Spencer Dryden

Spencer Charles Dryden (April 7, 1938 – January 11, 2005) was an American musician best known as the drummer for Jefferson Airplane and New Riders of the Purple Sage. He also played with Dinosaurs, and the Ashes (later known as the Peanut Butter Conspiracy). He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996 as a member of Jefferson Airplane.

Spencer Charles Dryden was born in 1938 in New York City to Alice Chapple and George Dryden Wheeler Jr. Alice Chapple was a ballet dancer with Anna Pavlova's dance company, and a member of the Radio City Ballet Company; Wheeler Dryden was an English-born actor who was also a half-brother of Charlie Chaplin. After becoming an American citizen in 1936 he later worked as a director. When Spencer Dryden was growing up, he carefully concealed his relationship with his world-famous half-uncle, not wanting to be judged on his name.

When Dryden was an infant, the family moved to Los Angeles where his father went to work as an assistant director for Chaplin. His parents divorced in 1943. His mother later remarried, so Spencer would later have either two half- or 2 step-sisters: Ginny and Marilyn. He attended Glendale High School (Glendale, California), and in 1955 he graduated from the Army and Navy Academy in Carlsbad, California.

In interviews, Dryden fondly recalled playing at his famous uncle's Hollywood studio as a child when visiting his father. Dryden's father was a jazz fan, and exposed him to the jazz scene by taking him to Los Angeles jazz clubs during the 1950s. These inspired Dryden's musical ambitions.

During that time, Dryden became friends with Lloyd Miller, also born in 1938, who lived down the street on Royal Boulevard in the Rossmoyne neighborhood of Glendale, California. Because they both liked jazz, Miller suggested that the two start a band, and encouraged Dryden to play drums. Since Dryden didn't have a drum set, Miller fashioned an instrument by thumb-tacking an old inner tube over a wooden barrel with no ends. Miller would pump his player piano, play cornet or clarinet and Dryden would bang out beats on the drum.

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.