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digitalDrummer: The name Simmons is still synonymous with electronic percussion many years after the last kit rolled off the production line. What do you think was your single biggest contribution to electronic drumming? Dave Simmons: Phew, the hard question first, eh Allan? I have to say that I am continually amazed after 25 years that the products we produced are remembered at all, let alone held in the respect that some people hold for them. Having said that, having just spent months going through the masses of documentation I have in the vault covering the period 1979 to 2006 where we were inventing, manufacturing and eventually going bust, it is apparent that something strange and a bit wonderful happened during that period. I’ve recently had to drag all this stuff up in preparing my case against Guitar Center (more of that later), and there are hundreds and hundreds of pages of press on the Simmons products, the drummers that used them and the resulting music. Some of the advertising that Geoff Howarth (sales director) created were works of art in their own right, so he must take a lot of the credit (or should it be blame?) for the public face of Simmons. I’ve looked at the original design drawings scribbled in my own note books in 1981, and then the spectacular developments in custom chips and multi-processor systems created by the hardware and software engineers under the guidance of Simon Davidman and Jim Lindop only five years later, and I am staggered at what we achieved as a small independent British company. We didn’t borrow a lot of money to do it. We built five drum kits and sold them. With the money we built 10 drum kits and sold them. Within a few months, we were building 100 drum kits. And with the money from those, we took on design engineers, assembly workers, accountants and shipping people, sales and marketing, etc, etc. We went from one person in a shed to 150 in a brand-new assembly plant in St Albans in four years. Everyone that I talk to now, that was involved in the whirlwind that was the growth of the company back then, says the same thing: it was the best years of their working life and nothing they have done since came close to it. It was certainly an exciting time for all of us involved in creating the drums, and maybe some of that excitement was reflected in the drummers who saw the kits on Top of the Pops and said “what the f**?”. I know of drummers that were on the waiting list for the kits for months, were saving hard to get one, were really excited about the visual and aural aspects of something quite new for drummers. But I also know that the majority of drummers were either anti-electronic drums, or downright hostile towards them. 34
Ads from Simmons’ heyday
www.digitaldrummermag.com