Nick DeVirgilio
Spock's Beard, Tears

You only need to listen to one or two tracks to conclude that Spock's Beard is not your everyday, garden-variety progressive rock band. Then again, Nick DeVirgilio is not your everyday drummer. His ever-growing talent and skills have earned him a number of prominent gigs including Genesis, Peter Gabriel, Sheryl Crow, Kevin Gilbert, Eric Burdon, and this year, a second nationwide tour with the reunited Tears For Fears.

"I started playing drums when I was three and I did pretty much nothing but play music from that point on, except for some baseball and golf in between there. My brother taught me how to play guitar when I was seven years old, and I kind of just copied records from that point on as I had been doing with my drums," says Nick of his early years. "I wanted to be Donny Osmond. My parents took me to Las Vegas to see the Osmonds at the Tropicana when I was four (laughs). I bought my first Kiss records when I was six or seven then my brother turn me on to Zeppelin and Genesis and that changed everything."

It certainly did. Nick, a self-taught musician who started drumming at age three attended the Dick Grove School of Music at age 17. Over the years, he has also fortified his style and ability by training with the likes Dave Garabaldi, Chad Wakerman, Richard Wilson, Chuck Silverman and Roy Burns.

Nick’s band, the critically acclaimed Spock's Beard, formed in 1991 when he played in a blues jam in L.A. and met band mates Neal and Alan Morse. "We happened to sit in with the band together. Played some blues thing. After that we got to talking and hooked up from there really. I went to Neal's place and got a tape of some songs he had been working on which happened to be the whole The Light record. He and Al had been talking about starting a band. They asked me and off we went."

Seven studio albums later, Spock's Beard is still regarded as one of the most influential and innovative progressive rock bands in the world.

Nick is now set to rejoin Tears For Fears as it heads out on the road in support of it's latest release Everybody Loves a Happy Ending. Nick tells of how he got the TFF gig in 1996. "I was playing in a band called Kaviar with Kevin Gilbert and Brian Macloed. Brian had played on the Raoul album and did the (Tears For Fears) tour promoting Elemental. Kaviar was getting up and running pretty well and when the time came up for the Raoul tour to start, Brian decided he didn't want to tour, but really push Kaviar. So he recommended me to Roland (Orzabal). How amazing is that! Needless to say I was very, very grateful to him for doing that. That was my first big gig!"

If we know Nick, it won't be the last, either.