Bad Company Drummer Remembers Touching Christmas

12/23/2001 10:00 AM, Yahoo! Music
Kastle

(12/23/01, 10 a.m. ET) -- Bad Company is known as a rough-and-tumble outfit, but that doesn't mean the members don't have hearts under their leather jackets. Drummer Simon Kirke told LAUNCH about one particular Christmas when he was moved to tears. It happened at the Marquee Club in London in the early '90s while he was doing a drum clinic with Carl Palmer from Emerson, Lake & Palmer and Nico McBrain from Iron Maiden.

The show took place on Christmas Eve, and Kirke says, "I kept hearing all this 'click-click-click-click,' like hundreds of drum sticks being tapped on something." After doing his presentation, Kirke said he would take questions from the audience. "All the lights went up, and seated in front of the stage were about 12 or 15 wheelchairs," he says. "And in the wheelchairs were lots of kids--spastic kids, or kids with MS (multiple sclerosis), or thalidomide--and they were all holding drumsticks. And the leader started up one of the Christmas carols, and the whole club joined in, and I'm actually letting a tear fall because it was the most amazing sight to see these kids."

Kirke later found out that the children used drumsticks as part of their physical therapy, and that it eased their joints and tendons.

-- Bruce Simon and Darren Davis, New York

For more news at LAUNCH, click here.

Got news tips, comments, or questions? Send them to launchnews@yahoo.com.