In the early 1970's in Vancouver there existed a percussion specialty store called Drum Village, a forerunner of Ray Ayotte's Drums Only! operation. The partners in Drum Village were Jim Blackley and Michael Clapham, both well known teachers and drummers on the Vancouver scene ( Clapham actually played a lunchtime gig at my high school with his band Headstrong in about 1973 - adventurous instrumental stuff, lots of odd time signatures and extended improvisational sections... ).

One afternoon in mid-1973, as legend has it, Michael Clapham was tuning up/thrashing on a Fibes snare drum of some sort, evidently a Fibreglass model. At the time of all this percussing a man wandered into Drum Village, partly out of curiosity at the sounds he was hearing, partly to escape the tedium of his wife's beauty supply store, located directly next door. This man was John Soprovich. Enquiring about the Fibes snare drum, and after close scrutiny of same, Soprovich offered up what he considered to be a far superior method of fabricating a Fiberglass shell. A plastics engineer who'd once done a lot of consulting in the aerospace industry for organizations like N.A.S.A., he seemed eminently qualified to opine... In my files I still have the original sketches drawn up by Soprovich and Clapham. They're on Broadway Beauty Supplies stationery.

A few months later - the history is vague - a partner had been found in Toronto, funds had been raised, basic tooling acquired/built and some inventory assembled. A few prototype kits had been built and loaned out to visiting dignitaries. Bob Moses apparently played one of the first ever Milestone kits to favourable reviews. Elvin Jones was quoted as saying of one of the prototype Milestone snares, "this is a Mother drum... ". Word had begun to spread; Jerry Mercer, then with April Wine, bought a huge set, as did Gary McCracken of Max Webster; Canadian jazz veteran Terry Clark acquired a set. Carl Palmer tried to have a set of Milestone drums built with single-headed tom toms ( Clapham told me he refused to build single-headed tom toms, Carl Palmer or not... ); Billy Cobham bought an enormous red set which had its debut at the Commodore Ballroom the night of the only Vancouver appearance of the Billy Cobham/George Duke Band - a staggering performance I was lucky enough to witness; producer extraordinaire Bob Ezrin was told he had to buy a set by a Toronto retailer after Ezrin sat on a bass drum which had had its front head removed ( these shells do not have the rigidity, without hoops, to support a human adult... though more about this later on... ) - this kit promptly became the drum set of choice for all of Ezrin's production projects; Barry Frost, once known as Frosty, he of the Lee Michaels Band fame, purchased his own set...

In late 1974 I ordered my first set from Michael Clapham, then still partnered in Drum Village. I took delivery of the kit in June of 1975, a month after I started full time professional work as a drummer ( by which time Drum Village had been absorbed by Drums Only! and Clapham was running Milestone on a full-time basis ). The Milestone kit was the first - and the last - serious kit I ever purchased. But I stray...

So, the reputation of Milestone drums rapidly grew. They became widely regarded as something quite special, preferred by many players, studios, engineers and producers for their unparalleled acoustic properties. They also became well known as being almost indestructible under road conditions.

But the management style used by Michael Clapham began to have a detrimental effect on players and retailers alike... As an example of Michael's outlook towards attracting prominent players, Neil Peart once called the Milestone factory from the Pacific Coliseum, just across town. He'd heard good things about the drums from his friends Mercer and McCracken. Would Michael like to bring a couple of snare drums along to Rush's sound check and chat about the possibilities. The response? "My son has a soccer game - I can't make it..." Shortly thereafter Neil signed with Tama, as did Billy Cobham... the rest is no small part of drum set developmental history.

Now, as someone who toured incessantly with a Milestone kit from 1975 to 1983, I can attest to the fact that much of the hardware used on the drums was of poor quality and/or design; weak castings, bad concepts, flawed workmanship, tom holders which rarely stayed put, die-cast hoops which were incapable of accepting industry standard heads ( Remo was required to make special heads 1/8" undersized just for Milestone... they were most relieved when I told them, in April 1985, that they'd no longer have to do so... ). These inconveniences were no small part of the reason why so many otherwise hugely supportive players eventually made alternate equipment arrangements. Clapham simply refused to see that his hardware was a complete disaster; he told me, essentially, that what mattered was the sound of the drums - he was right, to a point - and he figured he made the best sounding drums in the world... he just couldn't imagine that people wouldn't flock to his door...

The net result of this outlook was that, by spring of 1984, Milestone was practically out of business; there was still a factory, even an employee ( Michael never did learn how to build shells and, as a result, had to retain Perry Baycroft to supply that craft ) but very little business. Having come into existence when the North American drum industry was in serious decline, and when neither Tama nor Pearl existed as such, Milestone Percussion had seemingly blown an opportunity to become a strong mid-sized contender. By 1984 it would have taken a far more Herculean effort to claim such status.

At the same time, having grown severely disgusted with the proposition of playing drums for a living, I was married and looking for something new. It was suggested that I look at the Milestone operation. Over the course of the next year I talked, then negotiated, with Clapham, did the research, arranged some financing and, on April 1, 1985 ( yes, that's right, April Fool's Day... ) Milestone Percussion officially became Tempus Instruments Inc. The decision to change the name stemmed from the fact that, although the essential drum was still very well respected for its sonic properties, memories of the problematic hardware plus the legacy of Michael Clapham's managerial approach was something of a deterrent when it came to opening up new retail and distribution avenues. Along with the name change came a revamping of the hardware, gelcoat finishes, production methods, pricing structure, promotional/advertising philosophy, public relations... you get the idea...

And, to my considerable relief, it worked moderately well. Within a matter of a couple of months business was, relatively speaking, thriving and, what was even more significant, the general consensus was that drummers and retailers alike were very happy to have these instruments available to them. I was able to keep Perry Baycroft, Milestone's former production specialist, busy both building drums and teaching me the entire process as well.

Of course, by 1985, all drum manufacturers were up against the Pearl Export line. The market for high-end professional sets was far smaller than it once had been, and everyone seemed to think that the $499.00 drum set was the thing to own. As an experiment I introduced the Tempus 2 series; this comprised the same Fibreglass shell as was featured in the high-end Tempus kits, but outfitted with a low-end hardware package.

I managed to get it priced competitively, though not on par with the Export product, and we eventually moved about 150 kits ( a great percentage of them went into the rental program at Long & McQuade; they rented them out for about five years then sold them off for what they paid me for them in the first place... and those kits are still floating around out there, seemingly indestructible ) but, with hindsight, what makes someone buy Pearl Export is not just price, it's the association through advertising with the famous endorsers who play the high end gear made by the same company.

Incidentally, many years after the fact, I spotted the name "Tempus 2" emblazoned across the flush mechanism of a local urinal... karma...?

Of course, Tempus Instruments didn't have the budget to either attract or accommodate those famous endorsers. We did, on occasion, get requests from up-and-comers with, let's say, unusual requirements. One of the L.A. Guitar Center stores called in late December of 1985; a man named Rod Gibson, who then played in a band called Bible Black, apparently needed a kit which the other guys could stand on (remember Ezrin's acquisition? Keep those front heads on!) and which they could spray with water from a fire hose during performances. So, a pair of 28x24" bass drums and a few of the biggest toms we could supply were shipped South. Although I never did meet Rod, nor actually correspond with him until the end of 2002, seventeen years after we built the kit, evidently he was most pleased with the results, as was the band. And he still has the kit...

The effort to attract players of note was continual. And I did manage to connect with several drummers who, while perhaps not household names, became such determined supporters that they're still with me today - to them I am most grateful, especially as each and every one of them could have had any number of other endorsements. I did give away ( yes, folks, I fell into that freebie thing quite briefly... ) perhaps half a dozen snare drums in the first couple of years. And there was a lot of gear loaned out to players who came through town on concert and clinic tours; my photograph albums are well stuffed with evidence of brief connections with the likes of Victor Lewis, Harvey Mason, Sonny Emory and so many more besides. Great fun for a former fan and an incorrigible record/CD buyer!

But Tempus drums remained, for all the expenditure of effort, a cult commodity, very well spoken of in some circles, disregarded completely in others. By 1989 I had distribution throughout North America, all over Europe, down in Australia, and interest from Japan and the U.K., and prospects seemed to be very good but, always, it was a fight for survival. A major hurdle in the battle for respect seemed to be, then as now, the very presence of the word "Fibreglass"; Milestone even went so far as to try and hide the fact that the Fibreglass drums were made out of Fibreglass. Clapham invented terms like "Therabond" and promoted what he called the "P.R.O.S. Formula Shell", all in an effort to convince people that it wasn't really the "F" word at all... ( and after opening up shop as Tempus Instruments I regularly got calls from irate drummers demanding to know why I no longer used Therabond in my drums... a substance which had never actually existed... ). I've never understood the tendency to dismiss an idea just because it doesn't fit preconceived notions but, sadly, without titanic resources there was no way I was ever going to sway market opinions on the matter. Nonetheless, I believed in what I was doing; still do, absolutely.

In the end it was, among other factors, the need for a big name endorser which helped to sink the ship. By 1991 the economy in North America was in serious recession; I'd learned an immense amount about business, made a lot of mistakes, too; I lost, over a period of about three months, nearly $40,000.00 in receivables because long-standing customers suddenly went under or couldn't pay bills; private label manufacturing contracts were canceled for a variety of reasons; Tempus was overextended and severely undercapitalized ( a common situation among small businesses... ); and a lot of time, energy, faith and resources had been misguidedly invested in a musician who lived up to neither his promises nor my expectations. By April 1992 I'd simply had enough and, before being forced out, I closed up shop, put the equipment in storage, and got on with the business of stabilizing my world.

By 1995 I'd made a serious change in direction career-wise; I was, as I still do today, running a group home for mentally handicapped adults ( well, perhaps the differences are not all that great in some ways; I had, after all, been in traveling rock bands for many years... ), and was rebuilding my life quite nicely. And so it might have stayed, quite comfortably, had Mr. John Yarling not called me up... John, as you may know, is a very fine drummer and teacher in South Florida. He was the very last customer I ever built a set of drums for out of the original Tempus factory in Richmond, just south of Vancouver. A truly beautiful Royal Purple kit, it had been stolen, along with all his hardware, cymbals, sticks, van, the lot, from in front of his home in Florida, and he was on the other end of the phone with an insurance company cheque; he needed a drum set and was in no way going to settle for anybody else's drums.

OK, fine... be that way... I agreed to set up - quite temporarily - a small workshop. I'd use the profits from John's kit to pay the rent for as long as the funds lasted. Once the profits ran out, so went the theory, I'd put it all away again unless there was another order. And then I figured, since I had a space and some inventory, it couldn't hurt to see whether anyone else was still interested...

And here it is, 2003. There's a Tempus Drums website, there are customers all over North America, in the U.K. and, amazingly, Australia, along with interest from a good many other points around the globe. There's still the essential Fibreglass line as well as, more recently, the CarbonFibre series. The prices haven't risen much in ten years. I still keep in touch with a lot of my old pals in the industry and, through the wonders of the Internet, have made a lot of new friends as well. I have my "real" job, I play, teach and write music. My family, my amazingly patient and supportive wife, Shelley, and our four kids, is healthy and intact. And I still love what I do, which is building the kind of drums I fell in love with in 1974, even if I don't do it as often as I'd probably really like to.

So much for career planning...

Paul Mason
Tempus Drums
Vancouver, B.C.