I figure no matter what interview I do, the real good ‘journalists’ are going to find the completely irrelevant quotes that will drum up some controversy and stick it on their page to get some clicks and completely miss the real context of what the interview is about. That’s what we do nowadays and call it ‘journalism.’
When I’m creating a song, I’m thinking of a hip-hop beat playing on a live drum set – kinda like the Roots would do. I will put New Orleans music on top of that with some other rhythms.
I guess you’d say I’m a gearhead. It’s not just guitars; I have five or six drum sets, a bunch of keyboards… It’s like Guitar Center exploded, and all the cool stuff dropped in my backyard. I’m a really lucky guy, I have to admit.
I don’t like drum solos, to be honest with you, but if anybody ever told me he didn’t like Buddy Rich I’d right away say go and see him, at least the once.
But I’ve gravitated more towards the drum set.
When I was in the marching band, I used to take my snare drum and turn it over and use my drumstick and scratch on the other side. That was just being creative.
I like a bass drum. A big one.
I grew up watching Gregory Hines banging out rhythms like drum beats, and Jimmy Slyde dancing these melodies, you know, bop-bah-be-do-bap, not just tap-tap-tap. Everyone else was dancing in monotone, but I could hear the hoofers in stereo, and they influenced me to have this musical approach towards tap.
We call ourselves a free nation, and yet we let ourselves be told what cabs we can and can’t take by a man at a hotel door, simply because he has a drum major’s uniform on.
I used to drum on the table at school. I think a handful of my school reports say that they thought I might have some kind of ADD because I was making sounds. I was far from being an ADD child. I was actually quite quiet and well-behaved. But I used to drum on things.
And on the war, I think my numbers would be a lot higher if I were out there beating the drum for this war. In fact, I don’t think it, I know it. But I can’t be for the war.
Tupac has always been somebody who represented a higher consciousness of what it means on both sides of the coin to be black in America. He and Prince were leaders who moved to the beat of their own drum, and I can only hope to follow in their footsteps.
I became the European amateur champion in Liverpool back in 2008. I visited the Beatles museum, and after the final, I went to a drum and bass disco.
I’m not a player who beats his own drum.
The rhythmic feel of ‘Dark Days In Paradise’ is completely different to anything I’ve ever done before. There’s a lot of drum loops on there, but used in conjunction with real drums: a lot of influence from hip-hop and dance music, with the keyboard sound and sequencing.
Romanians love country dancing. At Christmas, you go house to house, and they play guitar and drum and a violin and everybody’s on their feet – well, it’s better than watching telly.
I used to do this huge jump off the drum riser. I had a good way of landing so I wouldn’t hurt myself, but then one time, I landed on my elbow.
I started with the organ and drums, and I later got into drum machines as a teenager.
When I was younger, I liked money – the feel of it. I would sit with my dad and count his coins and be like, ‘Yeah.’ I’d saved £700 by the age of 10. I thought: ‘What the hell am I hoarding this for?’ So I bought a drum kit.
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.
My favorite instrument is the snare drum. In Scotland, the snare drum is very prominent in Highland bands. The Scottish style of playing is in my blood. It’s a very powerful instrument, but it can also be soothing, like velvet. It’s a real challenge for composers.
I like to drum for various theatrical things.
As you know, I played a little trumpet with Elvis. I overdub a few drum licks here and there on a session, but I’m not a drummer by any means.
You form pretty strong opinions about the guys you compete against. You’re all very competitive; you’re all very selfish. So it’s easy to drum up some strong opinions in a second’s notice, like, ‘Argh! This guy!’
Anyone I have musical chemistry with, I recruit, and we do shows and create drum kits together and make tunes for the SoundCloud.
It’s important to recognize how special New Orleans is. You play the snare drum or the clarinet in any other city, and you’d be considered a nerd, but here, there’s no shame in it, and it’s absolutely valued.
The two books I’ve re-read more than any others are Guenter Grass’s ‘The Tin Drum’ and Victor Hugo’s ‘Notre-Dame de Paris’.
I worked at an ice cream parlor called Chadwicks. We wore old-timey outfits and had to bang a drum, play a kazoo, and sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to people while giving them free birthday sundaes. Lots of ice cream scooping and $1 tips.
I was in a Montessori school. There was a drum circle with all the kids passing around a little bongo drum. I was the last person in the circle, and when it got to me I played ‘Shave and a Haircut, Two Bits’ – in front of all the parents. Blew the crowd away at five years old.
I have relentlessly beat the drum for Google’s ‘two-step’ authentication systems for Gmail and other services, which radically reduce the likelihood that your account can be hacked from afar.
There are no more vices left – I don’t drink or smoke and at a party, after a while, I am lost. I don’t dance to the beat of that drum anymore.
I’ve never been one to think it was cheating to sample this or to loop the drum part there – I’ve always done that. Even using four-track cassette recorders, I was always doing whatever I could to make it as good as I could.
I played the drums. I basically started off in drum line. So it was just straight percussion. Then I got into the drum set. I was in the jazz band and then all through high school I was in orchestra.
I meet everybody. If somebody invites me to their house and they got a drum set close, I’m going to play, man. Let’s jam. I don’t care. Get in where you fit in and enjoy the experience.
I had some proper training, but that was only on snare drum. Learning all the techniques in marching bands and realizing how important it is to play tight set a standard for me for when I did get into a band.
I think a lot of people saw ‘Fight Club’ and thought, ‘Right, here’s our next Che Guevara, here’s our next Fidel Castro, here’s someone who’s going to wave the flag.’ And I was like, ‘No, it’s just a book. And if I beat that drum, if I play that song one more time, I won’t have a career.’
I don’t have perfect pitch. My drums sound like a drummer, not a drum machine.
Yeah, Travis Scott’s dad taught me how to ride minibikes and how to repair the engines. His name’s Jack Webster. Jack had a drum set and his brother had a bass. So I used to play with them, and that’s what started me wanting to get into music and take it serious. And this is before rap.
You know the drum was the first instrument besides the human voice.
Dad bought me a toy drum one Christmas, and I eventually destroyed it. I wanted a real drum and he bought me a snare drum. Dad continued to buy me one drum after the other.
When you’re going for a joke, you’re stuck out there if it doesn’t work. There’s nowhere to go. You’ve done the drum role and the cymbal clash and you’re out on the end of the plank.
‘Dog Days’ was recorded with pens and the wall, and half a stolen drum kit that was out of tune, in what was basically a cupboard. The only instrument I could really play was my voice, so we just layered everything a hundred times. It was enthusiasm over skill.
This is show business, and there’s room for the shows and the personalities. But I think there’s also room for music, for people to play music, and there seems to be an audience developing that’s willing to go listen to music again, rather than just be blown away by drum machines and choreography.
In my old age, I’ve learned that if I put the right cymbal crash in the very right spot, exactly, it can be as powerful as all my showoff drum rolls in my 20s.
I don’t even like doing drum solos live; to me, it’s like, ‘Ehhh.’ It doesn’t really interest me.
People always ask me what I did when things went wrong on stage with AC/DC. Nothing ever went wrong. I might drop a drum stick, maybe, but that was about the only thing.
I remember when I was writing ‘The Tin Drum,’ I had the totally misguided idea of giving Oskar Matzerath a sister, and he just wouldn’t have it. There was no space for a sister, yet I had the character of the sister in my head. In fact I used her in later novels, in ‘Cat and Mouse’ and ‘Dog Years,’ Tulla Pokriski.
I’m inspired by anyone who’s honest in their own expression, people who truly beat to the rhythm of their own drum.
I play a percussion instrument, not a musical saw; it needs no amplification. Where it’s needed, they put a microphone in front of the bass drum. But, I don’t think it’s necessary to play that way every night.
Yeah, my drum programming especially is based on my knowledge of playing a drum kit. For the bass too, definitely. It was the first thing that I translated any sort of ideas through. It must have shaped it somehow.
