Terry Bozzio quotes:

From the time I started playing solo drums, doing clinics and stuff, you know I think one of the largest selling clinics I ever did was in Chicago.

I don't really have that much control over where I play. I put out parameters and I accept what I can. If it's really low, or I had a bad experience at a place then I usually don't play there again.

I don't think I can play the game and sell myself.

I'm not Stravinsky, I never will be.

I'm not a haiku artist, but I wanted to use the phrase 5, 7, 5 in the melody that flows over time. So the string melody, the first one is five notes, the next one is seven, and then the third one is five.

I don't think I really started to seriously compose until around that time when I was 40.

I have tons of tunes, maybe 30 tunes that I still think are great, and only because some jerk at a record company didn't think it was great, it's not out there.

I married my Japanese wife Mayumi who I'm so happy with, she's been so supportive. I live part time in Japan at her house, so I've been always very influenced by Japan. Since I guess the 70's or so. I've come to appreciate so much of their culture.

All of your experience comes into play when you're composing.

Being a professional does not have a very high standard.

Half the stuff I've written was written when I was half asleep watching the David Letterman show when some boring actress was on talking about herself. I would just mute the TV, look over to the computer and start plugging in notes. Then the next morning you go "Wow, I like this". I'd almost forget what I did, and then it would inspire me to go on and do the next thing. That's what I do. Just kind of follow my own little thing.

I always liked to make something creative.

I do the same thing every night, but different.

I don't have to be a success. I can just try.

I don't know where I'm going, and I don't care where I'm going. As long as I can just do it.

I feel qualified and competent to try anything that's thrown my way because I don't have to be a success. I can just try.

I had been composing just for myself, and people would say I played so orchestrally, and wondered if I thought about having someone write a piece for me for an orchestra. And I thought, I don't want someone else to write that. You know I finally had made an overhead chart of my drums and what pitches the cymbals and toms were tuned to, and what have you. And I started to compose just with what I had for my solo drumming.

I have great samples of my drums and I try to program them pretty much how I want to play them, try and make it feel natural even though it's programmed.

I just want to make music on the drums.

I really think kids should understand that music is like learning the alphabet. You put small letters together to make words, and then you use these words to create a story, but with music. And they really need to know how to mix and match those letters and how to come up with something that is really interesting, or speak in metaphors as poets do to show us something maybe we didn't think about.

I think by the time I finished college I was calling myself a professional because I was, you know. I was making a living playing music.

I think my music is great for film, but I don't have the opportunity, or goesche to go and pitch myself to Hollywood.

I try to put what's evocative in the music to me, I try and put that out there in terms of titles and imagery, or implication towards the listener.

I'd love to do music for films.

If I had my brothers I think with just a little bit of the correct marketing, I'd like to be almost exclusively in small theaters. You know, to me it's like a church for music. You can sit down and really give yourself to the performance and be comfortable with good surroundings and a clean, quiet atmosphere.

If I practice I'll really alienate people.

If it's something that I just can't get anywhere with, even if I think this could be a hit, I just drop it and it doesn't get developed.

If you enjoy learning, if you enjoy the curiosity of music and what can be done with it, and stop looking at it as something you have to do because someone says this is what you have to do to be a professional, you know, learn it because you're curious about it and then I think you'll have a much better creative sense and enable this inner voice to come out. These things are not taught and are not encouraged.

I'm happy doing what I do. That's ok. Some guy could appear tomorrow and do it much better than me, and so be it, but right now I'm just happy to be who I am doing what I do.

I'm not going to limit myself in ways to compose or how I should record. You just do what you can with what you've got at the moment.

I'm not Zappa, you know. I'm just Terry.

I'm pretty proud of everything I've done.

I'm very grateful to be where I'm at and be able to play. That's really the bottom line for me. Survival and being able to play.

In America there are some places that are just gorgeous to play.

In America we're in this awful situation, and you know, I hardly get any royalties anymore because music is just stolen from the internet.

In the liner notes, music is fine by itself. It doesn't need any explanation.

It's very difficult to make a living in music these days. All it takes is somebody paying.

I've composed all my life and kept things, and even developed things I've done in college into something now.

Japan and Europe seem to have a little more cultural education and so the crowds have been a little more big and enthusiastic, and the places I've played seem a little more classy.

Money and fame are very inconvenient and very problematic.

My motives at a young age were, "I want to be rich and famous".

Of course the headspace for the young musician is whatever the guy who is paying you says, is right, but that's all.

People YouTube me and crap and then, they probably don't want to see me after seeing a friendly posted YouTube video, so I'm constantly having to take those down.

Some great experiences I've had and little by little I've come to the realization that everything Frank Zappa told me was the truth, whether I wanted to believe it or not. You know, I was young and naive or in denial. But he really was a special, special human being.

Sometimes I feel like a one man crusade against the devaluation of music in America and culture in the arts.

The best thing is to find something you really love to do and enjoy that process for the rest of your life.

The first time I ever went to Chicago was with Zappa and I had a fantastic experiences with him and every other band I've played with. It's a great music town.

The way we teach is a very linear kind of way.

There are things I've kept over the years and then someday I might pull up a program of some tune that I've done and I go "Wow, I know what to do with this now".

There's many possibilities for anything.

There's nothing that can prepare you for fame and for the music business at any point in history.

There's things I'd like to do, but I've found that pretty much anything that I try to will to happen doesn't happen, but if you just kind of let go and let things fall into place, somehow I end up being able to do the right thing or the right time.

We have a society that wants somebody to come out of college with a degree that will make them a slave for whatever discipline they're in.

When I was in eighth grade said sit in at a graduation party and I played 'Boys' by The Beatles and fifty people were standing around with their mouths open. And you kind of get the hint, well maybe I should do this because I'm not very good at sports, I'm not that popular, I'm not very smart, and I'm not very good looking, but when I played the drums, everybody liked it.

Where does Terry live? Somewhere deep inside. So I just let that come out and try to make something out of it without worrying about techniques or rules or any of that stuff. Just do it, you know. As long as it doesn't burn or get deleted, you know, then somebody will find it someday and I will have left something that I think is beautiful.

You don't know where you're going.

You have to study composition to understand that things can be done backwards and forwards and upside down, inverted, but it's mainly just an inner valid intuitive thing. Where do you want to go? Ok this is busy, or this needs some space, or this is too much space so now I want to put more notes in there or something. It's all about contrast. High, low. Fast, slow, thick or thin or what have you. And it's the same with improvisation.

You just chip away until the puzzle is complete.

You just write one word and that tells you what the next word is going to be.

You stick your nose in the dirt until you find something that smells good.

You try to improvise in a compositional manner. You don't just do some stupid lick you've been practicing, scale form exercises or something.