Maureen “Moe” Tucker (born August 26, 1944) is an American musician and singer best known for having been the drummer for the New York City-based experimental rock band the Velvet Underground. (More from Wikipedia)
When women started showing up in otherwise male rock bands, they were normally the lead singers; but after awhile, women were as often on the musician side as the vocalist side. The roster of the classic line-up of the Velvet Underground – Lou Reed (lead vocals, electric guitar), John Cale (multi-instrumentalist), Sterling Morrison (bass guitar, electric guitar), and Moe Tucker (drums) – makes it seem that this classic band was an all-male group like virtually every other rock band in the 1960’s.
Actually the drummer’s real name is Maureen Tucker; her approach as a percussionist was outside the norm to say the least. Quoting from Wikipedia: “Her abbreviated drum kit was rather unusual: She generally played on tom toms and an upturned bass drum, using mallets as often as drumsticks, and she rarely used cymbals. . . . When her drums were stolen from one club, she replaced them with garbage cans, brought in from outside.”
(December 2013)
