all the
(06:41):
harsh people that we met, we met some godly Christian
people as well. And there was a reverend. His name
was a reverend Ed Williamson. He is the one who
let us shower at his house, and he also bought
me and my brother's shoes. We didn't have the money
to buy the shoes because we wanted to go on
this church camping trip, so he bought us the shoes.
(07:03):
That's what allowed us to go to the summer church camp.
And that's actually the camp where I gave my heart
to Jesus. So sometimes it takes just a pair of
shoes to get a kid to find Jesus. And the
most beautiful part of that story, I was in Grant's
past preaching at a church and doing some book signings,
and that pastor showed up fifty years later and we
(07:24):
had this beautiful full circle moment. And I've been tracking
him down because I wanted him to know what I
had done with my life and how many people I've
affected because of the love of God he showed to
me and my family. So it was just the most
beautiful thing. But anyway, so in Grant's Pass is where
I officially wanted to be a drummer. So I entered
a talent show. They were putting a band together, and
(07:47):
I just told him that I was a drummer, even
though I didn't have any drums or had never played
any drums other than the ghetto drum set on the
streets and Compton, which was not a drum set. So
I calmed my way into this band. And when we
had the first her so they were like, hey, you know,
where's your drums, And I said, they're in the shop
getting fixed. But I could play with my hands on
the back of the chair. Just to keep time for
(08:07):
you guys, And so I faked my way through that
until the day of the show, and which of course
I wasn't going to have the drums that hadn't known
any We found a big, giant box. We ended up
painting a drum set on it by hand with glitter
and glue and all that stuff, and I ended up
playing at the talent show on the box with my
hands like I had been playing on the chair. The
(08:27):
kids in the van were totally disappointed, but I just
wanted to be in that talent show. And kind of
what sparked that whole thing was watching Elvis Presley on
the big televised satellite show he did called Elvis Aloha
from Hawaii. It was the world's first satellite broadcast broadcast
all over the world. At the same time, I watched
the drummer behind Elvis. His name was Ronnie Tett, and
(08:50):
when I saw him play man, the guy looked like
he was having so much fun. I'm like, that's what
I want to do. I want to do what that
guy's doing. But then it kind of went dead for
a while because I did and get in the school band,
and so at that point I needed a new dream,
and so, living in rural Oregon, everyone raised animals we
couldn't afford, like cows and horses and goats and stuff.
(09:12):
So I decided I was going to raise chickens because
they were really cheap to buy and they were small.
I wanted to be the world's greatest chicken farmer. Then
I raised a couple of Saint Bernards and then one
of them got loose and destroyed my entire chicken farm
in one day. And that's what sort of God's plan
for my life. I needed a new dream, and so
I thought about it. I'm like, man, Music's what I
(09:33):
always really wanted to do, but I didn't know how
to get into it. I didn't own any drums.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
So, and you've been listening to the story of Zorro
the Drummer. His mother, Maria, raised seven kids alone in Compton,
but his mom's incredible faith, well, it was always in evidence.
When we return more of Zorro of the Drummer's story
here on our American Stories, and we returned to our
(10:10):
American Stories and the story of Daniel Donnelly aka Zorro
the Drummer. When we last left off, Daniel had set
aside his dream of being a drummer, because while he
couldn't afford a drum set, didn't get into the high
school band, and chickens were cheap. But he'd soon have
a meeting with his school counselor that would change the
course of his life. Let's return to the story.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
He said, what do you like? I said music? Can
you find me a job that puts me around music?
And he goes, I'll see what I can do. A
week later he comes back and he goes, man, I'm sorry,
I couldn't find anything like what you wanted, but I
did find you a job, and I'm like, well, what
is it. He goes, well, it's a custodial position. And
I'm like, okay. Where he goes right here? Where? Right here?
(10:56):
At the school? My school. He goes, yeah, like it's
like an embarrassing job, like the school bell rings and
all the kids are seeing you clean the toilets. But
he said, well, the good news is you get to
clean the bandroom. So I was like, wow, great, I
get to clean the bandroom. Well, at the end of
the two hours of the job, last ten minutes, I
reserved to sneak into the band room after I cleaned it,
(11:19):
and then I would sneak on the drums and play. Now,
I never took a lesson. I didn't own a set
of drums. But I guess you could say I was
given a gift because from day one I could play.
I would do that every day, you know, I just
daydream about being on stage one day. And then one day,
(11:40):
un beknownst to me, the band director was in his office.
He came out and startled me. He caught me drumming
on the job. So he goes and says, wait right there,
and goes and get somebody else. And I know I'm
getting fired. So I think he's bringing my boss, Clarence,
to tell him this kid sneaking on the drums and playing. Instead,
it was the swing choir director says, play again like
(12:01):
you were playing it, And so I played, and they
both looked at each other and they're mumbling while I'm playing,
and then they said, stop, kid, You've got an incredible
amount of talent. You're like a rhythmic genius. I need
you in the swing choir, the stage band, the marching band,
(12:22):
all the school bands. And that is how my career started.
So I graduated high school then I auditioned for and
landed a gig with a local band, Italian family, a
bunch of brothers and a sister. They had an opportunity
to go down to LA to audition for Disneyland as
(12:45):
the house band at the Tomorrowland Terrace, which was the stage.
It would rise from the ground like hydraulically, and then
all of a sudden it would be up in the
band would be playing. And they had held that job
a couple of years earlier as the house band, so
I was certain we'd get the job again and now
I'd be back in my southern California, LA area, live
in my dream of playing. Additionally, I'm with a show band.
(13:07):
For whatever reason, we auditioned and they didn't get the gig.
Was heartbreaking. So I ended up quitting the band and
I was ready to go back, and I called my mother,
told her what had happened. The band was falling apart,
and she said, she said, son, don't come back. I said,
what do you mean, She goes, if you come back,
you'll never make it. She said, you have real talent,
(13:28):
but you got to stick it out in LA. You've
got to be there. That's where all the gigs are,
that's where all your potential is, that's where opportunities are.
There's nothing for you up here. And I was scared
as gonna be. I didn't really know what to do,
but I listened to her advice and said okay. And
then I drove all around LA for a a couple
of few days, just you know, Hollywood and Beverly Hills,
trying to figure out the lay of the land, reading
(13:50):
newspapers looking for ads about drummers. Just couldn't figure out
where to meet the people. You know, I hadn't been
there since I was a kid. And I drove by
Beverly Hills High schoo and I thought, wow, it looked
like a college camp. Was like an Ivy League college campus,
like Harvard or something. Gee, I wish I would have
went to school like this. And then this idea came
to me. I wanted to meet kids my age to play.
(14:14):
So I went one day, spent the last bit of
money I had on the latest Panasonic boombox, and then
I went to Beverly Hills High School one day in
the afternoon and I got there around lunchtime and I
sat on the lawn of this pristine well manicured lawn,
a beautiful fall day. I'm going to play my boom box.
(14:35):
I'm going to crank some earth Wind and Fire in
the earth Wind and Fire Platinum boom Box. I'm bringing
my practice pad and my sticks, and I'm just going
to play on the lawn. And if there's any musicians
within an earshot, they're going to go, hey, who's that
new kid on the lawn. You know, I was trying
to bring attention to myself. I wore like a yellow
silk shirt and silk pants. I had a panama jack
(14:57):
hat with a sash around it that was yellow, had
some shape. I was like big bird out on that lawn.
I was yellow, and you're gonna find me. Within ten
minutes of doing that, this kid comes walking up to
me and goes, hey, man, are you new here? And
I just said yeah, because you know, I'm not really
(15:18):
supposed to be there. You know, you're not supposed to
be just walking in on the campus. So I said yeah.
And then he was like, where'd you come from? So
I just transferred from Eugene, so I kind of pretended
like I was a new student there. He played the bass.
His name was Kennedy and We became fast friends, and
then another kid came up to me about ten minutes later,
and it was the same thing. It was like, hey man,
(15:39):
you knew here. You looked like you had some mean chops,
you know. I was practicing fast on the pad and
his name was Lenny Well later he turned out to
be Lenny Kravitz, and Kennedy turned out to be Kennedy Gordy,
who was the son of Barry Gordy, the founder of
Motown Records. It wasn't long after I met Kennedy Gordy.
(16:04):
I'm up at the Gordy compound and one day I
see two Rolls Royces pulling up and Kennedy's the only
kid I knew who had pinball machines, and he had
an arcade in his front living room, but you didn't
have to put coins in them, So I was in
there playing arcades by myself. He was upstairs in his
bedroom taking a shower, and his dad was upstairs. Then
the doorbell rings and I opened the doorbell and it's
(16:27):
Michael Jackson and the Jackson Five, which is another one
of my favorite groups I grew up with. I had
all their forty fives. I belonged to the fan club.
So I'm there trying to talk Michael and the brothers
into jamming with me, like Michael, Jermaine, Jackie, Tito, Marlin, Man,
I know all your songs, Man, ABC, the Love You Save,
you know one more Chance? I named them all you know,
I want you back. Michael just looked at me with
(16:49):
this smile. He goes, oh, kid, you got a lot
of heart. But anyway, I ended up chatting with them
for like twenty minutes, entertaining them while they were waiting
for Barry Gordy to come downstairs. So it was like
a dream come true. So all these amazing things were happening.
And then within a couple of years I had got
a gig with Philip Bailey, who was the lead singer
(17:10):
of Earthmen and Fire, my favorite group, the group whose
music I played on the boombox that day, and that's
how everything started. My biggest break that really put me
on the map was in nineteen eighty five. The group
The New Addition was looking for a drummer and Lenny
Kravitz had met the managers up at MCA Records and said,
(17:32):
I got just a guy, and he goes, hold all
your calls. I got just a guy, but by that
time the word had gotten out and now every other
great drummer in LA had heard about it. It was
like a cattle call. There's no way I'm going to
get this gig over these guys. These guys are pros.
And Lenny's like, now, come on, man, you're funkier than
those guys, and you're cooler. You got an image, you
got a vibe, you get your Zorro vibe and your
(17:53):
Zorro hat. So he talked me into believing I could
do it. But through playing with them, I became a
teen star my own right. So there were Zoro posters
and centerfolds in the white teen magazine, Black teen magazine,
Latin teen magazine, every kind of teen magazine you can imagine.
(18:15):
So my story is an overcoming story of epic proportions
in the spirit of like Rocky. But it's about a
musician with a dream and a family. It's about this
mother and this faith that my mother had that God
could still provide, that God could still do incredible things,
that nothing could count us out. I adopted that same
faith myself, and I've preached everywhere from San Quentin prison
(18:38):
to the most hardened criminals in the world, to Hollywood
oscar parties. Probably the most beautiful thing about my story,
this overcoming story, I got to become the very thing
that I never had. I never had a loving father
who mentored me, supported me, did anything for me in
any way or sape or formed. But I got to
become a father to my children. And the most important
(19:01):
kind of success is the one that really matters when
you're on your deathbed.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
And a special thanks to Zorrow the Drummer. His book
is called Maria's Scarf and by the way, as a
final note, Tsorrow the Drummer still wears a scarf to
this very day when he plays an homage to his mom.
The story of Zorrow the Drummer an overcoming story of
epic proportions. Here on our American Stories
And we returned to our American stories. Up next, a
story from Zorro the Drummer. He's worked for musicians the
likes of Lenny Kravitz, Frankie Valley, and Lisa Marie Presley.
But before he was a renowned drummer, he was a
poor kid from California named Daniel Donnelly. Let's get into
the story. Take it away, Zorrow.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
My life is very much like Forrest Gump. All the
things that were not supposed to happen to Forrest happened.
If you remember in the movie, you know he's in
the White House with Elvis. All these amazing things to
this kid, the unlikely kid that was pretty much me.
(00:53):
My mother, Maria, had the enormous task of raising seven
children alone in the area known as common in the Hood.
So I was straight out of confident. Like the rap
song says she was an immigrant, she actually came from
(01:13):
an aristocratic family. She was the daughter of a Supreme
Court justice. She had married my father about six months
of age. He took the only car we had and
abandoned us. So life was very difficult. We moved around
a tremendous amount because we were getting evicted for either
being late with the rent, and back in those days
(01:35):
in the sixties, they could kick you out if you
had too many people. All that has changed now. But
my mother tried to hold down as many jobs as
she could, but still wasn't enough, so we struggled a
lot just to make ends meet. In fact, there were
times when we moved when there was no money for
a U haul or anything to move from one apartment
to the next. So I would use literally my red
(01:57):
radio flyer wagon and we could load up furniture on
there if you stack it a certain way, and me
and my brothers would hoist it and haul it down
the street a couple of miles to the next place.
But at the same time, my mother had this incredible faith,
She had this vision and dream, and something pretty amazing
happened during the like when I was going into the
(02:19):
second grade. Even though we were poor, she always dressed
very dignified, and so she always carried herself as the
person she grew up being in Mexico, So she never
saw herself like that poor person. She carried herself in
a different way even though we were poor. But she
wore these scarves and she always looked fabulous in these scarves,
and inside of me was like a budding rock star,
(02:42):
which I had no idea was there at the time,
but there was this artistic flare about me. And I
asked her if I could wear her orange silk scarf
she was wearing. I asked her if I could wear
it for my second grade school picture. And she looked
down at me and she laughed and oh me, you
can't wear my scarf. The boys will beat you up.
It's not Mako. This is the United States. But I
(03:02):
wanted to wear it really bad. So I kept reasoning
with her, and I said, I don't care what they think,
and said, the scarf looks cool. Elvis Presley wears one,
Tom Jones wears one. I want to wear a scarf.
I want to be different. And so she knelt down
and tied her orange silk scarf around my neck and
then she whispered in my ear. She says, one day,
my precious son, you will do something fantasmical with your life.
(03:24):
Fantasmical was the word she used. It was a mixture
between fantastic and amazing and wonderful, and it was her
own own word that she coined. But that's how she
truly felt. So I grew up in this household full
of love, even though we were in abject poverty. And
I think during those years of being sort of heartbroken,
because I remember trying to send letters to my father,
(03:47):
he never responded to any of the letters or the
report cards of the pictures. So I grew up with
this incredible sense of rejection. It would have been different
if he died or died in the war. Then I
would just have to have dealt with this is no
longer can be. But there was always this glimmer of
hope inside this kid that something he would write or
do or say would make his dad respond. And so
(04:09):
he never did, and that sent a big spear of hurt,
pain and rejection in me, which became the fuel later
for me doing what I end up doing. Really, one
great thing that happened during those days we lived in
Compton was all of my brothers and sisters loved music,
(04:30):
and so I grew up in a house where everyone
was playing different records, all the great rock and roll records,
soul music and motown jazz. My mother loved big band
and Mariacci. And then I had the great fortune a
neighbor bought us some tickets, took me to go see
Diana Ross and the Supremes and the Temptations when I
(04:52):
was seven or eight years old, and I got so
excited from the concert that the next day I just
wanted to play drums onto the rhythm of soul music.
I didn't own any drums, but I was creative, so
I looked at my mother's cupboard and found some tupperware
(05:12):
canisters and some salad spoons, and then looked at the
trash cans and found like some Folger's coffee cans, all
Monroca cans, and I made a ghetto drum set, put
it in my red radio fire wagon, took it out
on Compton Boulevard, turned on my transistor radio to Wolfman Jacket,
how you doing made Away?
Speaker 1 (05:33):
And call it brown?
Speaker 2 (05:35):
And put on soul music. And then I just commenced
to pounding on the drums, and all the people around
me were digging it and throwing coins into my wagon.
Something sparked in me that day, and something came alive.
That rhythm and that drummer thing was calling to me.
(05:55):
We ended up moving to Grant's Pass, Oregon. It's beautiful
up there, there's mountains, rivers, lakes, trees, and they hated
us because my mother was Mexican. But this is fully
the American dream. My mother was tired of renting and
she had this dream of having a house one day.
(06:18):
So we scrimped and saved, all of us worked and
put a little tiny piece of down payment on a
little plot of land out in the middle of nowhere
in the country. But we didn't have any money for
a dwelling. We lived in our nineteen sixty two Chevy Nova,
which was hot as hell in the summer. No running water,
no electricity, no outhouse. But I remember, for all the
(06:41):
harsh people that we met, we met some godly Christian
people as well. And there was a reverend. His name
was a reverend Ed Williamson. He is the one who
let us shower at his house, and he also bought
me and my brother's shoes. We didn't have the money
to buy the shoes because we wanted to go on
this church camping trip, so he bought us the shoes.
(07:03):
That's what allowed us to go to the summer church camp.
And that's actually the camp where I gave my heart
to Jesus. So sometimes it takes just a pair of
shoes to get a kid to find Jesus. And the
most beautiful part of that story, I was in Grant's
past preaching at a church and doing some book signings,
and that pastor showed up fifty years later and we
(07:24):
had this beautiful full circle moment. And I've been tracking
him down because I wanted him to know what I
had done with my life and how many people I've
affected because of the love of God he showed to
me and my family. So it was just the most
beautiful thing. But anyway, so in Grant's Pass is where
I officially wanted to be a drummer. So I entered
a talent show. They were putting a band together, and
(07:47):
I just told him that I was a drummer, even
though I didn't have any drums or had never played
any drums other than the ghetto drum set on the
streets and Compton, which was not a drum set. So
I calmed my way into this band. And when we
had the first her so they were like, hey, you know,
where's your drums, And I said, they're in the shop
getting fixed. But I could play with my hands on
the back of the chair. Just to keep time for
(08:07):
you guys, And so I faked my way through that
until the day of the show, and which of course
I wasn't going to have the drums that hadn't known
any We found a big, giant box. We ended up
painting a drum set on it by hand with glitter
and glue and all that stuff, and I ended up
playing at the talent show on the box with my
hands like I had been playing on the chair. The
(08:27):
kids in the van were totally disappointed, but I just
wanted to be in that talent show. And kind of
what sparked that whole thing was watching Elvis Presley on
the big televised satellite show he did called Elvis Aloha
from Hawaii. It was the world's first satellite broadcast broadcast
all over the world. At the same time, I watched
the drummer behind Elvis. His name was Ronnie Tett, and
(08:50):
when I saw him play man, the guy looked like
he was having so much fun. I'm like, that's what
I want to do. I want to do what that
guy's doing. But then it kind of went dead for
a while because I did and get in the school band,
and so at that point I needed a new dream,
and so, living in rural Oregon, everyone raised animals we
couldn't afford, like cows and horses and goats and stuff.
(09:12):
So I decided I was going to raise chickens because
they were really cheap to buy and they were small.
I wanted to be the world's greatest chicken farmer. Then
I raised a couple of Saint Bernards and then one
of them got loose and destroyed my entire chicken farm
in one day. And that's what sort of God's plan
for my life. I needed a new dream, and so
I thought about it. I'm like, man, Music's what I
(09:33):
always really wanted to do, but I didn't know how
to get into it. I didn't own any drums.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
So, and you've been listening to the story of Zorro
the Drummer. His mother, Maria, raised seven kids alone in Compton,
but his mom's incredible faith, well, it was always in evidence.
When we return more of Zorro of the Drummer's story
here on our American Stories, and we returned to our
(10:10):
American Stories and the story of Daniel Donnelly aka Zorro
the Drummer. When we last left off, Daniel had set
aside his dream of being a drummer, because while he
couldn't afford a drum set, didn't get into the high
school band, and chickens were cheap. But he'd soon have
a meeting with his school counselor that would change the
course of his life. Let's return to the story.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
He said, what do you like? I said music? Can
you find me a job that puts me around music?
And he goes, I'll see what I can do. A
week later he comes back and he goes, man, I'm sorry,
I couldn't find anything like what you wanted, but I
did find you a job, and I'm like, well, what
is it. He goes, well, it's a custodial position. And
I'm like, okay. Where he goes right here? Where? Right here?
(10:56):
At the school? My school. He goes, yeah, like it's
like an embarrassing job, like the school bell rings and
all the kids are seeing you clean the toilets. But
he said, well, the good news is you get to
clean the bandroom. So I was like, wow, great, I
get to clean the bandroom. Well, at the end of
the two hours of the job, last ten minutes, I
reserved to sneak into the band room after I cleaned it,
(11:19):
and then I would sneak on the drums and play. Now,
I never took a lesson. I didn't own a set
of drums. But I guess you could say I was
given a gift because from day one I could play.
I would do that every day, you know, I just
daydream about being on stage one day. And then one day,
(11:40):
un beknownst to me, the band director was in his office.
He came out and startled me. He caught me drumming
on the job. So he goes and says, wait right there,
and goes and get somebody else. And I know I'm
getting fired. So I think he's bringing my boss, Clarence,
to tell him this kid sneaking on the drums and playing. Instead,
it was the swing choir director says, play again like
(12:01):
you were playing it, And so I played, and they
both looked at each other and they're mumbling while I'm playing,
and then they said, stop, kid, You've got an incredible
amount of talent. You're like a rhythmic genius. I need
you in the swing choir, the stage band, the marching band,
(12:22):
all the school bands. And that is how my career started.
So I graduated high school then I auditioned for and
landed a gig with a local band, Italian family, a
bunch of brothers and a sister. They had an opportunity
to go down to LA to audition for Disneyland as
(12:45):
the house band at the Tomorrowland Terrace, which was the stage.
It would rise from the ground like hydraulically, and then
all of a sudden it would be up in the
band would be playing. And they had held that job
a couple of years earlier as the house band, so
I was certain we'd get the job again and now
I'd be back in my southern California, LA area, live
in my dream of playing. Additionally, I'm with a show band.
(13:07):
For whatever reason, we auditioned and they didn't get the gig.
Was heartbreaking. So I ended up quitting the band and
I was ready to go back, and I called my mother,
told her what had happened. The band was falling apart,
and she said, she said, son, don't come back. I said,
what do you mean, She goes, if you come back,
you'll never make it. She said, you have real talent,
(13:28):
but you got to stick it out in LA. You've
got to be there. That's where all the gigs are,
that's where all your potential is, that's where opportunities are.
There's nothing for you up here. And I was scared
as gonna be. I didn't really know what to do,
but I listened to her advice and said okay. And
then I drove all around LA for a a couple
of few days, just you know, Hollywood and Beverly Hills,
trying to figure out the lay of the land, reading
(13:50):
newspapers looking for ads about drummers. Just couldn't figure out
where to meet the people. You know, I hadn't been
there since I was a kid. And I drove by
Beverly Hills High schoo and I thought, wow, it looked
like a college camp. Was like an Ivy League college campus,
like Harvard or something. Gee, I wish I would have
went to school like this. And then this idea came
to me. I wanted to meet kids my age to play.
(14:14):
So I went one day, spent the last bit of
money I had on the latest Panasonic boombox, and then
I went to Beverly Hills High School one day in
the afternoon and I got there around lunchtime and I
sat on the lawn of this pristine well manicured lawn,
a beautiful fall day. I'm going to play my boom box.
(14:35):
I'm going to crank some earth Wind and Fire in
the earth Wind and Fire Platinum boom Box. I'm bringing
my practice pad and my sticks, and I'm just going
to play on the lawn. And if there's any musicians
within an earshot, they're going to go, hey, who's that
new kid on the lawn. You know, I was trying
to bring attention to myself. I wore like a yellow
silk shirt and silk pants. I had a panama jack
(14:57):
hat with a sash around it that was yellow, had
some shape. I was like big bird out on that lawn.
I was yellow, and you're gonna find me. Within ten
minutes of doing that, this kid comes walking up to
me and goes, hey, man, are you new here? And
I just said yeah, because you know, I'm not really
(15:18):
supposed to be there. You know, you're not supposed to
be just walking in on the campus. So I said yeah.
And then he was like, where'd you come from? So
I just transferred from Eugene, so I kind of pretended
like I was a new student there. He played the bass.
His name was Kennedy and We became fast friends, and
then another kid came up to me about ten minutes later,
and it was the same thing. It was like, hey man,
(15:39):
you knew here. You looked like you had some mean chops,
you know. I was practicing fast on the pad and
his name was Lenny Well later he turned out to
be Lenny Kravitz, and Kennedy turned out to be Kennedy Gordy,
who was the son of Barry Gordy, the founder of
Motown Records. It wasn't long after I met Kennedy Gordy.
(16:04):
I'm up at the Gordy compound and one day I
see two Rolls Royces pulling up and Kennedy's the only
kid I knew who had pinball machines, and he had
an arcade in his front living room, but you didn't
have to put coins in them, So I was in
there playing arcades by myself. He was upstairs in his
bedroom taking a shower, and his dad was upstairs. Then
the doorbell rings and I opened the doorbell and it's
(16:27):
Michael Jackson and the Jackson Five, which is another one
of my favorite groups I grew up with. I had
all their forty fives. I belonged to the fan club.
So I'm there trying to talk Michael and the brothers
into jamming with me, like Michael, Jermaine, Jackie, Tito, Marlin, Man,
I know all your songs, Man, ABC, the Love You Save,
you know one more Chance? I named them all you know,
I want you back. Michael just looked at me with
(16:49):
this smile. He goes, oh, kid, you got a lot
of heart. But anyway, I ended up chatting with them
for like twenty minutes, entertaining them while they were waiting
for Barry Gordy to come downstairs. So it was like
a dream come true. So all these amazing things were happening.
And then within a couple of years I had got
a gig with Philip Bailey, who was the lead singer
(17:10):
of Earthmen and Fire, my favorite group, the group whose
music I played on the boombox that day, and that's
how everything started. My biggest break that really put me
on the map was in nineteen eighty five. The group
The New Addition was looking for a drummer and Lenny
Kravitz had met the managers up at MCA Records and said,
(17:32):
I got just a guy, and he goes, hold all
your calls. I got just a guy, but by that
time the word had gotten out and now every other
great drummer in LA had heard about it. It was
like a cattle call. There's no way I'm going to
get this gig over these guys. These guys are pros.
And Lenny's like, now, come on, man, you're funkier than
those guys, and you're cooler. You got an image, you
got a vibe, you get your Zorro vibe and your
(17:53):
Zorro hat. So he talked me into believing I could
do it. But through playing with them, I became a
teen star my own right. So there were Zoro posters
and centerfolds in the white teen magazine, Black teen magazine,
Latin teen magazine, every kind of teen magazine you can imagine.
(18:15):
So my story is an overcoming story of epic proportions
in the spirit of like Rocky. But it's about a
musician with a dream and a family. It's about this
mother and this faith that my mother had that God
could still provide, that God could still do incredible things,
that nothing could count us out. I adopted that same
faith myself, and I've preached everywhere from San Quentin prison
(18:38):
to the most hardened criminals in the world, to Hollywood
oscar parties. Probably the most beautiful thing about my story,
this overcoming story, I got to become the very thing
that I never had. I never had a loving father
who mentored me, supported me, did anything for me in
any way or sape or formed. But I got to
become a father to my children. And the most important
(19:01):
kind of success is the one that really matters when
you're on your deathbed.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
And a special thanks to Zorrow the Drummer. His book
is called Maria's Scarf and by the way, as a
final note, Tsorrow the Drummer still wears a scarf to
this very day when he plays an homage to his mom.
The story of Zorrow the Drummer an overcoming story of
epic proportions. Here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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