Starr Time
MD scored a major coup with its December ’81/ January ’82 cover story on Ringo Starr. The former Beatle was about to release a new album, and Musician magazine had been promised the only interview he was going to give. In the meantime, MD contributor Robyn Flans had established a connection with Starr’s good friend Jim Keltner, who was a fan of MD and encouraged Ringo to give an interview and pose for exclusive photos (all of this unknown by the publicist). Ringo’s MD cover story came out just a couple of weeks before Musician hit the stands, with a standard promo shot of the drummer on the cover. People started paying a lot more attention.
especially ones dealing with music, to see how they were constructed. He subscribed to a magazine geared toward publishers and editors. He got advice on everything from layouts to postal regulations. Modern Drummer’s address was listed as Nutley, New Jersey, which is where Ron lived. His basement became the MD offi ce, and he laid out the fi rst few issues himself on his Ping-Pong table. But MD didn’t remain a one-man
operation for long. After the fi rst issue appeared, Spagnardi received letters from a number of writers and professional drummers who wanted to contribute. And in the third issue, he ran a notice, “Correspondents Wanted,” inviting drummer-writers to apply for freelance reporting assignments. Over the next few issues, the bylines of several writers who would contribute a lot during MD’s early years (some of whom still write for the magazine) began to appear. Many of the columns were being written by prominent drummers and educators, including David Garibaldi, Mel Lewis, Charley Perry, and Roy Burns. The magazine grew quickly, in terms of
both subscribers and advertising. After the third issue came out, Spagnardi put his
music store up for sale so he could devote all of his time to Modern Drummer, which was also growing in size. The fi fth issue jumped to thirty-six pages, the next issue was forty-four, and the one after that was fi fty-two. But the extra pages were not just fi lled with ads; the articles were longer, and there were more of them. Karen Larcombe was added to the staff as
features editor starting with the seventh issue (July 1978), which also included the fi rst MD article by this writer. That issue featured the magazine’s fi rst color cover photo, of Ed Shaughnessy. A couple of weeks after it came out, Buddy Rich appeared on The Tonight Show, and right before he did a duet with Shaughnessy, who was the house drummer on the show, Johnny Carson held up a copy of MD with Ed’s cover story. Another milestone was reached at the
beginning of the third year: Modern Drummer went from quarterly to bimonthly. And two issues later, the masthead was listing a new address; MD had moved out of Spagnardi’s basement and into an offi ce building in Clifton, New Jersey. By the end of the fourth year MD was over a hundred pages, and by 1981 nine issues were being published per year. That fi fth year of publication saw some
A family business: One of Ron Spagnardi’s earliest infl uences was his father, Leo, a drummer himself who worked in the MD offi ces for years. Ron’s wife, Isabel, and daughter, Lori, remain involved with the magazine to this day.
other signifi cant changes. Scott K. Fish was hired as managing editor late in 1980, and in April ’81 I was named features editor when Larcombe left. Ron now had an all-drummer editorial staff , and while he had created a detailed list of guidelines for the editors and writers to follow, his philosophy about what MD should be was perhaps best summed up when he told us, “We need to put out a magazine that, as drummers, we would want to read ourselves.” This was an exciting time to work for MD.
The magazine had been accepted and embraced by the drum community, and whereas in the early days writers had to
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January 2016 Modern Drummer 55
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