I started playing drums when I was about 8.
And just never stopped.
I never really stopped.
By the time I was 13, I was playing in a band with 18 year olds.
And they were wild.
They were... Had these, these two guys that was a Big Jo Flash and Willie Wawa.
I was only 13 back, they're playing drums that was...
My mom would have to drop me off to the gigs with my drum set.
But it was... It was an experience.
The Drum Doctor AKA: Ross Garfield
When I moved to Los Angeles in 1980 I got a job, at my day job.
I was working in a music shop.
And I started out as the drum repair guy there.
I was still playing with different bands at that point.
After I realized that I wasn't of a caliber of a musician to compete with the session drummers that were in LA
I decided that instead of trying to compete with them,
I would try to help them do their job more efficiently.
When I first started, now that I look back on it,
I tended to tune the drums a certain way because that's what I thought it should be.
By doing it for more and more people, I realized that each guy really wanted something a little different
It took me maybe 3 or 4 years to understand what the drummer was looking for
and then tune the drums to their song or their project.
So, a big part of this is understanding what the gear does,
what the sounds come out of the different drums and how you tune them.
The important thing for me is to nail what they're looking for and to understand what they're looking for.
Maybe even more than what they do.
Drum Doctor.
As I have been doing it for a while, I guess someone will call me up and say:
"Hey! I love the drums and Blood Sugar Sex Magic by the Chili Peppers."
Or "I really like what you did for Metallica on The Black Album."
So, I get references back to stuff that I've done and that makes it really easy cos I still have all those drums.
So, if those are in, if somebody asks for something like The Black Album drums,
I say: "I have The Black Album drums."
I mean I'm looking at them, they are sitting on my shelf here.
If you want to use those exact drums, I'll bring them over.
When I first started running the idea by my friends and my family they were all like...
Why would anybody rent your drums? Don't drummers have their own drums?
The bottom line is:
you can't get a John Bonham drum sound from Ringo drum set.
You really need the right set for the song or the project.
All the sets that I send out have been highly modified.
So there's no problems, you don't have any weird rings or rattles in the set
and you don't have a problem tuning them cos the edges have been done properly.
So there's... There's a lot of advantages to it, so...
Not to mention, it makes it so much easier on the drummer.
In 1980 I started collecting hardcore.
I started buying mostly Gretsch, vintage Ludwig, Slingerland Radio Kings...
And that was where I kinda started with the collection.
And every month I would buy a set or two
and that's how you wind up with 441 sets of drums.
Some of the bigger records - the Nirvana Nevermind. I worked on that.
It really kind of a game changing, when that record came out
it really, it really kinda changed up the way people thought about music.
The Metallica Black Album was a high point.
That was a long process and it was, like, 13 months that they used my drums on that record.
I worked on the Wilburys records with Jim Keltner playing grounds, with George Harrison, Bob Dylan,
Tom Petty, Roy Orbison, Jack Flynn.
I worked with Michael Jackson quite a bit.
Alanis Morissette, Lee Charles, Adam Levine, Barbra Streisand, Slipknot, Stevie Wonder.
What else...
I can just go on.
Success means to, basically, be in demand
and also to be able to have the freedom to do what you wanna do.
And it gives me happiness to do what I'm doing.
So when it starts being a drag I'll stop doing it and it'll be fine.
But I still enjoy doing it, I still really enjoy doing.
So when somebody calls me up and says:
"Hey! We got something going tomorrow morning and this is the kind of sound we're looking for."
I'm...
I'm excited. Just like: "Let me, like, build cool set for that!"
You know...
So it's... It's still there.
Ross Garfield The Drum Doctor