The Broken Drum Machine That Powered the War on Drugs’ ‘Lost in the Dream’

Gear Me is a column in which we ask some of our favorite musicians about the racks, stacks, and instruments they love best.

Put on a blindfold and throw a dart at any Hot 100 chart from the heart of the 1980s, and you’re likely to land on a hit powered by the LinnDrum. Cyndi Lauper, Madonna, Billy Idol, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Kurtis Blow, George Michael, Genesis, Michael Jackson, and Donna Summer all made signature records with the classic drum machine, which helped to define the crisp and punchy sound that dominated the era between the last days of disco and the dawn of grunge. (Prince, who did more than any artist to popularize Linn’s drum machines, mostly used an earlier model known as the LM-1.) 

Getting your hands on one of these storied machines in 2024 will probably set you back something like $7,000. Adam Granduciel got his for free. Around 2011, right before the War on Drugs leader started making his breakout 2014 album Lost in the Dream, a friend just handed him a LinnDrum that was gathering dust in his basement. There was one problem: It wouldn’t turn on. Granduciel, ever the tinkerer, eventually got it working—sort of—and it became an integral part of his songwriting and production process as he conceptualized the record that would turn him into an indie rock star. That’s the LinnDrum you hear as the propulsive backbeat of “Disappearing,” providing Granduciel’s reveries with a sense of unstoppable forward motion, even as the song looks backward at memory and loss. 

After Granduciel’s initial DIY fix, his LinnDrum was still only good for about eight seconds of rhythm at a time before it fizzled out again. His process involved capturing a brief snippet of a beat, then running it through a delay pedal on an infinite loop and building a song around its repetitions. It’s of a piece with the way he makes music more generally: salvaging bits and pieces of rock history, figuring out which parts will still work for him, and filtering them through his scrappy lived experience—plus a whole lot of reverb and delay—until they’re rendered dreamlike and new. 

Last month, the War on Drugs released the deluxe edition of Live Drugs Again, a triumphant live album that demonstrates how far the band has come since the days of Granduciel fiddling with busted electronics at home alone. (The physical release ships on December 13.) Below, Granduciel demonstrates and talks about the drum machine that helped to kickstart his now-signature sound.