Lucky Lehrer

Lucky Lehrer
Instruments	Drums
Associated acts	Circle Jerks, Darby Crash Band, Bad Religion, LA's Wasted Youth, Redd Kross

Lucky Lehrer is a drummer from Los Angeles, California who was voted the best punk drummer of all-time by fanzine, Flipside. He was originally trained in jazz then played in influential LA punk rock bands, particularly the Circle Jerks,Redd Kross,Bad Religion,Darby Crash Band and LA's Wasted Youth, among others. Lehrer also appeared in three notable documentary films charting the punk rock music scene. He is the brother of LA's Wasted Youth guitarist Chett Lehrer. Lehrer also teaches drums, with notable students being future Bad Religion drummers Pete Finestone and Bobby Schayer. He was an early developer of hardcore punk drumming and he has been called the "Godfather of hardcore drumming".

Lucky credits his early music start to his mother, who died of cancer. "I quit guitar after 6 weeks and she let me try the drums. Years later, she said that all the racket in the house from hours of practicing drums never bothered her," Lucky remembers. Early birthdays were spent at venues like Shelly's Manne Hole watching Louie Bellson, or at the Brass Ring, where young Lucky got so close to his idol, Buddy Rich, he quipped "get outta here kid, you bother me." They visited jazz clubs until his mother died, such as Jaxx, Vibrato and La Ve Lee, where Lucky met his mentor, Los Angeles session drummer Joey Heredia.

He attributes his innovative, syncopated style to his interpretation of jazz and Latin drumming in a crash collision with speed metal. Early inspirations include jazz legends Buddy Rich and Max Roach. Later influences involve Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham, session and Flamenco drummer Joey Heredia, and teaching pioneer Murray Spivak.

Lucky has a long-time relationship with Drum Workshop (DW) which designed a custom “Speed Demon” kit in 6 ply maple shells that’s finished in “Caution” yellow. The kit features a pair of 10” and 12” Piccolo Toms DW designed in conjunction with Terry Bozzio that are positioned in lieu of a floor tom. The standard mounted “rack” tom tom is 10” in diameter (8” in depth). For touring, Lucky uses a 24” diameter bass drum (18” depth) but prefers a smaller drum for recording. For live shows, he uses a one-off prototype 13” diameter custom concrete snare drum by DW (6” in depth) that was a personal gift from DW Senior V.P. John Good. All hardware is heavy duty DW.

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Wikipedia