Top 150 Drummer Quotes

I was interested in music and making movies about musicians, but my own experiences, and doing what it felt like for me to be a drummer? Nah, I wasn’t interested in that.

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.

I always saw myself as a sideman. I figured I’d end up a drummer.

If you call someone up on a mistake – if the drummer’s put an extra beat in a bar or something – you have a lot more authority if you can show them how to do it right.

With Mr. Bungle, I’d lay down a really rough demo of my vocals and then play them for the guys without telling them what I was saying. Our drummer at the time had the coolest takes on what he thought I was saying, so I’d ask him to write out what he thought the lyrics were.

I’m the greatest rock and roll drummer on the planet and you suck.

Actually, I wanted to be a musician, either a guitarist or a drummer. I guess my dreams were in the entertainment industry, and I landed somewhere along there.

My drummer was my best friend. It weighs on me that we put all that time in – I played with him for 15 years, beginning with ‘Laguardia’ – and we had moderate success.

My drummer, bass player, and guitar player sing backgrounds. They play and sing. I can sing all the harmonies, but I can’t do it alone.

Portishead’s production is just insane beats you would expect to be on a KRS-One album. But then there’s this little white girl with an angel voice singing over it. It was a cool juxtaposition. I like ‘It’s A Fire.’ That’s a chill song with kind of a military drum thing going on, like a drummer boy.

Writing songs is an essential part of my life: my mother teaches piano, and I have inherited my grandparents’ passion for music, especially from my grandfather Tommy, who was a great drummer. It’s no coincidence that I play the drums best, but I am also good with the guitar and the piano.

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.

You know, another jazz drummer, Ed Thigpen, who played with Oscar Peterson way back – it was the first time I ever heard rivets in a cymbal. And then I heard that Chico Hamilton had them too, and I went, ‘Oh, that’s it. I’m taking that for my sound.’ And it worked well on ‘Riders On The Storm,’ so that’s one thing.

I can’t get anything out of an orchestra if I have the 10 best guitarists, but I don’t have a pianist or a drummer.

But, I don’t think any arranger should ever write a drum part for a drummer because if a drummer can’t create his own Interpretation of the chart and he plays everything that’s written, he becomes mechanical; he has no freedom.

Drums isn’t my one thing anymore. I love to produce. I love to make tracks, write tracks, produce tracks, and I can’t just sit back as a drummer anymore.

I’m a bass player and I’m a drummer – I’m a big fan of bass players.

I never professed to be a great drummer but I was a very heavy drummer.

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.

We hear so many records these days that are done with click tracks, as opposed to a drummer.

I had a drummer in my band who started teaching me tricks to come up with interesting rhythms. Because I don’t come from a musical background, I’ve never studied music, and I don’t know music theory at all, so a lot of stuff I discover on my own are things students would learn in the first grade of music.

I grew up as a dancer, and music and dance are so closely tied that in ballet class, you’re listening to all this classical music, and in modern class, you’re working with a live drummer. It was something that always made me feel really comfortable, and I’ve had a connection to since the beginning.

When I was young, I wanted to do something more low-key, like become a drummer in a rock band.

I had no clue of Hollywood until I became a teenager. Then I got a fake ID in Tijuana and discovered Shelly’s Manne-Hole, on Cahuenga and Selma, where I saw John Coltrane and his piano player, McCoy Tyner, and Elvin Jones, the drummer – my idol.

In jazz, you listen to what the bass player is doing and what the drummer is doing, what the pianist and the guitarist is doing, and then you play something that compliments that, so you are thinking simultaneously and thinking ahead.

When I listened to Elvin Jones, man, for the first time I heard a drummer that had all the technique plus emotion, passion, feel, and just – good God!

My dad was a kind of semiprofessional Dixieland-type drummer, and I learned the drums from him. When I was about twelve, we bought our first Ludwig drum set from a pawnshop – a marching-band bass drum, great big tom-toms, and big, deep snare drums.

Buddy Rich was one of the most incredible technicians in the world, on this planet, but the only people he could really impress, who knew what he was doing was another musician or another drummer.

Hellhammer is the best drummer ever, and Euronymous is a musical genius.

Yes, I always say that we’re a National League band. What I mean is, if you play an instrument, you have to sing. So I always call our drummer up. Even the drummer has to take a turn on the microphone.

As we’ve added players to the team, like a videographer, a drummer, or a sound guy, we’re trying to keep a bus full of A players and keep a culture where everybody is comfortable enough to push each other in their areas to be great.

I’d just play ’til my hands fell off. My parents would yell at me to stop because they couldn’t stand the noise any more! I was terrible! It must have been hard for them to listen to me as a beginning drummer.

I noticed a lot of guitar players neglected the rhythm part of rhythm guitar and decided I would try to focus in that. As my skill and knowledge of the instrument grew, I found lead started to come naturally. Sometimes I play guitar like a frustrated drummer. Ha ha!

I actually wanted to be a drummer, but I didn’t have any drums.

The one thing I do know is that I’m the best Taylor Hawkins drummer there is, and that is all I can hope to be. And when it comes to music, musicianship and skill, there is no such thing as better or worse because so much is personal opinion, and I can see that now.

Mainly I was able to perform with music – I played the French horn, I would sing, and I was a drummer in the pipe band. So I think it was a way to show off.

I was a groupie for a year and followed a band. I dated the drummer of the band.

To me, I always felt like drums have to be the support and the driving factor in a song, and there’s places where the drummer has to show off and do things and get the spotlight, but not all the time. You’ve gotta pick and choose. And it’s always gotta be about the song. That’s really the bottom line.

I’m a rock drummer. I couldn’t sit down and pretend to be a jazz drummer.

The drummer is the backbone of the band and is the real underrated one.

I went to church as a kid, but mainly for the showbiz aspect. I remember doing a solo of ‘The Little Drummer Boy’ and everyone singing the rup-a-pum-pums.

My first rock band was called Mike and the Majestics. I was about twelve, and my older sister Kathy was the manager. There were three of us: me and a friend on guitars and a drummer. We were young, but we played for a lot of fraternity parties, plugging both guitars and a microphone into one little amplifier.

I remember the first time somebody played me Janis Joplin. My friend Donna put on Janis Joplin, and she said, ‘You’re like her.’ At the time, I wasn’t even a singer; I was a drummer. I just wanted to play the drums.

I think you get to a point where you watch something just to enjoy it. I don’t think it’s really done so that you’re supposed to feel, Oh, he’s the most wonderful drummer. I think the whole lot is what’s more enjoyable.

I know I live in the shadow of the greatest drummer in the world, so it’s nice to have a bit of sunshine now and again.

But primarily, the drummer’s supposed to sit back there and swing the band.

A band is as solid as its drummer is.

We were the first group where the drummer was the front man.

The end result of my personal story is that I became a really good drummer, and I know myself well enough to know that I wouldn’t have without this really tough conductor and this really cutthroat hostile environment I was in.

Even though I’m a jazz-trained drummer, I cut my teeth playing rock.

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.

I’m not a singer who plays a bit of drums. I’m a drummer that sings a bit.

My motivation for being a good drummer was born out of fear, which, in a way, seems so antithetical to what art should be.