Jason Bonham Quotes

Gene Krupa was my big hero, and I used to play on my mother's flour cans and sugar cans with the kitchen knives, listening to the big bands on my dad's records. Gene Krupa and Harry James.

I'm very influenced by jazz drummers. I always liked drummers like Roger Taylor, Keith Moon, Ian Paice, John Densmore. I just learned from playing to those drummers.

A guy called Arthur Brown... was a big influence of mine... and also Ian Anderson from Jethro Tull.

Tony Williams, Billy Cobham and Lenny White; some of those guys were big influences on me.

Some of my heroes are John Bonham, Keith Moon, Neil Peart, Ringo Starr, Terry Bozzio, Bill Bruford... The list goes on and on and on.

Lars Ulrich, he was my hero growing up. I wanted to be like him. I played the drums.

Tommy Aldridge is the guy that made me wanna play double kick, man.

I got my first set of drums when I was around 3. I went from band to marching band to Latin jazz band - it's like riding a bike.

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.

No one sits in front of a drum set and thinks they invented it all out of whole cloth. The fact that the set is there means that you've got some dues to pay to Baby Dodds.

My primary influences were the best jazz players from the 50's and 60's and later some of the pop people from the same time period along with the better of the well known blues musicians.

I would say my greatest musical influences have been Ella Fitzgerald and Mary J. Blige.

My father was a jazz listener, and I think, at least before I was 5, I was not so into that. Although there were records that emphasized percussion that I liked, like Baby Dodds.

Oh, I was super serious about practicing and rudiments, and still am. I still have all my books.

Age 10. I joined the school marching band as a drummer.

I tended to lean towards the guys who both sang and played, such as Ricky Skaggs, Vince Gill, Steve Wariner... And at the other end of the spectrum, I had Eric Clapton in a rock and blues sense, jazz guys such as Tal Farlow and Les Paul... Then Chet Atkins-type stuff.

I was inspired by Billie Holliday, and I really liked Mary Weiss of the Shangri-Las because she wore tight trousers and a waistcoat on top - she looked hot.

Queen and Bon Jovi, Aerosmith and Guns N' Roses - I had a huge rock-band mania. I play a little bit of drums.

To me, Bill's musical heart is in Earthworks, in the jazz they are playing, in the acoustic kit.

I worked with a guy, I can't think of his name, him and his wife, and one of them had a saxophone and the other played drums. It wasn't a regular job but I did a few gigs around home with them.

Growing up, I was inspired by The Beatles and Bob Dylan. Damian Rice was a huge influence for me musically.

When I try to explain to people the big influences in my life, or at least when I first started, the most important ones were my friends who were also writing songs and were typically four or five years older than me.

I started playing drums at about seven or eight. My mom used to let me play with the pots and pans, and instead of telling me to stop like most moms would, she just let me do it. So the noise kind of turned into music. From that point on, musically, that's what I want to do: start creating beats.

According to my parents, I just started drumming when I was two. I traveled with them from five to seven on the road, playing percussion. Between 8 and 12, my dad sort of prepared me by teaching me every aspect of road life.

My dream job is to be a rock drummer and the alternate drummer for the Foo Fighters.