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 June 15, 2007 Richard X. Heyman, True Believer
Richard X. Heyman grew up in Plainfield, New Jersey, a small city of about 47,000 located 25 miles southwest of Newark. Like most of us who grew up in the ’60s, he heard many different kinds of music at home. "My father was into big-band jazz and Sinatra," he told me in an e-mail. "My mother liked Broadway musicals, and my three older sisters were listening to early rock and roll with some Johnny Mathis mixed in." Heyman’s sister dated a guy who brought James Brown and Ike and Tina Turner records to his house, "which I confiscated. I started begging my parents for a drum set when I was five years old. I instinctively knew I should play the drums." One of Heyman’s rock’n’roll epiphanies occurred the first time he heard the Everly Brothers’ "Wake Up Little Susie." "The whole listening experience of that song encapsulated everything I love about music," he wrote to me. "I can still remember those two-and-a-half minutes as if it just happened yesterday. The song elicited all kinds of emotion -- joyfulness, wistfulness, a feeling of being cool just by hearing that guitar riff." Those words describe Heyman’s music as well. His songs celebrate the feeling of hope and possibility that rock’n’roll held before it became widespread and corporate. And you really do feel cool just by hearing his best guitar riffs. When he was 11, Heyman and some of his friends started a band, the Ascots, and a few years later won a battle-of-the-bands contest sponsored by a Newark TV station. First prize was a recording contract with Bell Records, whose roster included soul greats James and Bobby Purify. The Ascots renamed themselves the Doughboys and recorded two singles for Bell that didn’t light up the charts, but did give them the chance to open for some of the most popular musicians of the time, including the Beach Boys and Neil Diamond. Heyman’s Boom Harangue, his amusing memoir about growing up and playing music in the ’60s, includes a passage about the Doughboys that’s posted on his website. While Heyman has been able to scratch out a living over the years playing drums for some of his heroes, including Link Wray, Ben E. King, and Brian Wilson, it’s his own recordings that have brought him a devoted following that’s far too small. His first full-length release, Living Room!! (1988), caught the attention of Rolling Stone, which praised it, calling Heyman "an undiscovered treasure." Living Room!! and its predecessor, the EP Actual Size, contain the elements that would mark all of Heyman’s work. The songs are tightly constructed and melodic, and, despite limited budgets and technical constraints, the recordings are packed with musical details. Heyman’s discs are full of so many great moments they’re like listening to AM radio in its golden age in the mid- to late 1960s. "Palace of Time," from Living Room!!, opens with a straightforward chord strum and a strong beat that lead into a killer guitar riff on acoustic 12-string guitar. Heyman’s multitracked harmony vocals carry the ear-grabbing melody and smart lyrics, a hallmark of his work. A piano flourish darts in at key points, and Heyman’s guitar solo is driving and incisive. Every song on the disc evokes the great pop singles of the ’60s, as if Heyman had access to the part of your brain that stores fond memories of them. Yet his music doesn’t sound dated or nostalgic. Cypress Records, then distributed by A&M, picked up Living Room!! for national distribution in 1990. The following year, Heyman and Andy Paley produced Hey Man! for Sire Records. Once again, Heyman’s sure songwriting and intelligent arrangements resulted in a pop gem. The chorus of the opening tune, "Falling Away," would make Brian Wilson proud. Though fans had to wait seven years for Cornerstone, which appeared on Permanent Press Records in 1998, the album was yet another demonstration of Heyman’s formidable songwriting and instrumental talents and received the usual strong notices.
Basic Glee (2002) was Heyman’s first full-length CD on his own label, which he named Turn Up Records, and the music and sound on it surpassed the high standards the songwriter had already set for himself. Recorded on an eight-track ADAT machine, Basic Glee is richly woven fabric of complex, beautiful vocal harmonies, chiming guitars, and unforgettable hooks. Heyman is remarkable for his command of every instrument he plays on his recordings. He’s a formidable guitarist whose ear for tone allows him to create exactly the right sound for his songs, and his skills on the keyboard aren’t far behind. Most of all, he’s a great rock’n’roll drummer who plays with both power and finesse. "I start my recordings with the drums," he said when I asked him about his steps for recording. "I block out time at a studio and lay down all the drums for the entire album project. As the writer of the songs, I generally know what I want to do, drum-wise. Of course, a lot of the fills are impromptu on the spot, but I have the general arrangement in my head as I sing the lyrics to myself. Then I take those drum tracks home to my bedroom studio -- christened ‘The Kit Factory,’ in honor of our feline family -- and start filling in the components to each song. Nancy engineers all the vocals and instruments. I’ll put an organ or maybe a rhythm guitar down first so I have something to sing to, then I complete all the vocals." Heyman admits that some aspects of his recording approach are unorthodox. "[It] is backwards to the standard procedure of finishing the backing track and then adding the voices. I like having the vocal parts all in place so I can place the instruments around the voices. It just seems to work better for me. I don’t demo anything, so I come up with the guitar, bass, and keyboard arrangements as I’m recording." The results are anything but haphazard. Every Heyman recording is well crafted, and he obviously takes great care with each instrumental and vocal detail. More than anything, Richard X. Heyman’s music captures the power and beauty of the best rock’n’roll in a way that only a few of its greatest practitioners have. He’s not afraid of melody, or of qualities -- such as lush vocal harmonies -- that made records by the Who, the Kinks, the Beach Boys, and many other great bands so memorable. Heyman is a true believer in rock’n’roll, and you’ll forgive me for scratching my head over the fact that his music hasn’t been pouring out of every stereo, boom box, and radio station for the last 20 years. When I listen to the five discs I own by Heyman, I think of something John Sebastian sang a long time ago: "I’ll tell you about the magic, and it’ll free your soul / But it’s like trying to tell a stranger ’bout rock’n’roll." Play that stranger a disc by Richard X. Heyman and I think he’ll know what you’re trying to tell him. …Joseph Taylor
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When writing about New York-based
songwriter Richard X. Heyman, it’s tempting to draw comparisons to the musicians who
have obviously inspired him ("If you like this artist, you’ll also like . . .
"). That does him a disservice. While it’s true you can hear echoes of many
great rock’n’roll musicians in Heyman’s music, there’s always a moment
in each of his songs when you get that unexplainable buzz that happens only when
you’re hearing something both familiar and breathtakingly new. Heyman has been making
music since the 1960s, and was taken with the bands that dominated the charts during that
decade’s British Invasion. But his recordings demonstrate a sure grasp of
rock’n’roll history, from its beginnings to its many current strains, and that
knowledge gives his songs tremendous depth and variety.
Heyman’s discs -- including his newest, the brilliant Actual Sighs
-- show an attention to detail that makes the best rock’n’roll such a pleasure
to listen to. His complex recordings are dense with instrumental nuances that continue to
reveal themselves, listen after listen. That feat is especially impressive given that
Heyman has recorded much of his music in home studios and played nearly all the
instruments himself. Actual Sighs contains 14 songs Heyman wrote in the
mid-’80s and rediscovered when he and his wife, Nancy, moved to a new apartment in
2003. While he was recording those lost gems, Heyman decided to re-record the six tracks
that originally comprised his 1986 EP, Actual Size. The resulting 20 tracks add to
an already impressive body of songs that have earned Heyman praise from both critics and
other musicians.
Beginning with the EP Heyman,
Hoosier, & Herman, which featured Peter Noone of Herman’s Hermits on
"Hoosier," Heyman began distributing his own music. "Growing up as a rock
musician, I certainly wanted to make records and tour, and that meant being signed to a
major label," he explained. "With indie labels and the Internet, it’s a
whole new model. I honestly have no desire to be on a major label. I wasn’t treated
very well when I was on one, and they are not necessary anymore. Sure, it’s nice to
be handed a pile of money, but I’d just as soon sell my music on my own label and
retain control over the music, artwork, and promotion."