Ben Thatcher
Karl Brazil: “Which drummers were influencing you when you first started playing?”
Ben Thatcher: “For me, it was the rock and metal guys – Dave Grohl, Brad Wilk, Jon Theodore, Chad Smith – but I guess Chad was the person I looked up to most. He made drumming look so fun, and his groove was heavy with that funk element. I was literally addicted to his video Red Hot Rhythm Method, with him and Flea playing through tracks from Blood Sugar Sex Magik. I watched it over and over…”
K: “Do you think that you were born with a natural groove?”
B: “I started playing very young and had my first proper kit by the age of six, so I do think that there is a seed you are born with. But you need to develop and grow it through practise, and there are definitely some people without that seed...”
K: “Very delicately put, and I agree that it’s a natural ability that you can develop through the drummers that inspire you and the music that you listen to. What did you do as a kid to improve your skills?”
“I played to a lot of music – nu-metal and, before that, pop, like the Spice Girls and Britney Spears. Pop was a massive thing for me when it came to planting groove actually, because you could play your chops over those songs but also still come back to the groove – whereas the nu-metal stuff
