Jazz Drummer Quotes

#1. Keith Moon is not interested in jazz and won't ever be a jazz drummer because he's more interested in looking good and being screamed at.

Pete Townshend

#2. I was a jazz drummer, and it was my life for a while: what I lived and breathed every day.

Damien Chazelle

#3. In 1962 I wrote for 'Jazz News,' using the pseudonym Manfred Manne, which I picked because of a jazz drummer with that name. I later dropped the 'e.'

Manfred Mann

#4. Nothing ever stays the same. Just because things aren't good now doesn't mean they will be that way forever ... Never quit.

Ziad K. Abdelnour

#5. My first album will be titled One Foot in Hell Already.

Cassandra Clare

#6. Even though I'm a jazz-trained drummer, I cut my teeth playing rock.

Jimmy Chamberlin

#7. In jazz, you listen to what the bass player is doing and what the drummer is doing, what the pianist and the guitarist is doing, and then you play something that compliments that, so you are thinking simultaneously and thinking ahead.

David Amram

#8. I can be whoever you want me to be: CIA, FBI, DIA, an agency so fucking secret you've never heard of it before. -Gabriel Allon

Daniel Silva

#9. Just because you're not a drummer doesn't mean you don't have to keep time.

Thelonious Monk

#10. I was here, & now, but I was also swimming in the past, living these same motions we'd made so many times before.

Beth Harbison

#11. The greatest contribution jazz has made in music has been to replace the role of the conductor with a member of the ensemble who, instead of waving his arms to keep time and convey mood, is an active member of the musical statement. That person is the drummer.

Elvin Jones

#12. People like Art Blakey and Buddy Rich, you look at them playing music, and it's just like looking at a heavy metal drummer. I mean, they're playing with the same amount of ferocity. It's not to say all jazz is like that.

Damien Chazelle

#13. I love more percussions more than anything. I always wanted to be a drummer.

Pharoah Sanders

#14. The sight of men filled her with an old, slow, strange mixture of tenderness and terror.

Peter S. Beagle

#15. I had a jazz trio, a rock n' roll band, and I played drums in junior high, high school, college, big bands, and I played timpani in the symphony. I am a drummer. It's the one instrument I actually play pretty well. It's just hard to carry on your back.

J. D. Souther

#16. If you mess around with jazz, you better have a good drummer and a good bass player.

Gunther Schuller