I never desperately wanted to be a jazz drummer. If anything, I was motivated a lot by fear. Fear of the conductor, fear of the future.

As a drummer, you're always fighting for a level that you never quite attain.

I was a jazz drummer, and it was my life for a while: what I lived and breathed every day.

My motivation for being a good drummer was born out of fear, which, in a way, seems so antithetical to what art should be.

The end result of my personal story is that I became a really good drummer, and I know myself well enough to know that I wouldn't have without this really tough conductor and this really cutthroat hostile environment I was in.

People like Art Blakey and Buddy Rich, you look at them playing music, and it's just like looking at a heavy metal drummer. I mean, they're playing with the same amount of ferocity. It's not to say all jazz is like that.