Charley Drayton is one of the most popular and richest Session Musician who was born on May 9, 1965 in New York, United States. Drayton was the drummer on four tracks from The B-52’s album from 1989, Cosmic Thing, including the singles “Channel Z” and “Love Shack”. The other track, however, Zack Alford, who later toured with The B-52 playing drums, was featured in the video for both songs.
Drayton played with Australian rock band Divinyls from 1991–2008. He married Divinyls frontwoman Chrissy Amphlett on July 27, 1999. Amphlett died on April 21, 2013, after a long battle with breast cancer.
In 2008 and 2009 he recorded and toured with Paul Simon. In 2010 he toured with Simon & Garfunkel. Paul Simon said “Charley’s the heart of the band and I’m very grateful that I have him. He comes in prepared, real serious and he’s a delight. He’s an all around great musician and a fine, fine drummer.”
Drayton played bass guitar along with Neil Young on the September 30th 1989 Saturday Night Live performance of “Rockin’ in the Free World”
As of 1985, Drayton played percussion on Rolling Stones’ album Dirty Work that resulted in Keith Richards to ask him to join as a founding member of his own project X-pensive Winos beginning in the year 1987. In his role as bass player, Drayton performed and recorded alongside Richards as well as the Winos from December 1992 onwards, and also played for their records Talk Is Cheap and Main Offender and also on Live album as well as the live video in the Hollywood Palladium, December 15 1988. Richards says that Drayton as being one of his favorite drummers.
He played bass guitar on The Cult’s 1991 album Ceremony.
