History
Modern Drummer magazine was conceived in the basement of Ron and Isabel Spagnardi’s home in Nutley, New Jersey, funded only with the family’s personal savings. The magazine’s initial staff consisted of Leo Spagnardi (Ron’s father, who taught him how to play the drums), and Ron and Isabel’s daughter, Lori. Although they had no real publication experience or financial backing, the Spagnardis placed ads in local newspapers, in Downbeat, and in Drum World. "What we didn’t consider when we put the ads in the papers," recalled Isabel in The Drummer, was that we were innocently breaking the law by advertising a product that didn’t even exist yet!"
The ads worked, however, and subscriptions began coming in as the first issue was still being laid out on the Spagnardis’ ping-pong table. Ron contributed most of the magazine’s content, writing the majority of the articles on an old typewriter under various pen names.
Within two years, the Spagnardis’ basement could no longer provide the necessary space and so moved to its first proper office in Clifton, New Jersey. By 1984, the magazine once again outgrew its headquarters and moved to a larger facility in Cedar Grove, New Jersey. Ten years later, it moved to an even larger facility in the same town. Modern Drummer’s offices remain at 12 Old Bridge Road in Cedar Grove today.
Ron Spagnardi died on September 22, 2003. In an interview, Ron explained “I think the timing was right, and it filled a need. “There were drummers who wanted something of their own, and no one was doing it. There were a couple of publications at the time, but they were created in-house by drum companies specifically to advertise their own products and endorsers. We needed something that was going to talk about products across the board, something that would talk to all drummers.”
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—Francis Bacon (1561–1626)
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)