Quotes & Sayings About Drummers

The advice I like to give to drummers is that there's no right or wrong way of playing the drums. I think the drumming community can be very antiquated and very stuck in the past of, like, this Neil Peart style, technical Guitar Center drum video kind of approach. That you need to have played for 15 years before you ever do anything worthwhile. — Janet Weiss

Historically, musicians know what it is like to be outside the norm - walking the high wire without a safety net. Our experience is not so different from those who march to the beat of different drummers. — Billy Joel

People who come up to me are drummers or fans of the band. I don't get it too much, but I'll be somewhere and someone will have me take a picture or something. — Chad Smith

I had trouble fitting in, in a musical sense. A lot of drummers get sidetracked by the instrument. It can engulf you. — Tre Cool

Her heart filled with boundless love that surged anew for her father. She felt like rushing to him and planting a quick kiss on his cheek the way she used to when she was a small girl. However, these villagers are not in the habit of kissing their offspring after they grow up. They show their love and affection by stroking their heads, addressing them in endearing words and blessing them. — Swarnakanthi Rajapakse

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. — Patty Schemel

When he had accompanied his father on drumming errands he noticed how high caste men and women treated them as inferior. They had to enter from the back door and wait near the kitchen or at a side veranda and sit on low benches or reed mats. They were never offered a decent seat. At meals times they were never invited to eat at the main table with the family or other guests. Instead, they had to eat the food served to them on the reed mat. This they ate in silence while the patrons sat at a lavishly laid table and enjoyed their food amidst chat and cheer. — Swarnakanthi Rajapakse

Madman drummers, bummers, Indians in the summer with a teenage diplomat. In the dumps with the mumps as the adolescent pumps his way into his hat. — Bruce Springsteen

We auditioned a lot of great drummers; every one of them was world class. We had a lot of fun playing with each of them and had some great jams. With Mike [Mangini] it was just something really special about what was going on. — John Petrucci

I got an amazing 10-CD set, it's the music that Alan Lomax recorded in Haiti in 1936. And what's incredible is how fantastic the drummers are and how off-the-grid they are. The liveliness is astonishing; they're just totally alive, these recordings. It's very interesting, to me, to be reminded of that, that there was a time when things were not that tight. — Brian Eno

I do like to look at female drummers, because I am one. — Caroline Corr

How come drummers leave their drumsticks on the dashboard of their car? So they can park in the handicapped spaces. — Dave Grohl

I think that the rhythm sections, drummers in particular, are the unsuing heroes of the music. It's the rhythm section that has changed the styles from one period to the other. — Max Roach

I've always noticed that Old Families, like plumbers and barbers and possibly drummers and detectives, seem to have some kind of reciprocity arrangement in the South. Members of the freemasonry could move anywhere ... and still operate cozily in the local Old Family top drawer. — Celestine Sibley

There aren't enough girl drummers. — Tobi Vail

Just to be around that, to feel a part of it and be able to integrate the experience while I was with the Messengers, of going and playing gigs with other drummers, gave me the chance to realize that it was not just me that was making it happen. — Benny Green

When I asked Vera why Michael was so obstinate, she told me that some asshole had recently broken Eliza's heart. A drummer, no less. Hell, even I know girls should stay away from the goddamn drummers. — Tiffanie DeBartolo

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. — Buddy Rich

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. — Moby

We were dancers and drummers and standers and jugglers, and there was nothing anyone needed to accept or tolerate. We celebrated. — Bill Konigsberg

Empowering Women 101-- A strong women knows that cheating isn't a mistake; it's a choice. The choice was made long before you found out. — Shannon L. Alder

Lars [Ulrich] of Metallica is one of the worst drummers I've ever heard, but they hide it because they spend millions recording. — Slim Moon

Puffy's the only guy who's jealous. All drummers want to be singers. I think it's a myth that the singer needs to be the focus. Bands perpetuate that myth. With somebody like Sebastian Bach it makes sense. Look at him. He could be in an Avon ad. — Mike Patton

Drummers haven't managed to develop their individuality quite as well as guitarists have. We can be so focused on the nuts and bolts that we overlook the importance of individuality - the broader picture, if you will. — Bill Bruford

At first I would be taken aback by that observation, then I would think of them seeing other drummers on television, often faking it or playing less physically demanding music, and understood why they had that impression. I guess drumming wasn't hard work for every drummer, but it certainly was for me, the way I liked to play - as hard as I could, as fast as I could, as long as I could, and as well as I could. Playing a Rush concert was the hardest job I knew, and took everything I had, mentally and physically. I once compared it to running a marathon while solving equations, and that was a good enough analogy. — Neil Peart

I remembered that you can find joy in work and life, and if you do it right, they fuel each other-like dueling drummers, better and better, one after the other. — Abbi Jacobson

Drummers are conductors - we set the pace for the music - so if you're not relaxed and feeling right, the whole thing goes out the window. — Steven Adler

Quentin had told Spike that inking 'percussion' across your
knuckles was kind of lame. It takes more than ten letters to make
a badass knuckle tattoo. That was the problem with drummers.
They didn't listen. But they always seemed to get laid anyway. — Ros Baxter

As regards my feelings about drummers - there's Buddy Rich, and then there's everybody else. — Mel Torme

Do you know why they call a drummer's seat a throne? Because drummers are kings and queens. — Ed Thigpen

You are never, ever gonna get a drummer to dis another one. It's part of the drumming rules, as important as being able to keep pace or smashing up hotel rooms. Drummers do not dis! — Philip Selway

According to the Buddha's doctrine that they believed in, it was not the caste that defined a person high or low. It was one's deeds that mattered. — Swarnakanthi Rajapakse

A new movement reinforced by activists such as Buddhist monks, physicians who practised traditional medicine, teachers, farmers, and laborers brought Prime Minister Bandaranaike into the political helm. The leaders of the Davulawatta community considered this election a personal achievement. They saw this as a people's government and appreciated its genuine interest in fulfilling the needs of the common people. They trusted that the present government would eradicate poverty and the caste discrimination, and work to promote self-esteem. — Swarnakanthi Rajapakse

I like to be one of those drummers who actually add to the music, not one of those guys who sit in a room 24/7 trying to outwit or outplay another drummer. — Dave Lombardo

Radical feminism, male lesbians, transsexuals, musical condoms with suspenders, and lotsa drummers drumming are all manifestations of a political agenda with roots in the 1960s. This is all fruit we are reaping from the sexual revolution. — Rush Limbaugh

And, well of course, Count Basie, and I think all of the black bands of the late thirties and early forties, bands with real players. They had an influence on everybody, not just drummers. — Buddy Rich

I would like, with the sun shining through the window on a crisp early-autumnal mid-morning, with a sufficiency of Monster Cappucino flowing in my veins to prompt minimal sentience, to declare my view for the record that Drummer Jokes are a cruel and pernicious form of humour introduced to the world by under-humoured persons lacking in sensitivity and concern for other drummers. — Robert Fripp

I want to keep pushing the limits for drummers and expressing myself. — Travis Barker

I look up to a lot of old school drummers from the '70s, '80s, and '90s. — Ashton Irwin

There are so many things we expect God to do: lead us, bring good people into our life, give us a life of abundance, make us happy, fix our problems, fix other people, triumph over our enemies, etc. However, why do so many people think they will get any of this if they choose not to live righteously? If you choose to hurt other people and not take any responsibility for it or live your life as if everyone else is the problem, except you then God is going to lead you back to the same people, same places, same situations so you can fix the same problem you ran from. God is not standing in your future telling you to forget what you did. He is standing in front of you telling you to go back and undo what you did! He leads you to places that change who you are. He doesn't lead you to places to forget who you are. — Shannon L. Alder

In a front of each home garden the villagers fixed a triangular wooden lamp-house on the top of a pole planted on the ground to hold a small statue of Lord Buddha and some deities. They used to offer flowers at this small shrine and light a tiny clay oil lamp. — Swarnakanthi Rajapakse

The drummer is stereotypically the dumb guy. Maybe that's why I always respect drummers who do more than drum. — Taylor Hawkins

In rock & roll heaven, there ARE drum solos, but only the drummers can hear them. — Lin Brehmer

Maggie was ten years younger than him. Being cross-cousins, they lived in the same compound, in the same two houses that still existed. When their parents told him to take her for his wife, there was nothing for him to think deep into the matter. They simply obeyed their parents. Accordingly, she came over to sleep in his house. In this, manner they remained as man and wife for a period of over thirty years. — Swarnakanthi Rajapakse

Baby...drummers bang all night long! — Joanne Schwehm

'Whiplash' was always the song I hated the most because it's a song designed to screw with drummers. — Damien Chazelle

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

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. — Rikki Rockett

Philippe also brought along musicians - mainly trumpeters and drummers - to scare the enemy. Even then, French music was known to terrify the English. — Stephen Clarke

Generally, that humble piece of furniture placed on the front veranda of the house officially belonged to the man of the household; the women never slept on it. — Swarnakanthi Rajapakse

Bass players and drummers are brothers in the basement cooking up the groove that makes people move. — John Densmore

Most studios in Memphis had a house set of drums; the drummers just brought their own sticks. — Steve Cropper

She wandered through the crowded feast hall, listening as wine greased tongues and dimmed minds. Her uncle Dalinar was in the full swing of it, rising from the high table to shout for the Parshendi to bring out their drummers. Jasnah's brother, Elhokar, hurried to shush their uncle - though the Alethi politely ignored Dalinar's outburst. All save Elhokar's wife, Aesudan, who snickered primly behind a handkerchief. Jasnah — Brandon Sanderson

Rising to her feet, she shot the Bird Man a furious glare, and then stormed off toward Savidlin's house. She was glad to be away from Richard, to be away from watching those girls pawing him.
Her fingernails dug into her palms, but she didn't notice as she marched past the happy people. The dancers danced, the drummers drummed, the children laughed. People she passed wished her well. She wanted one of them to say something mean so she would have an excuse to hit someone. — Terry Goodkind

To women, drummers seem like these adorable, sexy Neanderthals, and lead singers seem mysterious and dangerous. So while the lead singers all want to be David Bowie, floating into parties and being the center of attention, it's the drummers who are in the corner doing keg stands and breaking tables. Usually it's the drummers who get the fun-loving ladies and the singers who get the nutcases. — Dave Grohl

She builds people up because she knows what it is like to be torn down. — Shannon L. Alder

The bands were everywhere, close and faraway, a blend of discordant noise. He passed close to one now, a half-dozen drummers pounding away, a sergeant leading them in a rhythm that was no rhythm at all, and behind, men with fifes, squealing out something that had no resemblance to a song. — Jeff Shaara

Killing life in whatever way, will drag you along the hell's way. — Swarnakanthi Rajapakse

Hendrix rehearsed different drummers, before we met Mitch Mitchell. — Noel Redding

At heart I cannot accept that I am a well-known rock 'n' roll star and one of the greatest drummers in the world. — Keith Moon

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. — Peter Tork

Most drummers are covered with a million drums, and everyone is like, 'What are you doing back there?' — Tommy Lee

Drummers shouldn't just think of themselves as drummers. If you're going to be a musician, you should expand your horizons, compose things, and work with other instruments. — Stewart Copeland

Almost the moment he died, they put him in Playboy as one of the greatest drummers, which he was - there's no doubt about it. There's never been anybody since. He's one of the greatest drummers that ever lived. — Jimmy Page

Drummers don't write - or at least, that's what everybody believes. — Tony Williams

We're all geniuses. Life is merely overpopulated with singers who play drums, and, drummers who sing, to pay rent. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

I was a beginner again. I practiced hard and used to listen very closely to recordings of American jazz drummers such as Tony Williams and Kenny Clarke. — Jamie Muir

They are examin'd skeptickally. "Not from the Press, are you?" " 'Pon my Word," cry both Surveyors at once. "Drummers of some kind's my guess," puts in a Countryman, his Rifle at his Side, "am I right, Gents?" "What'll we say?" mutters Mason urgently to Dixon. "Oh, do allow me," says Dixon to Mason. Adverting to the Room, "Why aye, Right as a Right Angle, we're out here to ruffle up some business with any who may be in need of Surveying, London-Style, - Astronomickally precise, optickally up-to-the-Minute, surprisingly cheap. The Behavior of the Stars is the most perfect Motion there is, and we know how to read it all, just as you'd read a Clock-Face. We have Lenses that never lie, and Micrometers fine enough to subtend the Width of a Hair upon a Martian's Eye-ball. This looks like a bustling Town, plenty of activity in the Land-Trades, where think yese'd be a good place to start?" with an amiability that Mason recognizes as peculiarly Quaker, - Friendly Business. — Thomas Pynchon

Families could often trace their lineage back several centuries. Their livelihood was earned from drum playing, a service considered to be dis-respectable. As members of a low caste, the drummers were forbidden to build decent houses. There were allowed to build wattle and daub huts, and to live rent-free on their patrons' properties. The right to own the country's land was restricted in this manner, a vicious condition that arose through tradition and was reinforced by law. Patterns of financial power and political hierarchy existed hand in hand. — Swarnakanthi Rajapakse

At dawn I had the assembly beaten; at broad daylight I had the drummers beat to arms, and started once more on our route, telling them that the Emperor was going to have all the deserters arrested. I marched until noon, and, as we emerged from a wood, I came upon a herd of cows grazing in a meadow. My soldiers immediately took their bowls, and went off to milk the cows, and we had to wait for them. When the evening came, they would camp before nightfall, and every time we came across any cows, we had to stop. It may be imagined that this was not much fun for me. At — Jean-Roch Coignet

I play weird. I'm always just behind. We [drummers] only have so much room. We're not guitarists. — Ringo Starr

When I speak of natural drummers I'm talking about guys that are playing with the talent God gave 'em. — Gene Krupa

To have everything written for you ... It's not really creating. That's why I think symphony drummers are so limited. They 're limited to exactly what was played a hundred years before them by a thousand other drummers. — Buddy Rich

Even though we are supposed to be low caste and poor our vote also has the same value and validity as that of great people. — Swarnakanthi Rajapakse

I can understand why some of these drummers and bass players become cult figures with all of their equipment and the incredible amount of technique they have. But there's very little that I think satisfies you intellectually or emotionally. — Ken Burns

We often behave as though Jesus is only interested in saving and loving a romanticized version of ourselves, or an idealized version of our mess of a world, and so we offer to him a version of our best selves. With our Sunday school shoes on, we sing songs about kings and drummers at his birth, perhaps so we can escape the Herod in ourselves and in the world around us. But we've lost the plot if we use religion as the place where we escape from difficult realities instead of as the place where those difficult realities are given meaning. — Nadia Bolz-Weber

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. — Buddy Rich

The records that I grew up listening to had feel, and the drummers that inspired me - like Stewart Copeland, Neil Peart, Phil Collins and Roger Taylor - all had their own voice and individual style. — Taylor Hawkins

Like my best friend, I asked for drums for Christmas, and got them. But when he moved on to guitar, I realized two things: (1) guitar is a much more expressive instrument, (2) way more girls pay attention to guitar players than to drummers. — Greg Iles

If drummers are 'anti-solo,' that's up to them. They're musicians, and they can play whatever they want. But my inspirations early on were people like Buddy Rich, seeing him on 'The Tonight Show', or Gene Krupa. — Neil Peart

If their horoscopes are not compatible, this marriage is out of the question. — Swarnakanthi Rajapakse

I love to go see live music. That used to be what I would do, almost every other night, and watch drummers play. — Patty Schemel

Too many drummers sit at the back covered in drums, and you never see them. — Tommy Lee

All do not develop in the same manner, or at the same pace. Nations, like men, often march to the beat of different drummers, and the precise solutions of the United States can neither be dictated nor transplanted to others. What is important is that all nations must march toward increasing freedom; toward justice for all; toward a society strong and flexible enough to meet the demands of all its own people, and a world of immense and dizzying change. — Robert Kennedy

I've talked to some drummers who seem to have a very hard time staying in shape on the road, including some drummers touring with high-profile acts that don't have to live on fast food every night. — Matt Cameron

Art was carrying me a lot of the time. When you're accustomed to playing with Art, and you play with other drummers, it's as if the bottom dropped out. — Benny Green

The villagers considered it lucky to make the New Year's first money transaction with her because she was a prosperous person. — Swarnakanthi Rajapakse

I think female drummers are great. I think there should more of them. — Sean Kinney

She believed that people born to low caste families were meant to suffer. That was their karma. She had learnt that those who indulge in sinful activities in their previous birth, especially those who humiliated others, would be reborn to low caste families. She firmly believed also that one has to suffer until the sin was paid for through suffering and good deeds. — Swarnakanthi Rajapakse

I really like working with drummers, I like being able to bounce ideas off drummers. — Thighpaulsandra

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

Are you considering becoming a creative person? Too late, you already are one. To even call somebody "a creative person" is almost laughably redundant; creativity is the hallmark of our species. We have the sense for it; we have the curiosity for it; we have the opposable thumbs for it; we have the rhythm for it; we have the language and the excitement and the innate connection to divinity for it.
If you're alive, you're a creative person. You and I and everyone you know are descended from tens of thousands of years of makers. Decorators, tinkerers, storytellers, dancers, explorers, fiddlers, drummers, builders, growers, problem-solvers, and embellishers
these are our common ancestors. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Amidst all this bustle it is not reason, which carries the prize, but eloquence; and no man needs ever despair of gaining proselytes to the most extravagant hypothesis, who has art enough to represent it in any favourable colours. The victory is not gained by the men at arms, who manage the pike and the sword; but by the trumpeters, drummers, and musicians of the army. — David Hume

I was always very aware of drummers. My oldest brother Henry was a drummer, and he drummed on everything in the house from the kitchen sink to stovepipes. He was the first drummer in the Gil Evans Orchestra, so you've got to know how great he was. — Dave Brubeck

They ignored her because of their headphones, a thousand people marching to fifteen hundred different drummers, effectively secluded but for a very basic instinct not to bump into one another. Those that were unplugged rushed from place to place and were never actually anywhere other than somewhere else. — Thomm Quackenbush

Master Salamon usually set off a little later as neither he nor other male members of their community were in the habit of walking on the road alongside their wives. — Swarnakanthi Rajapakse

May she play the Drums to the fiery rhythm of her Own Heart with the sinewy strength of her Own Arms, so she need Not Lie With Drummers. — Tina Fey

The majority of my training was as a drummer, and drummers are basically accompanists. — Z'EV

Have you noticed, now, the way people talk so loudly in snackbars and cinemas, how the shelved back gardens shudder with prodigies of talentlessness, drummers, penny-whistlers, vying transistors, the way you see and hear the curses and sign-language of high sexual drama at the bus-stops under ghosts of clouds, how life has come out of doors? And in the soaked pubs the old-timers wince and weather the canned rock. We talk louder to make ourselves heard. We will all be screamers soon. — Martin Amis

When I watch drummers, I always want to see energy. It's not about the proficiency of the musicianship; I'm just into the vibe and excitement of it. With drums, it's such a primeval thing. — Mike Joyce