Mike Gordon Quotes

And I like messing around in the engine room of music. Seeing what happens in the rhythm section area.

The heart of a music is its rhythm. The heart of rhythm section music is the rhythm.

There's something about rhythm and bass sections generally, how the bass and drums interact, that's basically the soul of any song.

The bass should be the note of the bass drum, and then you've got the engine of the band that everything else builds on. Everything else, the guitar, the keyboards, is a colour.

I tend to think of the organ as part of the rhythm section, rather than a frontline voice.

Perhaps of all the most basic elements of music, rhythm most directly affects our central nervous system.

Most great records really start with the drums.

I consider every drummer that ever played before me an influence, in every way.

The bass player's function, along with the drums, is to be the engine that drives the car... everything else is merely colours.

But primarily, the drummer's supposed to sit back there and swing the band.

How can you not love a man banging on the drums? He knows how to keep a rhythm.

I like rhythmic things that butt up against each other in a cool kind of way.

The drums tell me everything. Everything else registers a millisecond later.

Essentially my contribution was to introduce repetition into Western music as the main ingredient without any melody over it, without anything just repeated patterns, musical patterns.

It's been years and years and years I've been playing the drums, and they're still a challenge. I still enjoy using drumsticks and a snare drum.

I can always tell if a band has a British rhythm section due to the gritty production.

It's always been my dream to have a monster rhythm section that's just all groove and pocket.

My role in AC/DC is to keep time and to drive the band as much as I can. That's a drummer's role anyway.

Playing drums, for me, is like breathing. It's like thinking. It's like eating. It's like walking.

Obviously, I like the drums to be heard. I think they're important.

The main rhythmic loop in 'Alaska' is me just patting on my jeans.

The core of all the music I love is a good bass line and a good rhythm.

My playing is always just a little on top of the beat. I can't lay down the kind of groove that Brad Wilk can. I'd really have to lay back to do that; it just doesn't feel natural to me.

Being a bass player in a band without a drummer for seven, eight years has been kind of weird.

With 'Under the Pressure,' I just found two chords I liked, and built it up, did like a ten-minute drum pattern.