Half the time, my job is basically to talk people off the ledge. It's more psychological than just me picking up some sticks and counting, "1, 2, 3, 4."

I cannot keep a girlfriend longer than seven months. I have 12 jobs. I don't have time for my personal life. I'm fully aware that this is the sacrifice.

And more importantly, I wouldn't be the person I am today, I wouldn't be where I am now and I may not even have been here if it wasn't for the accident.

I'm a great thief. I like to lift stuff and play it better. The real trick is taking whatever you've stolen and trying to do something different with it.

In West Virginia, we're all family. We know how firefighters and policemen honor their own and we feel our miners deserve to be honored in a similar way.

I feel like before I came to the planet I asked God for the gift of music. I didn't want to come here without the gift of music and God granted it to me.

I have great samples of my drums and I try to program them pretty much how I want to play them, try and make it feel natural even though it's programmed.

I think that people should learn about that. In most music, there's one way that you do something, and that's the only way. In jazz, it's a lot different.

I've seen Keith fall asleep at business meetings about millions of dollars for him-because of heroin, just nod out and then wake up and answer a question.

I really don't have a theme when I start a sculpture. The rock guides me to the final sculpture. I think that is true for many creative sculpture artists.

I think that the jazzy approach that I have is based on the way that I hear music and in the way I play a supporting role to the other people in the band.

If you can get a twelve year-old kid to go listen to Thelonius Monk, what more do you want? Do you want a big pile of cash, too? That's a home run for me.

All I ever wanted to do was play the drums; I felt good about myself when I played the drums. So I worked anywhere and everywhere I could lug my drums in.

I have so much gratitude that I get to do this for a living and that I actually have fans who come to the shows and buy the records and support me online.

The Chronic represented everything that I hated about hip-hop as a fan, but then later represented everything that I stood for as a musician and engineer.

Thinking about what songs are coming next instead of just relaxing, breathing and playing from my heart. Sometimes it can get to be almost like the enemy.

I will never take anything away from Pantera. It was great; we had fourteen amazing years together. But it's no longer here. My brother is no longer here.

I don't like drum solos, to be honest with you, but if anybody ever told me he didn't like Buddy Rich I'd right away say go and see him, at least the once.

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.

In Adrenaline Mob there are five guys that are all absolutely insanely energetic performers each of their own right. It's like a five-ring circus on stage!

I'm not one of those people who's so blinded by my own work and my sweat. It's kind of risky writing a memoir when you're really part of a larger universe.

The fountain of youth with the youthful young musician is one meaning, and the fountain of youth with the youthful energy of the leader is another meaning.

Every time you play you have energy within you - universal energy. That's the energy that keeps everything together - the planets, the galaxies. Everything.

I would have told him that I appreciated his friendship through the years and that I had learned a lot from him. I really loved Frank like you do a brother.

You can't be everything. Nobody is everything. You just do what you do, and you try to do that as well as you can. And if somebody doesn't like it, too bad.

Close to the Edge, Red, One of a kind, Discipline, Earthworks, The Sound of Surprise, all seem to me to be albums that captured the essence of the intention.

It's the honesty you apply to your playing that makes music enjoyable. The style of the music has little to do with it. It's only honesty makes it beautiful.

The drum is the heart of music. The saxophone can play and then rest, as can all of them except the drums; the drummer keeps going - he can't afford to stop.

I think that you really don't have a choice, when you see that things are wrong the only choice you really have is to just do what you can to make it better.

Cruelty towards animals and child abuse make me feel vulnerable. I wish there was more I could do. I try to spread positive messages through my social media.

I'm a music fan first and foremost. I can find the beauty in Jellyfish and U2 just as much as Opeth and Lamb of God, just as much as I can with Rush and Yes.

The one thing about Billie is he will snap and rip your head off if you point anything out at all other than how beautiful he is and how nice he looks today.

My roots and Victor's are jazz, basically, but these two young fellows that we have with us come out of rock bands. And they're tremendously exciting players.

The spirit of what we do is that you do what you feel and when you feel it and not feel you have to be something you're not: you have to be honest to yourself.

I think all of those things, but certainly the booze really brought out the really unreasonable side of me, and I just didn't want to revisit that place again.

If Carlos and I were books, he'd be a Nietzsche book, and I'd be a Hubert Selby book - totally different mindsets. But musically, it all fell right into place.

The first time I ever went to Chicago was with Zappa and I had a fantastic experiences with him and every other band I've played with. It's a great music town.

Sometimes you get too jaded, too seasoned. With Hellyeah, we've been having a lot of fun. From the minute we sat down in the studio, there was a lot of energy.

In 1999, we did a thing called the 'Reinventing The Steel' tour with Pantera, when I was still with them, and Slayer was part of that, and it was a great tour.

I think that the old Mothers started that trend of rehearsing long hours. We went as long as the later bands did except we didn't get paid for it like they did.

Well, everybody's a drummer, I'll tell you that right now. Everybody knows what's right rhythmically for a song, so there were always suggestions flying my way.

I have tons of tunes, maybe 30 tunes that I still think are great, and only because some jerk at a record company didn't think it was great, it's not out there.

I wish people would turn off their computers, go outside, talk to people, touch people, lick people, enjoy each other's company and smell each other on the rump

But back then the thing that saved me was the music, and it's certainly the music that saves me now. The music, my family and my friends and everybody around me.

I don't consider myself a great drummer. I consider myself just a music fan that's a very, very passionate artist, and the drums just happen to be my instrument.

You've really got to keep on improving and improving and improving. It still involves work. It's not like you get to a point, and then you're good and that's it.

There are things I've kept over the years and then someday I might pull up a program of some tune that I've done and I go "Wow, I know what to do with this now".

I wish people would turn off their computers, go outside, talk to people, touch people, lick people, enjoy each other's company and smell each other on the rump.

In 1994, we had the first record by a true heavy metal band to ever hit the Billboard top No. 1 slot. We paved the way. And we always waved the heavy metal flag.

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.'

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