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  April 29, 2009

  The Beat Man

  Excerpt from MakingMusicMag.com

  by Jackie Saunders
  
  Off the set, Heroes actor Greg Grunberg sheds his telekinetic superpowers and picks up drumsticks for charity.
  
  Not many people can say portraying a superhero is their full-time job. Grunberg, an actor on the critically acclaimed NBC series Heroes, spends his days playing likable cop Matt Parkman, an average Joe who wakes up one day to find he has the ability to read minds.
  
  Even though Matt Parkman is just a character on a TV show, Grunberg, 42, is something of a hero in real life. Several years ago, Grunberg, a drummer in his spare time, put together a charitable rock group made up of primetime actors called Band From TV. The band donates all its proceeds to worthy causes.
  
  Grunberg chose to donate his portion of the money to the Epilepsy Foundation, a condition that his 11-year-old son, Jake, suffers from. “It’s the most incredibly helpless and out of control feeling when your child is having a seizure. You have to just wait it out,” says Grunberg. “This is something I can do to have control. I can get behind the drums and I can raise $2 million in two and a half years for not just epilepsy, but other charities as well.”

  He’s Got the Beat
  
  Music was a huge part of Grunberg’s childhood. Although his parents weren’t big music nuts, his dad played the trumpet as a hobby. Growing up in Los Angeles, right off of the San Diego Freeway, Grunberg’s first concert was the Blues Brothers opening for Steve Martin in the Universal Amphitheater in the late ’70s. Blues, in particular, was a style that heavily influenced Grunberg’s music taste. He also enjoyed listening to the popular rock groups of the time.
  
  "I was one of those kids who would go to my room, turn off the lights, and listen to full albums like Pink Floyd’s The Wall and Yes’s Fragile,” says Grunberg.
  
  Although he never took a music lesson, Grunberg started drumming on his own at age 12. He was given a castoff drum kit by his dad’s friend. “I’ve always been tapping and moving to the beat in my head—everybody has internal theme music,” says Grunberg. “I would tap anything I could get my hands on. I think my mom always thought it was a nervous tic since there is no caffeine available when you are 12.”
  
  Despite never taking a drumming lesson, Grunberg had some heavy hitters as musical influences. Stan Lynch of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Max Weinberg of the E Street Band, Neil Peart of Rush, and Stewart Copeland of The Police, were some of the percussionists Grunberg admired.
  
  "I’m not an accomplished musician but I can keep a solid back beat,” says Grunberg. “Some people are so technical that they don’t have that much soul to their music or they aren’t improvisational—I’m all improv, I just try to make it up as I go along.”
  
  There was never a question as to what career path Grunberg wanted to pursue. “Acting has always been a passion of mine,” he says. Grunberg believes his big break in acting was his fortuitous meeting with Emmy and Golden Globe award winning producer, writer, and director J.J. Abrams in a sandbox when they were three years old. Abrams cast Grunberg in his first home movie filmed on Super 8 film, when he was only six. The two collaborated on later projects like Felicity and Alias, where Grunberg started his career as a TV actor.
  
  During high school, Grunberg kept experimenting on the drums and would jam with friends who played other instruments. While majoring in business at San Diego State University and UCLA he helped pay for college by selling sample leotards from his father’s clothing business door to door at sorority houses.
  
  He also played a drummer in a student film. “It was a USC Film School project and it was a story about a band,” Grunberg says. “I went through the audition process and none of the actors could play the drums so it was kind of like Greg Brady getting the part of Johnny Bravo—I fit the suit.”
  
  Surprisingly, along with his music-related aspirations, Grunberg says he is working on getting over performance anxiety. “I want to get in a comfort zone like I feel with acting,” says Grunberg. “I’m always looking for a challenge to keep me on my toes and I get that level of excitement from playing live music. There is nothing like being in a band and playing together in front of a crowd. If someone drops out, you’ve got to keep going and that’s the exciting/scary part. But, when it all works out you just have fun. It’s infectious and you don’t have to be perfect.”

  Click here for the full article.

  Source: Making Music magazine

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