"I had 25 feet to walk over to my kit and figure it out… 20… 15… 10… 5...": Kenny Aronoff recalls his terrifying Jack and Diane drum fill experience

It's a fill that sounds entirely sure of itself, but the iconic drum barrage that session ace Kenny Aronoff unleashed at the heart of John 'Cougar' Mellencamp's Jack and Diane was a last-minute, under-the-gun improvisation.

Speaking to somethingelsereviews.com in 2012, the session ace recalled of the sessions for the smash hit's host album, 1982's American Fool, "every day felt like a week.

"It was painful. It was hard. He wanted perfection. He wanted results that he couldn’t come up with.”

"This Jack and Diane song, we didn’t know how to arrange it, to make it into a song," continued Aranoff. "We felt like we had failed.

"Then somebody walks in with a Linn drum machine. Hall and Oates and Phil Collins both had hits out at that time with the same sound."

"My immediate thought was, 'I hope we aren’t using a drum machine on our songs'," he admitted to Modern Drummer in 2017. "I hated the idea of a drum machine replacing real drums. It wasn’t that common in 1981, but John didn’t care. All he was interested at this point was making his song a hit single."

Back to somethingelsereviews; "So I get the manual out, in all frustration, and I programmed my drum beat.

"We did that and it worked pretty well, but then you get to the part where you need something more. That something more, they decided, was a drum solo.

"So I hear: ‘Aronoff, get your ass in here. We need a drum solo.’ I’m, like, are you kidding me? I grew up listening to Buddy Rich. That’s who I thought of when I thought of drum solos.

"I was fighting for my job, because I saw two people get fired on that record. And now, I had to come up with something that was musical.

"I remember at one point, walking back to my drums, going: ‘Dude, you’ve got 25 beats to save your job. … now you’ve got 15 … now you’ve got 10 …’

Earlier in the sessions, things had already been going ominously south. Aronoff told Modern Drummer. "John didn’t like anything I did," he recalled. "I went into the control room to discuss what I was playing. Everyone was trying to make suggestions to me about what to play, and it actually was more confusing than helpful.

"As I walked back to my kit I realized that if I didn’t come up with a part, John would bring someone else into the studio to play the drums. There was no way I wanted that to happen."

Luckily for fans of Aronoff's subsequent stellar work, potentially career-saving inspiration struck just in time: "I sat at my drums, and - bam! - the idea of playing the same rhythmic pattern I had been playing, but starting it one 8th note later, popped into my head.

"So instead of starting on beat 1, I started on the “&” of 1. Then, instead of going down the toms like everyone else, I went up the toms.

"Just as I finished that part, John liked what I played and he screamed into my headphones, 'Hit a crash cymbal!', which I immediately did, and then I went down the drums emulating a classic Phil Collins fill.

"When I ran out of toms I decided to do a quarter-note triplet on snare, rack tom, and floor tom, and my drum solo or musical idea was complete."

Happily, concludes Aronoff, "John loved it!"

"That song basically launched my career. It was my big break. That album won two Grammys and sold millions of records."

But, speaking to us here on MusicRadar back in 2010, Aronoff said, "John loved it, but he never really gave me a compliment. 

"He said, 'OK, we'll give you a shot to play on the tour.' That made me kind of mad, but hey, I knew I did it. And when I heard Jack And Diane on the radio and I saw audiences going crazy and air-drumming to the part, I knew I did my job."

"I'm not saying that out of ego, but when you see that kind of response from the crowd, and when you see Jack And Diane and Hurts So Good go to number one on the charts… like I said, I knew I nailed it. Those drum parts jump out at you. When I heard those songs on the radio sandwiched between Eye Of The Tiger and Ebony And Ivory, it was… it was incredible.

"I never got that acceptance from John, but I got it from everybody else. It was hard, though. He's one tough mother. But ever since I was a kid, I wanted to be in The Beatles - you know, a cool rock band. I knew I had to fight tooth-and-nail to stay in John's band. Jack And Diane was my make-or-break moment, and I wasn't going to fail."

The rest, as they almost say, is drumming history - load up any YouTube version of the song and the fill is always a most replayed peak, at around 2:20. Aronoff, aside from playing in Mellencamp's killer band for nearly two decades, was subsequently named Modern Drummer's top pop/rock drummer and top studio drummer for a record five consecutive years.

As well as being a superb clinician and renowned speaker, he has also gone on to enjoy a huge career recording and performing with artists like - deep breath - Smashing Pumpkins, The Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Tom Petty, Sting, Billy Gibbons, Lady Gaga, Bruno Mars, Bob Seger, Bob Dylan, John Fogerty, Jon Bon Jovi, Elton John, Rod Stewart, Eric Clapton, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash... well, you get idea.

Follow Kenny Aronoff on instagram.

Bonus: Learn the Jack and Diane fill