Once upon a time [[Andie Rathbone]] was a car dealer, flogging Audis for top dollar. When he gave it up to try his luck in music, everyone said he was mad. But then he fell in with a band called [[Mansun]]...

Liverpool [[Parr Street Studios|Parr Street studios]]. Mansun drummer Andie Rathbone glances up from his kit, ruefully flexing a muscle or two.

"I tore a tendon in my arm," he says. "Playing cross-handed .. so I have my hi-hat on the right. But I find it better 'cos it's more open. don't usually play lots of sixteens on the hi-hat anyway. It doesn't really suit this music."

Returning to his work-out, Andie gets going with his double bass drums, simultaneously cooking up some manic snare work, and liberally dishing out grief on the cymbals. His drums are tuned pretty high, but the overall sound is full and expressive. Of his two snares, he mainly sticks with the small one, but the larger, when resorted to, is bastard loud. The Mansun man sets up a basic rock groove straight off his band's first LP, but subverts it with double-whammy kick drum and inventive lashings-out on the metals. As he sound is achieved by keeping the drums quite explains later, the bass slack and using heavy beaters. He admits "I can never match the sound of the actual bass drums."

<blockquote>"When you're outside the music industry looking in, you just see the gloss of it, the Top Of The Pops... You can't really start to imagine the work that goes on behind the scenes to do the album, to do the tour ... "</blockquote>

"Premier I've always played Premier. The first kit I had was' an old Premier Olympic Jazz Combo setup with bongos. I actually got rid of it. When I was twelve I saved up and got a Pearl Export! Thinking back, that kit was brilliant. All die-cast rings on it, the bearing edges were perfect..."

"Premier I've always played Premier. The first kit I had was' an old [[Premier Olympic Jazz]] Combo setup with bongos. I actually got rid of it. When I was twelve I saved up and got a [[Pearl Export]]! Thinking back, that kit was brilliant. All die-cast rings on it, the bearing edges were perfect..."

After his self-confessed "Pearl Export stage", Andie became interested in the 'Yamaha sound' of certain top studio players. He eventually went back to Premier, though, and started playing an old Resonator kit. When Premier offered him a deal, he made out like the proverbial bandit.

After his self-confessed "Pearl Export stage", Andie became interested in the 'Yamaha sound' of certain top studio players. He eventually went back to Premier, though, and started playing an old [[Resonator]] kit. When Premier offered him a deal, he made out like the proverbial bandit.

The friendly Premier person was purportedly taken aback, but nevertheless made the necessary arrangements. When Mansun flew to Glasgow to play at T In The Park, Andies Signia kit was in storage in London, so he hired a Genista for the occasion.

At school, Andie distinguished himself by playing drums in the school band and the Christmas panto. His first 'real' gig came when he was about fourteen, playing covers of The Jam and The Small Faces in a schoolboy mod band.

"I had to play all these representations of different genres of music," he recalls. "Which I found really hard, because my style is a mix of

everything and I've never really thought about it. I've never listened to drummers to pinch stuff off them; I've always listened to vibes and grooves and hooks."

Andie started playing at four. At eight, he thought he'd invented triplets, and only later found that someone else had got there first. Later, he built a drum kit in metalwork class, even soldering his own hi-hat pedal. As a player, he was quickly overtaking his peers, so the music teacher, Mr Parfitt, singled him out and got him playing in •.