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Bill Bateman (drummer)
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Bill Bateman (drummer)
Bill Bateman is an American drummer best known for his long service in the Blasters. He has also played for the Flesh Eaters, the Red Devils, and the Cramps.
In writing of the talent that the Blasters contained, Henry Rollins singled out Bateman as "one of the best drummers there is." A peer drummer, Dennis Diken of the Smithereens, called Bateman in 1987 "one of the most electrifying drummers I've ever heard. His intensity and spirit make your jaw drop."
Bateman was born on December 16, 1951, in Orange, California. He grew up in Downey, California, where he was neighbors with his future bandmates in the Blasters: Phil Alvin, Dave Alvin, and John Bazz. As Dave Alvin recalled in 2014, they were all like brothers - and fought like brothers too. From boyhood, the quartet shared a deep and abiding love of all forms of American music, and they ventured together into Los Angeles blues clubs, learning from veterans.
In Make the Music Go Bang! (1997), Los Angeles music journalist Chris Morris described the Blasters c. 1980 and the "brute energy" that the band generated, including "the indefatigable drummer Bill 'Buster' Bateman." Dave Alvin echoed Morris in another history of the L.A. punk scene, Under the Big Black Sun. He noted how "Bill Bateman pounding his drums as if he were trying to kill the damn things" contributed to the band's "undeniably manic, energetic magic."
On occasion Bateman used large meat bones as drumsticks, as observed by Belinda Carlisle of the Go-Go's, with whom Bateman had a two-year relationship in the early 1980s. (One photograph shows them playfully arm-wrestling.)
Yet Bateman also possessed subtlety and rhythmic complexity. Pointing to their mutual education in old American music of all kinds, Phil Alvin said that he used to play a lot of country blues with just Bateman accompanying him, and that Bateman often practiced by playing along with country blues. It helped "explain the Blasters' ability to infuse borrowings from blues, country and soul music with the proper accents, the right touch."
Bateman is pictured on the cover of the 1983 album Non-Fiction, clad in mechanic's coveralls and bearing a rose.
The Blasters played less frequently in the late '80s. In late 1988, Bateman began to devote more of his time to the Blue Shadows (later the Red Devils). Dave Carroll succeeded him as Blasters drummer in 1993 and was subsequently replaced by Jerry Angel in 1994.
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Bill Bateman (drummer)
Bill Bateman is an American drummer best known for his long service in the Blasters. He has also played for the Flesh Eaters, the Red Devils, and the Cramps.
In writing of the talent that the Blasters contained, Henry Rollins singled out Bateman as "one of the best drummers there is." A peer drummer, Dennis Diken of the Smithereens, called Bateman in 1987 "one of the most electrifying drummers I've ever heard. His intensity and spirit make your jaw drop."
Bateman was born on December 16, 1951, in Orange, California. He grew up in Downey, California, where he was neighbors with his future bandmates in the Blasters: Phil Alvin, Dave Alvin, and John Bazz. As Dave Alvin recalled in 2014, they were all like brothers - and fought like brothers too. From boyhood, the quartet shared a deep and abiding love of all forms of American music, and they ventured together into Los Angeles blues clubs, learning from veterans.
In Make the Music Go Bang! (1997), Los Angeles music journalist Chris Morris described the Blasters c. 1980 and the "brute energy" that the band generated, including "the indefatigable drummer Bill 'Buster' Bateman." Dave Alvin echoed Morris in another history of the L.A. punk scene, Under the Big Black Sun. He noted how "Bill Bateman pounding his drums as if he were trying to kill the damn things" contributed to the band's "undeniably manic, energetic magic."
On occasion Bateman used large meat bones as drumsticks, as observed by Belinda Carlisle of the Go-Go's, with whom Bateman had a two-year relationship in the early 1980s. (One photograph shows them playfully arm-wrestling.)
Yet Bateman also possessed subtlety and rhythmic complexity. Pointing to their mutual education in old American music of all kinds, Phil Alvin said that he used to play a lot of country blues with just Bateman accompanying him, and that Bateman often practiced by playing along with country blues. It helped "explain the Blasters' ability to infuse borrowings from blues, country and soul music with the proper accents, the right touch."
Bateman is pictured on the cover of the 1983 album Non-Fiction, clad in mechanic's coveralls and bearing a rose.
The Blasters played less frequently in the late '80s. In late 1988, Bateman began to devote more of his time to the Blue Shadows (later the Red Devils). Dave Carroll succeeded him as Blasters drummer in 1993 and was subsequently replaced by Jerry Angel in 1994.