The life of a touring musician can be grueling. Bands with resources often fly, which helps take some of the sting out of so much travel. Touring by bus is another matter. It can be a rolling party, sure, but it can also mean long days on repeat for months at a time. For his final tour with jazz group Spyro Gyra, the band he’d devoted 13 years to, drummer Joel Rosenblatt went another direction. He drove his Porsche.
Rosenblatt got the car thing from his dad, who was mechanically inclined and liked the weird ones. “Today, that’s way cool—but back then, I just wanted to fit in. I wanted to be dropped off at school in a Chevy or a Ford, but my dad was rocking a Citroën DS19, then a DS21. There was a Peugeot 404 and even a Borgward Isabella.” Luckily, there were a couple of 356s in there, too, so young Joel could hold his head up at the drop-off point.
There was always music in his home, thanks to his pianist mother. Rosenblatt started on the trumpet in the third grade, but when he was 13, his dad took him to a Buddy Rich concert, all bets were off. He left the concert not talking about the amazing trumpet players and their stellar solos, but the wild man on the drums.
“I was hooked,” Rosenblatt says. “I wanted to be a drummer. I just needed a kit of my own.”
At that time, his pride and joy was a 2 ½-hp Briggs & Stratton go kart. His parents were sure he was going to kill himself with it and were looking for reasons to curb what they considered Joel’s karting suicide missions (“I was building jumps for it!”). So they made him an offer: Ditch the kart and get the crash, bang, boom. A need for speed or a need for rhythm? The paradiddles won out.
“The drums were something fun to do. Was I serious about it? Not yet. However, my high school music teacher recognized a spark of talent in me and nurtured it. I spent two and a half years at the University of Bridgeport as a Jazz Studies major, but the real world was calling.”
Any musician will tell you that if you want to be a player, a diploma is useless. “You can have all the paper in the world, but if you don’t have great pocket, you won’t get the gig regardless.”
So Joel played out. He wanted to focus on jazz, but he also had to eat… He started with a wedding band and was making good money in the late ’70s. He met people, he networked, and he got his first break, touring and playing the blues with Matt “Guitar” Murphy. More connections and recommendations took him to Pure Prairie League. With them, he learned to have fun with his playing. “I’d always been working hard and practicing hard, but the Leaguers were more about let’s just have a good time! Which was a good lesson to learn.”
Rosenblatt was living and performing in New York and eventually got into a more Latin/jazz groove, playing with Michel Camilo, Paquito D’Rivera, and Eliane Elias, before entering a long spell with the jazz fusion band Spyro Gyra.
Throughout his time as a professional drummer, Rosenblatt had had a motley collection of cars. “My first was a ’71 Chevy Nova that I bought for $100. I drove it for three years, crashed it, and sold it for $400. I never changed the oil in that one, only filters. It leaked so much, I just kept adding lubricant.” There was a ’73 Plymouth Fury, a ’71 Datsun 510 wagon, an ’84 Toyota pickup, a ’97 4Runner. By the end of 2000, however, it was time for something with soul, with style, with groove. Something that spoke to his artistic sensibilities.
“I picked up a 1982 Porsche 911 SC Targa with 129,000 miles through a five-year-old company called eBay!” Rosenblatt says. The car was in Tampa, so he asked a friend from Florida to make sure the car really existed. “He didn’t do a PPI—he just took the car for a drive. There was some grinding in first gear, and it was sitting on four mismatched tires, but it ran strong.” Rosenblatt grabbed a one-way ticket to the Sunshine State and drove that Targa home.
As the budget allowed, he did all those things you’re not supposed to do to a vintage Porsche: modifications.
“I got some 9-inch Fuchs from a Turbo and put them on the rears. I took the 7s that were there and put them up front. I lowered it and gave it some SSI headers and a B&B exhaust to give it that funky sound. I did Turbo tie rods and valve covers, a Carrera oil cooler, a short shift, a Momo wheel, a strut brace, backdated gauges, a Carrera valance, and H4s to illuminate the oncoming world.”
By the end of 2003, Rosenblatt had split with a longtime girlfriend, and he had been with Spyro Gyra for 13 years, putting out a record a year in the process. It was time to move on. The band was going to make a new album, this time without him, but he would honor the live gigs he was scheduled to play with them. Without the studio duties, Rosenblatt had more free time, so while his old bandmates flew to shows, he decided to put the 911 to work. Now he can’t remember if it was his idea or if a friend joked that he should drive to the gigs. But that’s exactly what he did.
To accompany him on the road, he purchased an early Magellan Roadmate GPS, along with a 60GB iPod, both for ridiculous dollars. Added to a few Rand McNally atlases to help with directions, a 12V fridge, some cymbals, sticks, tools, camping gear, clothes, and a radar detector, every square inch of the Targa was put to good use. It didn’t matter that Rosenblatt couldn’t see out the rearview mirror; he was moving forward.
He left his home in Yonkers, New York, on January 28, 2004—a time of year when most Porsches are hibernating. “First, I had to shovel a foot of snow out of the driveway. But I made it to Washington, D.C., where the distributor bearing went. I hung out for two days in D.C. while I had a used piece FedExed to me.”
While waiting for the part, however, doubt crept in and Rosenblatt started thinking. Should he cut his losses? Flatbed the 911 back to New York and grab his 4Runner instead? It would make the trip, no doubt. But it would also turn the odyssey into a commute.
“Hell no! This was a Porsche tour.”
He replaced the distributor, the car ran beautifully, and he was southbound in no time. “After that hiccup in D.C., I decided to just listen to the car and watch the gauges, rather than getting lost in my music. It became a Zen-like existence, just listening to the engine and thinking about life, the next step…
But there was also the issue of dead batteries. “I was running a lot of gear off the 911. What I didn’t know at the time—with an SC, you need to bring the engine up to 2500 rpm to activate the alternator. So I added a voltmeter to make sure the SC was charging.”
On a stop in Charleston, South Carolina, to visit his ex, a doctor, Rosenblatt scored some MacGyver-type accessories, including one crucial item: a premium plastic urinal! It was not meant to keep Joel from having to make pit stops, however; it kept water from dripping on a stereo speaker from the leaky Targa top. One must have priorities.
“From Miami, I headed west. I knew at the start of the trip that the tires were marginal. I was planning to give the Targa new sneakers on the West Coast, but after hydroplaning across Texas, I had to stop. FedEx delivered the new tires to the Lone Star State, and it was Westward Ho!”
In Phoenix, smoke started pouring out of the A/C vents. Another unknown SC flaw had raised its ugly little head. “The windshield wiper mechanism had rubbed against some wires and created a short.” Rosenblatt pulled a couple of dash gauges, applied some more MacGyver-style repairs, and all was copacetic.
With maps and the GPS, Rosenblatt never ran on the interstates. He and the Targa followed lonely back roads all across the country, most of the time at what you might call enthusiastic speeds. Along the way, he learned the SC could do 137 mph with the top off.
“I had shows in Seattle, so I headed north from San Francisco through Oregon and on to the land of Starbucks. After Spyro’s residency in Seattle, it was south on PCH all the way back to LA.”
And then it was time to head home. Spyro Gyra’s tour was over and his obligations to the band were fulfilled. To round out the calendar, Rosenblatt put on in a few drum clinics in Dallas, Little Rock, and Richmond. There was even a quick side trip to Mexico.
Amid all that … enthusiastic driving, the heat caught Rosenblatt and the Targa only once. “On the return trip, driving through Atlanta, I was cruising with traffic and got pulled for doing 83 in a 65, for daring to be from out of state and driving a Porsche. Luckily, the cop took Visa!”
Rosenblatt found a great deal of joy touring in his Porsche. Together they covered 15,000 miles in seven weeks, with three oil changes, one new set of tires, a used distributor, multiple MacGyver fixes, and one speeding ticket. But he doesn’t describe it as a joy ride. Rather, it was more of a journey of enlightenment. He was leaving a solid gig, but only because he felt he was stagnating and needed to make an artistic change. At the same time, he wondered if he’d find good work again.
“I had many miles to go to get my head straight,” he says. “The 911 was like a faithful dog, with me for every mile. We bonded. Taking that trip, in that sports car, was a healing, exciting, and rewarding experience.”
I am a new convert to the 911. It is very odd and quirky but so good in many ways.
The one I am finding so far is the engine gets better with miles. Cars like this are just broke in at 150K if they were serviced right with oil changes and valve adjustments.
They are generally not hard to work on. Like in the story to pull the gauges you just pull them out.
I just rebuilt a Axle and changed the boots. Dirty to do but easy accept for the torque wrench that will do 339 FT Lbs.
He did the right things. Only I would avoid the snow and Salt. They will rust and rust badly.
Mods are no longer taboo Since Magnus Walker and Singer have taken the Outlaw 911 route. I have not modded but I see a lowering to Euro spec and 17″ Fuchs in my future.
Neil Peart from Rush liked to ride his motorcycle along the way during tours. I don’t blame someone for wanting to get away in a car or motorcycle when living the on tour life.
The great Keith Emerson too.
When his bike broke down on the way to a show, he got picked up by some folks going to that same show.
Who was the lucky one (man)?
