I got a drum set at the age of four. I wasn't playing that well, just kind of banging around. I just wanted to play drums and my dad got me a set. I played for several years, but I wasn't meant to be a drummer, I guess. I can play drums on my own things - obviously on some of my own records I play drums. But I didn't start playing guitar until I was 11.
I wanted to play drums, and I got a set when I was 14 and just started to play in the house, to the stereo. I liked Ringo Starr, of course. And Sandy Nelson. I had his record, 'Let There Be Drums,' and I'd play along with it.
Stick choice should be every drummers first decision. Sticks are the liaison between you and your creative expression on the drums. Getting there the smoothest way is the reason I'm using Vater.
Most drummers are covered with a million drums, and everyone is like, 'What are you doing back there?'
My little brother played drums, so we had a drum set over at my house.
You'd be surprised. Drummers ape each other. The way every rock n' roll record sounds like something else but not all together. Everything other drummers play, if you're playing drums, they all hear.
Everyone knows deep in their hearts that the drums are the coolest instrument, and that a band is only as good as its drummer. So I'm all for drum solos. I'm all for drummers hamming it up. I'm all for drummers standing up and kicking over the kit.
Almost everything I've done, I've done through my own creativity. I don't think I ever had to listen to anyone else to learn how to play drums. I wish I could say that for about ten thousand other drummers.
I'm very influenced by jazz drummers. I always liked drummers like Roger Taylor, Keith Moon, Ian Paice, John Densmore. I just learned from playing to those drummers.
PimpCo is a little business I've got, which basically offers drummers the affordable opportunity to make their drums that little bit more bespoke. I love drums and love how they look, so we offer re-wrapping to reboot your old kit, a hardware lacquering service - the black looks amazing, and bespoke snare drums.
I often thought that if I had been working with Mark James at American Studios, I would have had a pop hit before I ever moved out of Memphis. But that didn't happen.
A friend of mine took me to Memphis advised me that I should get in the musicians' union. He gave me a set of drums and said, Stay on the job, son.
It's much easier to have a diversified career as an electronic musician than it is as a drummer. Nothing against drummers. If you're a drummer, you just wait around for people to ask you to play drums. But if you have your own studio and can make music, you have the ability to approach music a lot differently.
I worked hard at that through most of the '80s, and in 1990 my house burned in New Hampshire, and my studios and my offices. I had to decide at what level to rebuild, and I decided that I was going to stop trying to be all things to all people, and just go back to playing the guitar.
I was living in different accommodation and it was never in a place where I could set up my drums and play, so my drums would end up back in their cases and then in the garage. In the end I got used to the drums being locked up, I went a good eight years without touching drums.
I find that drummers are the coolest people in the world. I play a little bit of drums.