When I was about six a friend got a nice new blue sparkle snare drum kit with brushes and sticks and the little cymbal that mounted on the snare stand. And he could tap out marching band cadences like a pro! That did it for me. The look and the sound of the snares.....I was hooked for life right then and there. Pestered my parents four long years before I finally got my own drum. I would tap away to whatever crummy song was playing on the console back in 1975. But Ringo was certainly an early inspiration as was Buddy Rich who I considered like Bruce Lee on the drums. Oh ya I also admired circus drummers, they always seemed better technically capable than your run of the mill rock drummers.

i started because of Dave which is a friend of mine from high school who was simply a better guitar player than i was so i became the drummer of the band, we had a punk rock band though so it was kinda cool to not really know how to play and just wing it

Another one for Peter Criss.

As kids my brother and I would set up Lincoln log buckets and Tinkertoy tin lids as drums and cymbals next to A round hassock on its side to look like a bass drum. We would take turns playing guitar on a Wiffle ball bat or imitating the drum solo from the ALIVE album.

Years later my brother got to play drums in elementary school. I wanted to play bass like Gene Simmons (probably just wanted to be a monster)

Sometime later when my brother was learning to play Motley Crue and Ozzy Osbourne songs I sat behind his set of Stewart/star/Ludwig/cb700 mix match drums and played the drum fill from the KISS song "ladies room" so I dug out "rock and roll over" and listened to it and tried copying the drum beat, in a day I had it!

My brothers friends all thought it was cool that I could play the whole song being that I was only 6 or 7 years old. So I learned nearly every KISS song we had on record and it just went from there. Mind you most of those songs were already going on ten years old and KISS.had long since taken off their makeup. I got use to saying "I like OLD KISS".

In the 70's, a local kid, about four years older than me named Tony Hunt, was a fantastic drummer. I'd walk three miles up to town, Dayton NY, just to watch him play. He played every week in his family owned restaurant/hotel/bar... I begged my parents for a set of drums, they bought me a Royce set, which I loved. I've searched for him recently, he's still playing drums, apparently living around Cleveland.

I searched again today, it's not the younger guy that tops the search page, this guy has to be 54 by now.

Edit: Hey! I found a video of him...

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUohiSiWNzY"]Tony Hunt Project - YouTube[/ame]

My brother had these drum sticks painted black with all sorts of designs painted on them,by my brother.He built all sorts of models when he was a young fellow in the 50's.Anyway watching the Lloyd Thaxton show,then Shindig,Hallaballoooooo ect There was a boardwalk show from LA what was good to. I copied all of the drummers I saw and in 65 got a set of drums and have been hitting them ever since

I'm part of the third of four generations of musicians in my family. My grandmother (on my dad's side) had a jazz band in the 40s and 50s in Melbourne, she played piano. My grandfather played banjo, sax and drums. Consequently my dad and my uncle joined the band, dad on trumpet and my uncle on drums. Both became jazz legends in Australia and indeed around the world - Bob and Len Barnard, you may possibly have heard of them. Bob, my dad, is in his eighties now and still plays the sh!t out of the trumpet. Len passed in 2005, but was and is one of the most respected jazz drummers in Oz.

So, being a kid with all this, the house was always full of musos, both local and international. I got to meet Kenny Ball and Acker Bilk, Turk Murphy, Barney Kessel, Ralph Sutton, and my late mother told me when I was a tiny baby I threw up on Jimmy Smith! A lot of people came to that house...

Influences for me drum-wise are pretty eclectic, given what I was exposed to. My brother Tony, a guitar player, was into Django, Hendrix and Emerson Lake & Palmer; my dad was into Louis Armstrong and Bix Beiderbecke; my sister was into Cat Stevens and Blood Sweat & Tears; and my mother listened to opera and classical music. So, the guys who influenced me are legion, but here's some names, in no particular order:

Buddy Rich, Ray Bauduc, Max Roach, Ed Thigpen, Shelley Manne, Jake Hannah (who I was lucky enough to meet at Ronnie Scotts about 10 years ago. He came to my gig!!), Carl Palmer, Ringo, my uncle Len, Louis Bellson, Bartholomew Barriemore, Bobby Durham, Krupa...

And I was using a crappy Maxwin kit when I started and wondering why I couldn't get the sound I wanted!

Oh, just a sideline, Len was also a demon washboard player, so I do that as well! Love the washboard - only one bag to carry! (Check out jugalugstringband.com.au for a bit of a look-see).

Sorry if I've waffled on a bit, I'm done now!

Trev (Adam Barnard)

band3

I'm 54 and have only been playing drums seriously for a little over 3 years.

Been a bass, guitar, and keyboard player for the past 30 years.

The coolest kid in my apartment complex in LA in the '60's was Dennis Wells, who had a surfboard and a drum kit. He let me be a tagalong and borrow his skateboard from time to time.

A couple of times he let us come up to his bedroom and listen to him play drums. It was so awesome and affected me so much that it was like being violently tickled. I giggled uncontrollably and rolled around on his bed and finally put my hands over my ears because it was affecting me so much. I really lost control of most of my motor functions.

(God I wish I could experience music that way again)

So, probably Dennis. Dunno where he is now, but I hope he kept playing.

After that, all the drummers in my various bands who let me sit down and have a tap on their kits during breaks.

I bet he'd love to know of his influence on you. Great story :)

Peter criss.... At age 11 i saw footage of Alive and i knew that i had to get a drum kit.....So i bugged my dad until he was sick of hearing me cry. He got my uncle from New York to get me a kit without me knowing anything about it. I got a 4 pc. Maxwin kit with formula 602's....Nice.

My very first influences were Gene Krupa, Buddy Rich, Ringo Starr, Dino Danelli !!