Great drummers - quotes

A man goes up to Buddy Rich, after a show, and ask him "how do you play SO fast?" Buddy takes his drum sticks and lift the right stick up and do a very slow beat, then he lift the left stick up and do a very slow beat with that one too.. and then he says: "like that... but faster"
 
When Buddy Rich was at the hospital to do his scheduled heart-operation (the one he died at..) he was asked if he was allergic to anything and he shall have said: " Yes.. Country music."
 
Big one for me was from my one and only drum teacher (not sure if he had gotten it from anywhere): "Good enough, isn't."


This one is from when Brann Dailor filled out a survey for Meinl. The questionnaire asked what drumming meant to him, and he answered, "it means hit circles with pieces of wood in an orderly and fashionable manner." I like that.

According to that same questionnaire, Brann was born in the lost underwater city of Atlantis, and has been with Meinl since Lincoln was shot.
 
I can answer a few of those Pol...... ;-)


Was Macarthur Park about a dying relationship or young people dying from smack ODs?
The former.


Was the "turn me on dead man" line in Revolution 9 meant to fan the flames of the Paul-is-dead rumour?
This is the infamous backwards message line - double entendre

Is the love in All You Need Is Love platonic, intimate, theistic or ...?
It was the Beatles' answer to Woodstock (and recording the song was the excuse why they couldn't be there)

Was All Along the Watchtower about the Counterculture coming to sweep away a hubristic Establishment?
We will not know until Bob releases the final verse of the song..... - revealing what happened when the 2 riders arrived?


2c
 
I really like this one from John Robinson is his interview with MD.
"Nowadays you could go find a plumber working on somebody's house and have him play drums for a minute and make him sound good."
 
"My names John Bonham, I'm a drummer and I'm potty about cars."

"Bollocks this for a game of soldiers"

John Henry Bonham.
 
"Dude, just one of these days I'm going to get on a bus, and then when it stops I am going to get off. And I'm going to run, and run into the woods and never come back, and when I come back I am going to be the knife master!" -The Rev.
 
"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."

"You only get better by playing."

-Buddy Rich

"Playing well with others is important - not being too flashy, just keeping good time and of course coming up with cool beats. A good snare drum, kick drum, high hat. Just getting good at the hand feet coordination."

-Chad Smith

"I've always liked Dennis Chambers, he's real flashy."

-Travis Barker


"What is the best music is impossible to define. Just because it's played by a virtuoso player, doesn't mean it's great music. It might not reflect the soul of a people, which is really my criteria for great music."

-Mickey Hart

"That's all drugs and alcohol do, they cut off your emotions in the end."

-Ringo Starr


How's that for a contribution?
 
I love this one from Paul Motian:
There's a specific tempo that's stated in the very beginning, and that's already there. I don't have to force it on to everybody else and myself included. I don't have to enforce it. It's happening already. I don't have to do shit. I could have just stayed there and not played a fuckin' note. They're playing along, they're playing that speed, you know? And so, what I'm doing is trying to add some kind of music to that.
 
Just digging around the site and found this cool thread. Here's a quote from a hand drummer that I think still very much applies to all drumming.

"Groove has a relationship to the whole area of trance, repetition, meditation and hypnosis. One view is that by repeating things beyond a certain point, the listener`s mind is forced to jump off to a new place. But rhythm goes very deep at instinctive level too, and has become increasingly an antidote for me to excess infomation. Losing myself in playing a hand drum gives me a route to shedding all the clutterings and clammerings of a world over-rich with media, and finding a more wholesome space."
~ James Asher

Also I've been searching for a quote I used to have about drumming/drummers. I'm not sure who it was by. It talks about all musicians having rhythm but that drummer's are the ones called upon to anchor this rhythm to the earth. Something along those lines, does anybody have or know of this?
 
My drum teacher gave me one of my favorites:

"I can't teach this to you, you are going to have to catch it"

He was talking about groove and feel.
 
From Tommy Clufetos:

It's that playing is not the only ingredient to a successful working career in music.

Tommy adds, "It's the showing up on time, getting along with people, having an upbeat attitude, and you must maintain a strong work ethic. You have to be willing to go to any length to be the best you can be."
 
Could someone please make me feel really stupid by explaining the meaning of Steve Gadds "never pet a burning dog" quote?

I've heard it in business contexts before. For instance, if people are in a tense moment because they're trying to work out a specific problem and tempers are getting heated up, don't go in and throw in your two cents to stir the pot. In a musical sense, if the producer and the writer are going at it, chill out and do your job with cool professionalism.
That's my take.
 
Thanks Spreggy.

I heard a great quote from the great drummer Winston Churchill

If you're going through Hell, keep going.
 
Not a drummer, but still:

"For me, that’s what’s so self-defeating about being in a band - that people tend to over-talk the situation. There’s no need to be a fucking method actor. If you trust the end result, and hopefully everyone in the band does, then it’ll work out. But I think sometimes they just don’t get it."

-Cedric Bixler-Zavala, Singer of The Mars Volta and At the Drive-In
 
I've heard it in business contexts before. For instance, if people are in a tense moment because they're trying to work out a specific problem and tempers are getting heated up, don't go in and throw in your two cents to stir the pot. In a musical sense, if the producer and the writer are going at it, chill out and do your job with cool professionalism.
That's my take.

I think I got a real answer to this never pet a burning dog thing. This makes the most sense out of anything I've seen so far. From Yahoo answers:

It means not to jump into a situation blindly, without assessing it thoroughly - otherwise you could get hurt or cause more damage.
 
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