Top 33 Drummers Quotes

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

Travis Barker is one of the greatest drummers ever, and all the guys in blink are really good songwriters.

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

I’ve played with the best drummers in rock, ranging from Josh Freese to Brooks Wackerman to even Dave Lombardo.

Jazz drummers traditionally are not always prepared to just hold down the beat; it’s like they’re soloing the whole time.

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 had a lot of teachers. When I think about my upbringing I feel like the most fortunate person. It was a marvellous era for drummers.

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

There’s quite a few people who said they couldn’t play with two drummers, and I don’t understand it. It’s no different than playing with two guitar players, two trumpets, or two anythings.

One day I decided to go to a hardware store – I picked up six pieces of wood, a hammer and nails, and built a box. It probably sounded useless at the time but its taken me to where I am today, and its been well received from drummers and percussionists like Josh Devine from One Direction and Robbie Williams drummer.

‘Whiplash’ was always the song I hated the most because it’s a song designed to screw with 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.

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.

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.

I look up to a lot of old school drummers from the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s.

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.

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.

With every record, with each band, I just try to make a song good. I’m not so much focusing on my technique. There are a million better drummers than me. I try to adapt to the songwriter; I try to adapt to the situation and retain my sort of melodic power. My goal is for the band to be good.

I’d rather be entertained and go to a show and watch a drummer and have somebody that makes me actually smile. So I don’t judge drummers based on their technical ability; I judge them based on the overall package and what they bring to the music they’re part of.

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.

With ‘Iowa,’ if you ask me, we really passed up a lot of things that we could have done with the two auxiliary drummers. I mean they hardly touched their drums on that album.

Both my brothers are drummers.

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.

As a drummer, I always approach things as, ‘I want to play just enough to keep other drummers interested, but not enough to go over the average listener’s head.’

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.

For singers and drummers, you’ve really gotta have your chops together just to do a rehearsal.

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.

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

In New York, the drummers rush for a reason – because there’s so much energy crackling through everything in that city and so many collisions at a highly accelerated rate.

Drummers don’t write – or at least, that’s what everybody believes.

All the guys I know that play guitar are also secretly drummers and vice versa.

I usually speak with all my drummers so that I write my songs with them in mind, and we’ll have bass sounds, choir sounds, and then you can multi-task with all these orchestral sounds. Through the magic medium of technology, I can play all kinds of sounds – double bass and stuff.

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.