Jimmy Degrasso
Drumming Hero

A couple of years back, while Jimmy DeGrasso was in Europe playing drums with Alice Cooper, he got a call from an old friend, Megadeth's Dave Mustaine. The band needed a drummer, was DeGrasso up for the gig? "It was a surreal moment," he recalls, "to sit down at breakfast with Alice and say, 'I have to leave.'"

DeGrasso joined the popular speed metal band on the cusp of recording their 1999 release, Risk. "They wanted to do something adventurous, a huge departure from what they had done previously," he explains. "Unfortunately, I wanted to join Megadeth and play Megadeth music, as opposed to this experimental rock album." While Risk picked up some new fans for the Megadeth camp, it certainly alienated some old ones.

With that in mind, Megadeth dispensed with unnecessary studio gadgetry for The World Needs A Hero, their first new album in two years. "This time out," DeGrasso says, "we basically streamlined back down to what we are. It's metal: guitar, bass, and drums - no effects or loops. We just wanted to do what we felt like doing."

Most of the songs for The World Needs A Hero were written during soundchecks on the Risk tour. DeGrasso believes the band's unorthodox approach yielded exciting results that are easily heard on the record. "When you write songs at soundcheck," he says, "standing on that stage, you have your full sound. The guys are playing through big rows of Marshals, I have this huge drum wedge behind me, and the bass drums are at about 135 decibels. There's a certain presence there that inspires you much more than when you're in a rehearsal space with padding all over the walls. I think that lent a live vibe to The World Needs A Hero."

Gail Worley

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