Jules Radino is the drummer for the legendary rock band
Blue Oyster Cult.
Jules Radino was born in New York City and grew up on Long Island, NY. He started playing drums at an early age, jamming with his father who played guitar. Songs from the bands Vanilla Fudge, Blues Project and the Rascals resonated throughout the house. While in high school, Jules would go on and take his first formal lessons with drum instructor Fred Weng. Fred was an integral part in the development of Jules’ overall playing, and also opened his ears to many new styles of music. After winning a Long Island Drum Center sponsored event, “Battle of The Beats”, in a latin category, Jules took a short break from the drums.
With a passion for film and video, Jules began to explore this other obsession. It was during this time that he was asked to join a band. Figuring he’d do it for fun he was soon bit by the bug to play again. With his fathers nudging, Jules went down to the Long Island Drum and Guitar Center to start up with drum lessons again. This is where he met John Miceli.
Jules began studying with John and was completely immersed in drums again. Eat, sleep and breath drums is all he did. A changing moment in his life was when John asked Jules to set-up his drums for a college show his band Marchello was playing, opening for Meatloaf. Right before Marchello was about to take the stage, a tour manager asked if anyone had a flashlight. “I have a flashlight” says Jules. “Alright, when the house lights go out, you’ll lead the band on stage.” “Ok.” As the house lights go down, the roar from the crowd was deafening. Not being able to see anything and feeling a rush of adrenaline never felt before, Jules led the band out slowly; afraid he and the rest of the band would fall off the stage. Thankfully no one fell off the stage that night, and Jules came away knowing exactly what he wanted to do with his life.
Not content to just play one style, he began to study with a wide array of instructors. Dom Famularo, Jim Chapin, Al Miller all helped with Jules’ growth as a drummer. John Miceli would soon go on the road as the drummer for Meatloaf and Jules would be asked to become a drum instructor at the Long Island Drum and Guitar Center.
While teaching up to 50 students a week, Jules began studying with Michael Lauren of Drummers Collective. Michael was an amazing teacher who hipped Jules to authentic styles of Big Band, Be-Bop, Brazilian, Afro-Cuban, New Orleans Second Line, Blues and Funk. While doing this, Jules played in a variety of musical situations from theatre work and small combo jazz gigs, 9 piece funk bands, to blues and top 40 cover bands. It was during this time he played a few short tours with the Elton John tribute band “Fantastic”, and the long island cover/original band “Sorethumb”. Jules would stay with Sorethumb playing the long island cover scene and recording the album “Spinning The 45’s”. The 
band also filmed a music video with Monkees lead singer Davy Jones which was played on VH1.
Wanting to get out of the cover scene, Jules put a hold on all other bands and focused his energy on the Brooklyn based original band named Fagen. The band lived together in a Greepoint Broolyn loft and would go on to record an EP “Hellsinki Effect” and a full length LP “Oliver Twisted”. After the break-up of Fagen, he heard a sampling of the NYC band Skywriter. Founded and fronted by singer/songwriter Dave Doobinin, Jules knew this was a band he needed to be in. He would go on and play the NYC circuit with Skywriter meeting some amazing people and songwriters.
Eventually Skywriter would break-up and Jules found himself sitting in at an open blues jam in NYC. With about 12 people in the place, in walks blues guitar great Popa Chubby. He immediately comes up to the stage and tells everyone to GET OFF, except for Jules. The house bass player comes back on and the trio continues to play for another 40 minutes, playing all types of different feels. Two weeks later Jules is on a European tour with Popa Chubby playing all over Denmark and France. Jules would stay with Popa Chubby for another US tour and another trip back to Europe.
After leaving Popa Chubby, Jules would get a call from John Miceli telling him Blue Oyster Cult was auditioning drummers. With help from John to get an audition, Jules would land the gig with Blue Oyster Cult. He has currently held the BOC gig since the fall of 2004, touring extensively in the states and abroad. In addition to Blue Oyster Cult, Jules keeps an active schedule performing and recording in the NYC area with artists Derek James, Briana Winter, Dave Doobinin and Black Bunny.
