CHESTER THOMPSON
Every month we get inside the mind of one of the biggest names in music. This issue it’s Chester Thompson. The US-born percussionist got his first gig when he was just 13 and his adult CV includes stints with Frank Zappa, Weather Report and, more recently, Unitopia. He made his mark on the 70s jazz fusion scene and soon became Genesis’s go-to live drummer. Now in his mid-70s, he lets us in on some trade secrets from his storied career and reveals how his accidental new album, Wake-up Call, came about.
Words: Mike Barnes
In 2008, drummer Chester Thompson was honoured with the Sabian Lifetime Achievement Award by American body the Percussive Arts Society to mark a career that began in Baltimore in the 60s when he was in his early teens. He honed his skills playing along to jazz records and went on to formally study flute, percussion and composition. He was about to embark upon a fouryear degree course but instead joined Frank Zappa And The Mothers Of Invention in 1973, reckoning, “Well, this is what I’m trying to get ready for anyway.”
Thompson played on a number of albums, including Roxy & Elsewhere (1974), One Size Fits All (1975) and Bongo Fury (1975). He left Zappa to join Weather Report, with whom he recorded Black Market (1976).
Around this time, Weather Report fan Phil Collins met with their bass guitarist, Alphonso Johnson, saying that he was looking for an American drummer to play with Genesis and invited Thompson to be their live drummer in late 1976 after Wind And Wuthering was recorded.
Chester’s new album, Wake-up Call.
RB/REDFERNS/GETTY IMAGES
This working relationship lasted more than three decades and Thompson features on their live albums from Seconds Out (1977) to Live Over Europe (2007). He also drummed on all Phil Collins’ solo tours from 1982 and 2005 and plays on the 1990 live album Serious Hits… Live!. Thompson recorded with Steve Hackett and Tony Banks, and with Brand X’s John Goodsall in the Fire Merchants, too.
Now living in Nashville, Tennessee, in addition to touring and recording, Thompson has worked as a drum teacher and is a professor at Belmont
University. His current projects include The Chester Thompson Trio, whose debut album Approved made No.6 in the JazzWeek album charts in 2013.
He has recorded with supergroup The Fusion Syndicate and joined the Australian prog band Unitopia in 2021.
“I’m very happy to see how much the whole prog world has grown,” he says. “There’s some really great stuff out there.”
Frank Zappa And The Mothers Of Invention, circa 1974. L-R: Tom Fowler, Napoleon Murphy Brock, Frank Zappa,
George Duke, Ruth Underwood, Chester Thompson.
LAETIZIA FORGET/DALLE/ICONICPIX
The song I had the most trouble with was Afterglow, which is probably the simplest song. Phil would always say, “No, it’s not the right feel.”