Ongoing History Daily: How Dave Grohl started on drums
Learning to play the drums is expensive because you need all that gear. But if you really want to learn, you can improvise without having a kit.
Take Dave Grohl, for example. There’s a reason why he became such a hard hitter when it came to his playing style. When he was growing up, there was no money for a proper drumkit so he learned to play using whatever he could. The drumsticks he used were designed for marching bands, so they were thick and heavy.
With no kit, he arranged pillows in the form of a drum set and played along to records by The Ramones and Minor Threat—which were all really, really fast. It wasn’t until he was 16 that he acquired a set of normal drumsticks and a proper kit.
But by that time, he was so strong that he bashed everything with incredible power. He remembers “I was breaking cymbals like they were teacups.” Hey, whatever works, right?