Her Beat Goes On : Moe Tucker, a Hall of Famer With the Velvet Underground, Is Back Drumming With a New Band, Magnet

As the drummer of the Velvet Underground, Maureen “Moe” Tucker kept the beat at the birth of “alternative” rock and had the first Hall of Fame career of any female rock instrumentalist.

Hardly anyone knew it at the time: The four landmark albums the Velvets made from 1967 to 1970 were commercial flops. But they survived as crucial influences for some of the most vital rock of the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s. David Bowie, Patti Smith, Talking Heads, R.E.M., Violent Femmes and Sonic Youth, among many others, took important cues from the Velvet Underground.

Tucker’s sparse, steady, thudding yet buoyant playing was the foundation for a band whose innovations include the artfully abrasive use of noise and the examination--courtesy of songwriter Lou Reed--of the darker nooks of obsessive human experience. But the Velvets also were at home with dreamy, floating romanticism and confidently chugging songs that embodied rock as a positive, invigorating force.

The band’s influence, and the enduring excellence of its music, finally landed it in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996. It is by far the least successful rock act ever so honored.

While Velvets alumni Reed and John Cale kept up steady, sometimes controversial and frequently brilliant recording careers, Tucker and guitarist Sterling Morrison dropped out of rock ‘n’ roll after the Velvets’ final breakup in 1972 (the band had lingered on, pallidly, after Reed’s departure in 1970, which followed Cale’s exit in 1969).

Tucker returned to full-time music-making in the late ‘80s and is on tour now as a member of Magnet, helping to drum up attention for the band’s solid independent release, “Don’t Be a Penguin.” Tucker will be banging out the beat Saturday as the Velvets-influenced Magnet plays at the Foothill in Signal Hill.

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Tucker has put out five low-profile albums of her own since 1982, in a solo career thus far focused primarily on Europe.

But her most urgent performance, the one that perhaps best defines her life struggle since the Velvets, played out not on record, not in a concert hall, but to an audience of a single bureaucrat in southern Georgia.

It happened during the mid-1980s, when Tucker, divorced and with five children to support, retreated to the tiny burg of Douglas, Ga., figuring she would crash with her retired, ex-New Yorker mother. Desperate for a job, Tucker jumped at the chance to work for Wal-Mart when it opened a distribution center in her town.

“I filled out a card, then waited and waited,” she said Wednesday from a San Diego hotel room, speaking in a voice interrupted by the occasional yawn; Tucker, 52, had just checked in after a cross-country flight.

Exasperated, she went to the state employment office that was handling the Wal-Mart applications, only to hear the position she wanted had been filled.

“I knew I was the one they needed, but they didn’t call me,” said Tucker, who had a series of office jobs after the Velvets broke up. “I had five kids, I hadn’t worked in a year and a half. Desperate wasn’t the word. I’m not a pushy person, but I leaped out of my seat screaming. I can’t tell you how pissed I was.”

The startled state functionary made another call, and Tucker was hired.

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Andy Warhol’s death in 1987 was a turning point for Tucker. The artist had been the Velvet Underground’s first mentor and promoter, using the band as the live soundtrack for a legendary traveling multimedia event dubbed the “Exploding Plastic Inevitable.”

Tucker says a song she wrote to mark Warhol’s death was her breakthrough as a songwriter. Her early-’80s album, “Playin’ Possum,” had been a collection of covers, but the 1989 release “Life in Exile After Abdication” featured her own material. It led to an offer to tour Europe. When Tucker learned that the tour would net her $10,000, more than a full year’s wages at Wal-Mart, she returned to performing.

“Between what I could earn when I toured and Velvet royalties, I could support my family,” she said.

In 1993, the Velvets reunited for a European tour that yielded a live album. But old frictions returned as the band discussed further recordings, and what had been an open-ended revival was cut short, leaving bitter feelings between Cale and Reed.

“It’s especially sad, because we really had a wonderful time on that tour, being together, seeing each other every day,” Tucker said. “To have come out of that not friends again, that was a shame.”

Morrison’s death from cancer in 1995 hit Tucker hard. They both were from Levittown, N.Y. Morrison had gotten Tucker into the Velvets late in 1965, suggesting her as a fill-in when the original drummer quit. She debuted with the Velvets at a high school auditorium in Summit, N.J. Morrison, who made his living as a tugboat captain in Texas after the Velvet Underground broke up, joined Tucker’s touring bands during the ‘90s.

“Since Sterling died, I’ve just been a total dud and haven’t done anything with my own [songwriting],” Tucker said.

Last year, Tucker decided to take up a long-standing offer to record with Mark Goodman, a Washington, D.C.-based rocker. Starting in 1990, Goodman sent tapes of his songs, along with repeated proposals that she play drums on one of his albums.

“I liked his music and I liked his persistence,” Tucker said. Besides drumming, she takes lead vocals on two tracks of the Magnet CD.

“There’s no other drummer quite like her, and I thought it would be a cool thing,” said Goodman, 34. The bonus, he found, was “just the professionalism and attitude [Tucker brought to the recordings]. The sense of fun, the back-and-forth creative ideas, all of that was great.”

Tucker plans to play with Magnet as time permits, but she has other commitments. She will play with the Kropotkins, a New York City band led by one of Cale’s associates, David Soldier. Its unusual lineup includes Tucker on bass drum, another drummer on snare, as well as guitar, banjo, fiddle and fife.

As a producer--a role she particularly enjoys--she will oversee sessions for another New York act, Vegetarian Meat. And before summer is over, she will have made her acting debut as a “grumpy lawyer” in an independent film called “Homeslice.”

Meanwhile, the Velvets’ music has never has been more prominent--an exhaustive, five-CD boxed set came out in 1995. And such capable ‘90s bands as Luna, Bettie Serveert and Yo La Tengo continue to make new music with a clear Velvet stamp.

Tucker says that all the recent exposure hasn’t erased misconceptions about the old days at Warhol’s creative headquarters, the Factory.

“People think the Factory was this constant whirl of drugs and sex and lunacy. It wasn’t at all. It was like sitting in your living room, partying. We had a great time, but the great time was just drinking beer and talking with a lot of intelligent and funny people who hung around there.”

* Magnet, Film Star and Trunk Federation play Saturday at the Foothill, 1922 Cherry Ave., Signal Hill. 9 pm. $10. (562) 494-5196 (club) or (562) 984-8349 (taped information).