Author Profile
John Densmore
1944 • American • Musician
61
Total Quotes
Collected Meditations
Showing 61 quotesI 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.— John Densmore
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.— John Densmore
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.— John Densmore
If you surrender to the communal vision, sometimes, certainly in our case, you become more than the sum of your parts.— John Densmore
In the '60s, the Sunset Strip became insane. The sidewalks and the traffic were jammed. It was a renaissance.— John Densmore
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.— John Densmore
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.— John Densmore
If somebody makes a really wonderful, ecological car, I'm down, no matter where it comes from.— John Densmore
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.— John Densmore
Pete Townshend keeps fooling us again, selling Who songs to yuppies hungry for SUVs.— John Densmore
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!— John Densmore
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.— John Densmore
I sometimes joke that I'm half Jewish, because I was raised Catholic... and we share 'the guilt.'— John Densmore
We used to build our cities and towns around churches. Now banks are at the centers of our densely populated areas.— John Densmore
I stumbled onto Peggy Feury in the '80s. I recognized her brilliance immediately; it took her awhile to recognize mine.— John Densmore
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.— John Densmore