WITHIN the madness, bitterness, dissent and division that reflects the current ethos in the RSAMD, haemorrhaging morale daily at a frightening rate, is an oasis of sanity. That oasis is the annual Plug festival of new music, running throughout this week and featuring around 40 first performances from the hungry student composers in Gordon McPherson's extraordinary department, a factory for young composers.

And within that community of composers is Steve Forman, very much at one with his colleagues, but very different from them in many respects.

Forman, an amiable, philosophical and slightly grizzled figure from Los Angeles, is a relative newcomer to the academy. He came over to Scotland last year on an exchange visit, and was so taken with the department run by the individualist Dundonian composer McPherson that he upped sticks and moved from LA to Glasgow to pursue here the PhD that is his passion.

Such a move would be a dramatic upheaval for any individual. For Forman, it was rather more than that. Forman, who is 62, has transplanted himself into a community where his peers are, on average, 40 years his junior.

The subject of the American's doctoral thesis also marks him out as different from his contemporaries in the academy. Forman is a percussionist-composer with a particular passion for the bodhran, the Celtic frame drum. His mission for the instrument he considers the most expressive of all percussion instruments is nothing less than to create, through his compositions, a new repertoire that brings the bodhran into the mainstream of contemporary classical music, integrating it within more orthodox groupings, from string quartets to woodwind and brass ensembles.

This week alone, three of his new works are hitting the boards: one was played by the Scottish Philharmonic at Oran Mor on Monday, another yesterday in the Plug lunchtime concert, and yet another will be unveiled at tomorrow evening's Plug event.

But the most extraordinary feature of this laid-back and occasionally laconic character is that for 30 years he worked in Hollywood as a studio musician - in the UK we would call him a session musician. The percussionist was one of that elite, first-call group of musicians relied upon by the industry to provide guaranteed top-level work for rock groups and soundtrack composers.

Forman was classically trained as a timpanist with the Phoenix Symphony Orchestra, but played jazz and had a hankering for the rock business. He cut his teeth on the road with a band called A Slower Buffalo, where he helped define the role of the free- standing percussionist as a key member of the rhythm section of a rock band.

He was on the road every night, playing in fusion bands with Dave Grusin and Lee Ritenour, with whom he cut five direct-to-disc albums, with no margin for uncertainty and where one footfault or missed backbeat meant starting over. In a business where employment is based entirely on reliability, accuracy, and word-of-mouth recommendation, recalls Forman, if you mess up, you don't work again.

His reputation grew, and the phone rang off the hook. He worked with southern country rock band the Cate Brothers, being produced by Steve Cropper, Fleetwood Mac's great guitarist, and with Booker T and the MGs. Demand for Forman's inventive percussionism, which, he says, was always driven by his composer's ear, developed steadily.

But the serious breakthrough into the big time came when he took a call asking him to come in for a recording session to play conga drums. "There are very few times in my life when I've been in the right place at the right time, but this was one." The call was from Phil Spector, and opened the door to Forman's first union recording session in LA. And that meant he was in - big time. But he wasn't told who the session was for, so he didn't know just how big it was.

To this day, he is gobsmacked at the memory of going into the studio and finding himself sitting next to John Lennon, who was "very quick, very clever, and as sharp as a whip, even behind a quart of vodka".

It's characteristic of Forman that he doesn't remember the name of the album (he brings no baggage of his past to his present) but he does remember precisely Phil Spector's production techniques.

"This was just about Phil's last wall-of-sound recording. His concept of the wall of sound was to have four bass players, four drummers, four piano players, and five or six sax players. In all, there were about 50 players involved in that recording. That was my first union night, and I met every important studio musician in LA on my first night. What an incredible beginning to a career."

What did it lead to? "It led to being called back." Subsequent work included percussion for The Beach Boys ("post Pet Sounds, post all of the crises"); on the road with Raymond Manzarek, organ player of The Doors, who wanted Forman's experimentalism with percussion for The Golden Scarab recording; two weeks in the studio doing percussion for Pink Floyd on a remake of A Momentary Lapse of Reason; brought in to do percussion on a remix of David Bowie's Fame. And on it goes.

It's remarkable that Forman, in an enthralling hour (for me) being dragged through his past, seems coolly objective - and forgetful - about his achievements and the company he moved in.

"I've never been a trophy collector. I've never really been that interested in the finished product. Very little of what I've worked on as a studio musician I own, or even heard the final mixes.

"For me, it was always the process. It was the doing it, being involved in the creating of it. As a percussionist you wind up working by yourself a lot at the end of the day, overdubbing, troubleshooting, and so on.

"On most records, as a percussionist, you're the last layer. Your relationship is generally with the producer, not the artists."

He diversified, hitting the road early with a full electronic rig, working on movie soundtracks, from Conan the Barbarian to Starship Troopers (his last was Pirates of the Caribbean), running his own electronic studio and cartage company, and gradually becoming disillusioned with the "diminishing returns" of the business.

"I wasn't playing at all. I was playing programmed multi-track sequencers that ran in real time with a 90-piece orchestra on time code. I was playing samples of myself. What's that?"

So he went back to his composition roots, back to school, and, eventually, over to Glasgow. "I gave up everything. The only things I retain are my instrument collection and my house at Highland Park, half-way between Pasadena and downtown LA."

He seems content. He enjoys the company of his fellow composers in the academy. "I kinda like the idea of simultaneously being a schoolmate, a colleague, a mentor, and a teacher without portfolio.

"I do miss the playing. But I do not miss the business of seeing your validity being defined by your appointment book."

  • Steve Forman's The Clydean Coronaries is premiered tomorrow at the RSAMD, 7pm.