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Moe Tucker

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Moe Tucker

Maureen Ann "Moe" Tucker (born August 26, 1944, in Levittown, New York) is a musician best known for having been the drummer for the rock group The Velvet Underground.

Career

The Velvet Underground

Main article: The Velvet Underground

Tucker first began playing the drums at age 19. When she was asked to join the Velvet Underground, Tucker was working for IBM as a keypunch operator. The band's original percussionist, Angus Maclise, had left in November 1965 because he refused to play before a paying audience, and Tucker was drafted because Velvets guitarist Sterling Morrison remembered that the younger sister of one of his college friends played the drums.

Tucker's style of playing was unusual: she played standing up, rather than seated, using a simplified drum kit of tom toms, a snare drum and an upturned bass drum, playing with mallets rather than drumsticks and rarely using cymbals.

Apart from drumming, Tucker sang (co-)lead vocals on three Velvet Underground songs: the acoustic guitar number "After Hours" and the strange poem set to music "The Murder Mystery", both from 1969's The Velvet Underground album, as well as "I'm Sticking with You", a song recorded in 1969 but left (officially) unreleased until it appeared on the 1985 outtakes compilation VU. Lou Reed has said of "After Hours" that it was "so innocent and pure" that he could not possibly sing it himself. In the early days, Tucker also occasionally played the bass guitar during live gigs; the only released song that features her playing bass is a recording of "Melody Laughter" included on the 1995 box set Peel Slowly and See.

Tucker temporarily left the group when she became pregnant with her first child, Kerry "Trucker" Tucker, in early 1970. Because of her pregnancy, Tucker was not able to play, with the exception of a few songs, on what turned out to be the band's last studio album with Lou Reed, Loaded. She was replaced for live gigs by Billy Yule, bassist Doug Yule's younger brother. On the album, Doug Yule played most of the drums.

Tucker returned to the band in late 1970, by which time Reed had left the group and Doug Yule had assumed leadership. She toured North America (United States and Canada) and Europe (United Kingdom and the Netherlands) with the band during 1970 and 1971, then quit the band and the music business to raise her family.

Solo career and Velvets reunion

In the early 80s, while living in Phoenix, Arizona, Tucker played drums in the short-lived Paris 1942 with Alan Bishop of the Sun City Girls.[1]

She moved to Douglas, Georgia in 1984 to raise a family and started working for the Wal-Mart Corporation before being able to quit in 1989 with the help of her friends, Half Japanese, to go on tour in Europe.[2]

Tucker started recording and touring again, releasing a number of albums on small, independent labels that feature her singing and playing guitar, fronting her own band. This band at times included former Velvets colleague Sterling Morrison. Tucker also participated in the 1992-1993 Velvet Underground reunion, touring Europe and releasing the double album Live MCMXCIII.

Apart from releasing her own records, Tucker has made guest performances on a number of others' records, including producing Fire in the Sky (1990) for Half Japanese, whose guitarist, John Sluggett, plays drums on her own recordings. In Jeff Feuerzeig's documentary about Half Japanese, The Band That Would Be King, Tucker performs and is interviewed extensively. Also, she has guested with Magnet and former Velvet Underground band members Lou Reed (New York) and John Cale (Walking on Locusts).

Tucker also played drums on and produced the album The Lives of Charles Douglas by eccentric indie-rocker and novelist Charles Douglas (also known as Alex McAulay) in 1999.

She played bass drum, wrote songs, and sang with the New York/Memphis punk rock-delta blues fusion group, The Kropotkins (named after the famous Russian prince and anarchist Peter Kropotkin), with Lorette Velvette and Dave Soldier in 1999-2003, recording "Five Points Crawl".

Discography

With The Velvet Underground

Studio albums

Live albums

Compilations

† Although Tucker did not appear on the original release of the band's 1970 album Loaded, a 1997 2CD re-issue by Rhino Records subtitled Fully Loaded Edition includes two late 1969/early 1970 demos, "I Found a Reason" and another take on "I'm Sticking with You", which feature her on drums and vocals, respectively.

With The Kropotkins

Solo

Albums:

EPs:

Singles

References

  1. ^ Sun City Girls- Rick Bishop interview
  2. ^ Welcome to the world of Crimewave
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