Drummer Quotes

My dream job is to be a rock drummer and the alternate drummer for the Foo Fighters.

I remember John walking on and starting to play, and my mouth sort of dropped open in disbelief at the power of the playing coming across the stage - and the technique! I've never, ever seen another drummer play quite the way he did.

People project their own dreams, fantasies, and prejudices onto my life. So people are either fans, or jealous, or disagree. Everybody marches to a different drummer.

I was born and grew up in the Deep South, and I must say it wasn't easy for me. I always marched to a drummer, I had different views about politics and religion and I had them relatively young.

A tap dancer is really a frustrated drummer.

I grabbed my drummer's cymbal in my teeth just as he crashed down on it with his sticks-I blacked out. I was a punk in those days. It was in Seattle. I still have all my teeth too, it's amazing.

The drums have hogged a lot of the credit. We're as much -- or more -- *cymbal* players, as we are drummers.

Ted Templeman, the producer, and Donn Landee, the engineer, are the same team that signed Van Halen, when they were called Mammoth. Donn convinced them to change it to the last name of the guitar player and drummer.

I think at one time every drummer wanted to play like Krupa or wanted to win a Gene Krupa drum contest. This is the big inspiration for drummers and naturally it has to be the same way for me.

I think that we just take our time with everything. We don't feel that there's a rush to become something that we're not yet. We like to really feel things out and know what we're doing. We hadn't ever really played a lot of shows live after we released our EP, and that's when we started doing it - we started playing out live consistently right after we released our EP and we got a new drummer because Shannyn [Sossamon] had quit.

Ronnie Spector's hair was taller and meaner and scarier than all four Shangri-La's combined, plus the drummer from the Honeycombs. You just know her rat-tail comb was a switchblade.

I was working at this club in downtown L.A. from four to eight at night, just Eddie Rubin, the drummer, and I.

The drummer in my first band was killed in Vietnam. He kind of signed up and joined the marines. Bart Hanes was his name. He was one of those guys that was jokin' all the time, always playin' the clown.

I read a lot. I spend of lot time thinking. It actually looks like I'm doing nothing, but... hanging out with clever and interesting people is a must if you're writing comedy, like hanging out with a good bass player when you're a drummer.

The public wants a great product, but they also want more layers of value. So it's lifestyle, it's takeaway, it's entertainment. It's all of those things and social media facilitates a big chunk of that, because they want to touch and feel you, they want to talk to someone about it, they want to join a community of other people who dance to the beat of a different drummer.

A guitarist or a drummer can get a cold and still play; I get a cold and sound like a wet mitten trying to sing you a love song. Charming.

My names John Bonham, I'm a drummer and I'm potty about cars.

I can deal with your judgment, because I've always marched to the beat of my own drummer--ever since i cut my camp shirt into a halter top.

If you go to Japan, they're still buying vinyl, and they want the education. They know who's playing on what tracks from the '60s and the '70s - who the guitar player is, who the drummer is, who the producer was, what studio it was recorded in. That's how I grew up listening to music. We bought albums. We read the liner notes. It was important to know the whole history behind it.

I would like to think that the singer is the butterfly, and the drummer was just the little grub in the ground, working to become a caterpillar

With all due respect to the world's great drummers - it ain't brain surgery.

I was very impressed with Hanson's performance. I thought that little drummer was a kick-ass drummer, and uh, that they sang great, I mean I didn't know either, y'know, that these little boys, y'know, I was very impressed. I think they'll probably be around in 20 years writing good songs, and being a great band.

I can't play anywhere near like I used to, and I was a hot drummer. It doesn't bother me, because frankly, if you get to that point where you can't hold a drumstick properly, there are many other things in life which are far more important, like cutting a loaf of bread or a piece of cheese.

Plus I am being hounded by all the fabulous new drummers, Bill Stewart at the head of the pack.

When I was a kid, I felt like I could do anything and play anything. I just felt super-confident. And then, once I started to play music professionally, maybe it's from being from a small town, but you grow up and then you're suddenly a big fish in a small pond, and I realized that there were a billion other drummers out there that could play as good as you or better, and everybody wants that job.

March to the beat of your own drummer.

The electric guitar meant that you could have a band with a drummer and a couple of guitars. And that put a lot of horn players out of work.

As rich as you think some of us are, for every $18.99 CD you buy, the artist usually sees a toonie or so. Pay your producer out of that. Then your manager. Then split it five ways among your band mates. Now don't act surprised when you see the drummer of a platinum-selling Canadian rock band behind the drive- thru window at Tim Hortons

I'm a drummer. I've been playing since I was three. I was in college bands when I was in elementary school: you'd see all these older kids and then this little kid behind the drums creating this big sound.

In high school no guys wanted to be in a band with me unless I was going to play bass or play grindcore or be in a scream-o band, so it was fun to finally have that experience of having my songs backed by a drummer and a bassist who were just as excited about it as I was.

If you have a great band with a mediocre drummer, you have a mediocre band. If you have a mediocre band with a great drummer, you have a great band!

A rock band used to be four guys and a drummer. Now it's five guys sitting around reading manuals!

Live with your memories and keep them as memories and that’s great. Forget the bad times just remember the good ones and you know and hope tomorrow is a good day

I have so much pride and love for the songs of The Smiths. However, I must ask you, if you come across any Smiths CDs, don't buy them, because all the money goes to that wretched drummer.

Mankind are in the end always governed by superiority of intellectual faculties, and none are more sensible of this than the military profession. When, on my return from Italy, I assumed the dress of the Institute, and associated with men of science, I knew what I was doing: I was sure of not being misunderstood by the lowest drummer boy in the army.

Playing drums feels like coming home for me. Even during the White Stripes I thought: 'I'll do this for now, but I'm really a drummer.' That's what I'll put on my passport application.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple-tree or oak. Shall he turn his spring into summer? If the condition of things which we were made for is not yet, what were any reality which we can substitute? We will not be shipwrecked on a vain reality.

I knew when I got to play with Al Jackson I would be a better bass player because he was the best drummer in the world. I worshipped him.

Artt Frank is my all-time favorite drummer. He always seems to know where I'm going.

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.

There's quite an overlap between musicians - especially drummers - who have an affection and a proclivity towards comedy and comedians who fantasize about being in a band. And a lot of comics play instruments.

It is simple to follow the easy and familiar path of personal ambition and private gain. It is more comfortable to sit content in the easy approval of friends and of neighbours than to risk the friction and the controversy that comes with public affairs. It is easier to fall in step with the slogans of others than to march to the beat of the internal drummer - to make and stand on judgements of your own. And it far easier to accept and to stand on the past, than to fight for the answers of the future

I have always tried to teach my players to be fighters. When I say that, I don't mean put up your dukes and get in a fistfight over something. I'm talking about facing adversity in your life. There is not a person alive who isn't going to have some awfully bad days in their lives. I tell my players that what I mean by fighting is when your house burns down, and your wife runs off with the drummer, and you've lost your job and all the odds are against you. What are you going to do? Most people just lay down and quit. Well, I want my people to fight back.

No husband of mine will say, "I could have been a drummer, but I had to think about the wife and kids. You know how it is." Nobody supports me at the expense of his own adventure.

Michael Sunday and I are the original members of the band. We first did it just for charities and benefit concerts. It was very ad-hoc, and before we knew it, we were really a band. We went through several drummers and guitarists before we were happy with the line up.

Metallica's the only band i've ever been in. I'm not sure that when it ends in five, ten years, I'm going to put an ad in the paper saying, 'stupid drummer looking for stupid people to play music with,' Metallica is it and I think when that ceases, that's it.

Cheers to the albums written fortunes earned lives touched in the millions and generations defined by one lonely person placing an ad in the back of a free paper seeking a guitarist, bassist, and drummer just looking to jam.

A broadsheet obituarist once pointed out to me that veteran soldiers die by rank. First to go are the generals, admirals and air marshals, then the brigadiers, then a bit of a gap and the colonels and wing commanders and passed-over majors, then a steady trickle of captains and lieutenants. As they get older and rarer, so the soldiers are mythologised and grow ever more heroic, until finally drummer boys and under-age privates are venerated and laurelled with honours like ancient field marshals. There is something touching about that.

The greatest contribution jazz has made in music has been to replace the role of the conductor with a member of the ensemble who, instead of waving his arms to keep time and convey mood, is an active member of the musical statement. That person is the drummer.

No acting, no production, could take the place of that moment when you come out in the dark on to the stage and the drummer plays four beats on the hi-hat and then lights and music. It just takes your breath away. No words can do what music can.