Rocker Jeff Campitelli to offer hometown lessons

By Keri Luiz
Assistant Editor

He’s toured with Joe Satriani for decades. Now renowned rock drummer Jeff Campitelli is offering his talents on a smaller stage — in his hometown, Benicia.

This fall Campitelli will begin teaching the art of banging the skins to individual students through 851 Music Studio in the Arsenal, owned by J Shelby.

And prospective students take note: This 33-year veteran of the professional drumming ranks knows what it’s like to love — and teach — the complicated instrument known as drums.

“I remember being a little kid and my older brother and sister playing the Beatles and the Stones,” he said. “As soon as a band came on TV, it was just like, ‘Get those other guys out of the way, I want to see the drummer!’ I was drawn immediately.”

Campitelli got his first drum set at age 11 from his uncle, a professional musician. But he couldn’t get his hands on it until the family took a trip to Los Angeles. “It seemed like an eternity. I just couldn’t wait!”

As soon as he got the drums, “that was it. I set it up, and quit playing Little League. I just played drums every day after school until my parents said, ‘That’s enough, stop!’

“They were very nice about it. They let me play in the living room, never complained about the noise,” he said.

“I couldn’t get enough. I’m still that way. I love playing every day.”

Campitelli graduated from San Ramon High School in Danville in 1979. He remembers the concert series staged around that time by the electronics teacher at Monte Vista High, in the same city. “He had Journey there, he had Y&T, the Earthquake, Greg Khin. All of these bands were just starting to break,” he said.

The year he graduated, Campitelli started playing with Joe Satriani, whose hits over the years have included “Surfing with the Alien” and “Satch Boogie.”

“(Satriani) had just moved out from New York and was a guitar teacher in Berkeley at the time,” he said. Campitelli was in a band with one of Satriani’s students, and “he came to one of our shows and said, ‘Man, you’re really good! Let’s get together, let’s try something.’ So we literally got together the next day, me and the bass player from that band, and Joe. Formed a power pop trio called The Squares.”

Campitelli himself had a lot of drum teachers over the years, even as his and Satriani’s fame rose. “Everything I didn’t know and I wanted to learn, I would just find a teacher that knew that,” he said. By the time he was 16, he had taken on the overflow of beginning drum students from his teachers.

From age 16 until he was 25, when he and Satriani recorded “Surfing With the Alien,” he taught dozens of students — including such heavy metal luminaries as Lars Ulrich of Metallica and Paul Bostaph of Slayer, as well as absolute rookies.

In fact, he said, teaching someone who doesn’t know anything about drums is “better, because there are no bad habits that I have to break down,” he said.

Now, after a long lapse, the 22-year resident of Benicia is getting back into teaching — largely because of his daughter Gabby, 11, a member of VOENA choir and a rising Benicia Middle School student.

“She started playing in the elementary school band, and I was helping out,” he said. “She wanted to play percussion, which I thought was pretty cool.

“Two of her girlfriends there were also percussionists. So we had a great time. They’d come over to play and I’d teach them something.

“I really enjoyed seeing the transition from them going, ‘How do you do this?’ to when the little light bulb goes off over their head: ‘Ah!’ That spark, I remember that, that’s kind of cool.”

Campitelli is touring this summer and in October in the G3 concert tour, which is organized by Satriani. He said he plans to begin offering lessons after that to students as young as 8 — but “anything younger, I don’t think they are quite ready for it. It’s definitely on an individual basis,” he said.

851 Music Studio is located at 1043 Grant St. For information or to inquire about lessons, call 707-747-0851 or visit 851musicstudio.com.