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I'm a street player, and all of my influences come from bands that I was listening to at the time when I was growing up. I was very impressed with guys like Mitch Mitchell. I liked rock and roll drummers, and I loved rhythm and blues guys like Clyde Stubblefield with James Brown. Man, that band blew me away all of the time.

Joey Kramer

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

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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.

Technology You Write

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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.

Experience Chance Art

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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.

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

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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.

Music Experience Without

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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I've never thought too much of 'Rolling Stone.' The first thing I'd do is look at about 50 or 60 of the drummers they have ahead of me and go, 'Oh yeah, right!'

Yeah Too Much Too

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

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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.

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

Damien Chazelle

Design Wit Whip

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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.

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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.

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It's not so surprising that there are more women in metal bands. And they're not just fronting them. There are drummers and guitar players, bass players.

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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.

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

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There are a lot more women drummers now than there used to be, and I'd like to think that I'm part of the reason.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

When the album 'Duke' came out, by Genesis, Phil Collins beat Dad in a drummers poll. My dad got me to learn 'Turn It On Again' by Genesis. I'd play it, and he'd go, 'Do it again,' until I got it right. I'd play it until I nailed it, and then he went, 'I don't see what the big deal is. My 12-year-old son could play that song.'

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.

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.

I'm a street player, and all of my influences come from bands that I was listening to at the time when I was growing up. I was very impressed with guys like Mitch Mitchell. I liked rock and roll drummers, and I loved rhythm and blues guys like Clyde Stubblefield with James Brown. Man, that band blew me away all of the time.

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

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.

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

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.

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

In my last band, Soundgarden, I had a couple of different drummers sit in on some stuff and it was fun for me to kind of take a break and watch the band.

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.

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

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.

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'm looking at EarDrummers like a boutique label, like an Interscope or a Def Jam.

Mike Will Made It

I wanted to find raw talent and help build it from scratch. I wanted to build from rags to riches. That's the way Ear Drummers did it. We took over the music industry from my mom's basement. That's why my first album is going to be called 'Made It Out the Basement.'

Mike Will Made It

You'd be surprised. Drummers ape each other. The way every rock n' roll record sounds like something else but not all together. Everything other drummers play, if you're playing drums, they all hear.

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.

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.

Hendrix rehearsed different drummers, before we met Mitch Mitchell.

Being a female guitar player back in school wasn't great, and I had to change schools so many times. The male drummers and bass players thought it was cool, but male guitar players said, 'It's a guy's thing. You should be doing something else, like playing the harp.'

Drummers are like sharks. They have to move all the time or they die.

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.

Ringo is incredible. He's the greatest. Simon Kirke is great as well, so is Ian Paice. All of these British drummers from the '60s are great. They were big influences on me.

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!