Pick Withers
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| Pick Withers | |
|---|---|
| Born | April 4, 1948 in Leicester, England |
| Genre(s) | Rock, Jazz |
| Instrument(s) | drums |
| Associated acts | Dave Edmunds, Dire Straits |
Pick Withers (born April 4, 1948 in Leicester, England) was the original drummer for the rock band Dire Straits and played on their first four albums, which included hit singles such as "Sultans of Swing," "Romeo and Juliet" and "Skateaway."
He first played a drum in the Boys Brigade taught by a childhood friend Richard Storer of now knocked-down Argyle Street in Leicester. He became a professional musician aged 17 in a band called the Primitives, followed by a band called Spring who had a record contract but little success. They recorded one album on the RCA label. In the mid-1970s he was a house drummer at Rockfield Studios. He played on records by Dave Edmunds, amongst others.
Pick has also studied at Drumtech drum school in London.
Withers's style with Dire Straits was distinct for being restrained, favoring spare snare drum and hi-hat combinations over heavy beats, speed and pyrotechnic flourishes. Like the guitar playing of the band's famous frontman, Mark Knopfler, Withers's style was blues-based and instantly recognizable as part of the pop music sp the band perfected beginning around the mid-1970s. Knopfler met Withers in 1973 in London when he joined the blues band Brewers Droop, for which Withers was already playing at the time. Withers continued to work regularly with Knopfler through the mid-1970s, although he also maintained his Rockfield affiliations, and was briefly a member of folk-rock outfit Magna Carta in 1977. Once Dire Straits gained a recording contract, however, Withers turned to drumming for that band full-time.
In 1982, after Dire Straits completed the album Love over Gold, Withers left the band to spend more time with his family and to pursue jazz music. He reportedly told an interviewer that he had succumbed to a growing feeling that there was nothing left in the music for him, that he was in danger of "becoming a rock drummer."
His replacement in Dire Straits was the dynamic Terry Williams, also a Dave Edmunds sideman.
He also played on the Bob Dylan album Slow Train Coming.
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