Brian Keenan (January 28, 1943 – October 5, 1985) was an American musician, best known as the drummer for The Chambers Brothers. Born in New York, he also lived in Conisbrough near Doncaster, Yorkshire, England, and Ireland as a child. Keenan was part of The Chambers Brothers from 1965 to 1971, and also played with the pre-“Doo Wah Diddy Diddy” Manfred Mann group in England. His group, the Losers, was the house band at Ondine, the first discotheque in New York City. (More from Wikipedia)
At the time of the British Invasion that began in late 1963, it wasn’t so hip to be American. Thus, many bands and recording artists in that period feigned Englishness in hopes of improving their changes of making the charts.
Sometimes though, they were just dressing in the fashions of the day. As an African-American group, the Chambers Brothers certainly weren’t fooling anyone on the cover of their most successful album, The Time Has Come, though their white drummer Brian Keenan had lived in England and Ireland for a time. This album featured the band’s 1968 psychedelic hit song “Time Has Come Today”; the extended version of this song runs for 11 minutes, and Keenan’s distinctive drumming is one of the reasons it has remained so popular.
(April 2013)
