23 Facts About Moe Tucker

Maureen Ann "Moe" Tucker was born on August 26,1944 and is an American retired musician, singer, and songwriter who achieved international fame as the drummer of the rock band the Velvet Underground.

Moe Tucker returned in the 1980s, and, until the late 2000s, released four studio albums and performed as a session musician.

In 1996, Moe Tucker was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Velvet Underground.

Maureen Moe Tucker was born in Jackson Heights, Queens, New York City, and grew up in Levittown, New York in a middle-class Catholic family.

Moe Tucker's father, James, was a housepainter and her mother, Margaret, was a clerical worker.

Moe Tucker had an older brother, Jim, who was friends with Sterling Morrison, and a sister, Margo.

Moe Tucker was drafted because Velvets guitarist Sterling Morrison remembered her as the younger sister of his high school friend, Jim, who played the drums.

Moe Tucker played standing up rather than seated, using a simplified drum kit of tom toms, a snare drum and an upturned bass drum, playing with mallets rather than drumsticks.

Moe Tucker rarely used cymbals; she claimed that since she felt the purpose of a drummer was simply to "keep time", cymbals were unnecessary for this purpose and drowned out the other instruments.

Moe Tucker is where the punk notion of how the beat works begins.

Moe Tucker temporarily left the group when she became pregnant with her first child, Kerry "Trucker" Moe Tucker, in early 1970.

Moe Tucker returned to the band in late 1970, by which time Reed had left the group and Doug Yule had assumed leadership.

Moe Tucker toured North America and Europe with the band during 1970 and 1971; shortly afterward, she quit the band and the music business altogether to raise a family.

Moe Tucker participated in the 1993 Velvet Underground reunion, touring Europe and releasing the double album Live MCMXCIII.

In 2021, Moe Tucker participated in Todd Haynes' documentary The Velvet Underground.

Moe Tucker moved to Phoenix, Arizona, in 1971, where she lived with her husband and children.

Moe Tucker quit the job in 1989 when she was asked to go on tour of Europe with the band Half Japanese.

Moe Tucker started recording and touring again, releasing a number of albums on small, independent labels that feature her singing and playing guitar, fronting her own band.

Apart from releasing her own records, Moe Tucker has made guest performances on a number of others' records, including producing Fire in the Sky for Half Japanese, whose guitarist, John Sluggett, plays drums on her own recordings.

Moe Tucker played drums on and produced the album The Lives of Charles Douglas by indie rocker and novelist Charles Douglas in 1999.

Moe Tucker was married in the early 1970s, and divorced some time in the early 1980s.

Moe Tucker has five children: Kerry, Keith, Austen, Kate, and Richard.

Moe Tucker voiced support for the Tea Party movement and said she was "furious about the way we're being led towards socialism".