Insight-Peter Link

I grew up a drummer. My dad gave me my first pair of sticks at the age of seven. He had been a professional drummer before the great depression changed the lives of millions. I had dreamed of a drum set since “don’t remember when”.

But the drum set did not come quickly. Dad said, “You play on this here window ledge for a year – till the paint wears out. If you stick with it, then we’ll see.” For a year, every night after supper, I marched up stairs to our HiFi room and played along with Artie Shaw, Glen Miller, The Dorsey Brothers – on Dad’s old 78s. Nobody had to tell me to go practice, ever. I was just driven to do it.

Dad taught me my rudiments, my double paradiddles, my triple ratamacues. I learned to play these complex beats so fast that they became rhythmic drum rolls. I played the paint off that old window ledge. At the end of the year there was a dent a quarter of an inch deep in the wood and a brand new Gretsch mother of pearl snare drum under the Christmas tree – the best that money could buy.

“This is great, Dad, but where’s the drum set?” Dad wisely answered, “You learn to play the snare drum this year and if you’re still interested next Christmas, there’ll be a matching bass drum under the tree.”

And so it went. Each Christmas there was another matching mother of pearl Gretsch drum, a floor tom, a side tom, a high hat cymbal, etc. under the tree – the best that money could buy.

I graduated from Buddy Rich and Gene Krupa to Elvis, Little Richard and Chuck Berry and then on to The Beatles and the Beach Boys. In the seventh grade I began to play with the best college dance band in St. Louis. I was many different things as a child, but always a drummer. There was always that rock band, always the Pete Link drum solo – little kid wailing on the toms.

In college I picked up the guitar. I knew there needed to be more to music than just the beat. For me it was the same thing all over again. Nobody ever had to tell me to practice. I played till the pain from my fingers went up my arm. Folk music, Rock n’ Roll, Big Band, Jazz – there were no favorites. It was all just music.

In the seventies I put the guitar down. I finally found an instrument that could fulfill my musical imagination – the computer. It’s been my life ever since. (Ten years later I did pick up that guitar again and resume my love affair with my Martin D-35S.) But the computer could do it all, not at first, but as it grew in its incredible abilities, I grew along with it, staying up with the mad advance of technology and trying to hold on to the natural talent within.

Today, still, nobody has to tell me to go practice. I’m still driven. If a day goes by and I don’t get into my studio, I feel robbed, I get ornery, I’m hard to live with. I’m becoming a bit of a recluse. I feel like I’m finally getting this thing called music by the tail and I really don’t much care about anything else. Oh, I love people, I love my wife and my son and my friends, etc., but what I live for is that studio. I am the best of me and truly in the moment of now, the power of now, when I’m playing my Dual Quad 3.0 Intel 16GB Ram Mac. This is heaven on earth. This, for me, is the height of creative expression. Mine is a life in music.

This album, this CD, Ode To Joy, is simply the latest culmination of that life. I grew up a Pop musician, an eclectic popular music creator. A decade ago I met, fell in love with and married Julia Wade, an opera singer. Musically, I pulled her my way, but along the way, she pulled me hers. We spent three glorious years with season tickets to Carnegie Hall studying and having our minds blown by our favorite orchestra – The Philadelphia. This experience gave me something to hope for, something to dream.

This CD is the first iteration of that dream. I plan to continue down this road for the rest of my life. This is not an album of songs, rather, a series of impressions on the theme of joy. With each movement, I started with a loved melody from my life, stated it and then let the musings take it from there. Sometimes I even dropped the original theme after it had given me a start.

I mixed the musical styles of my life joyfully, not caring who I might offend, but just going with what I heard, drawing from the diverse musical styles of the latter part of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st. My intention in the beginning was to create a purely instrumental album. That’s not the way it worked out. Along the way I kept finding things I wanted to say, and so I said them, or sang them, or had my friends sing them.

The experience of making this CD was one of the best of my life. I am ever grateful for the technological tools at my disposal – my computer and its constantly expanding software. I am ever grateful for the flip side, my talent, my connection with the Source of creativity, with the God given light of joy in my life. It is this light, this joy that I sing about, in all its ramifications. It is my Ode To Joy.

If you are interested in listening to Peter Link's "Ode To Joy" album, please click on the blog entry's title and be automatically redirected to his artist page at Watchfire Music: