You either swing a band or don't swing a band and that's what's lacking today.. There aren't any guys who get back there and play with any kind of guts.
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.
If you have any requests. keep them to yourselves. we don't play requests!
If you can play, you can play anything. I don't like classifications.
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.
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.
I never believed in a set routine. It should depend on how you feel, because you play what you feel.
I think the drummer should sit back there and play some drums, and never mind about the tunes. Just get up there and wail behind whoever is sitting up there playing the solo. And this is what is lacking, definitely lacking in music today.
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.
But I've played with so many varied bands with varied musical tastes, that I feel qualified to have my own musical tastes at this point in my life.
But I think that any young drummer starting out today should get himself a great teacher and learn all there is to know about the instrument that he wants to play.
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.