John Densmore

I don't like totally free jazz, unless it's done by somebody like Coltrane, who did bebop and cool jazz, so he was allowed to go out there.

You know, another jazz drummer, Ed Thigpen, who played with Oscar Peterson way back - it was the first time I ever heard rivets in a cymbal. And then I heard that Chico Hamilton had them too, and I went, 'Oh, that's it. I'm taking that for my sound.' And it worked well on 'Riders On The Storm,' so that's one thing.

When I do a press roll, I use the traditional grip. Sometimes I flip it around; for a louder crack on the two and four, I use the new grip.

Well, I've discovered that I really like writing, and I feel that I'm good at it.

If you surrender to the communal vision, sometimes, certainly in our case, you become more than the sum of your parts.

In the '60s, the Sunset Strip became insane. The sidewalks and the traffic were jammed. It was a renaissance.

I had no clue of Hollywood until I became a teenager. Then I got a fake ID in Tijuana and discovered Shelly's Manne-Hole, on Cahuenga and Selma, where I saw John Coltrane and his piano player, McCoy Tyner, and Elvin Jones, the drummer - my idol.

In the '50s, West L.A. was like Kansas.

When I was in my 20s I went through my testosterone phase and had a Mercedes to show that I'm rich, and they used to call me 'Jaguar John.' I'm older now, and I'm concerned about the environment and... appreciate a car that doesn't pollute.

If somebody makes a really wonderful, ecological car, I'm down, no matter where it comes from.

I like driving at least a part-time electric car because there's nothing coming out of the tailpipe. That's very important to me.

Pete Townshend keeps fooling us again, selling Who songs to yuppies hungry for SUVs.

I remember thinking: 'Why is Jim's face so big?' on the cover of our first album, 'The Doors.' Probably because it wouldn't have sold a lot of copies if it were my face!

I like connecting new synapses. Like Jim Morrison did.

A major component of jazz is improvisation, which forces you to stay in the moment because you never know what will be coming up. There's a lot of freedom and space available as you improvise around the chord changes.

I sometimes joke that I'm half Jewish, because I was raised Catholic... and we share 'the guilt.'

The whole world is hopefully heading toward democracy.

We used to build our cities and towns around churches. Now banks are at the centers of our densely populated areas.

I stumbled onto Peggy Feury in the '80s. I recognized her brilliance immediately; it took her awhile to recognize mine.

If I had been the drummer for the Grassroots, it probably wouldn't have cut me to the core when I heard John Lennon's 'Revolution' selling tennis shoes... and Nikes, to boot! That song was the soundtrack to part of my youth, when the streets were filled with passionate citizens expressing their First Amendment right to free speech.