How should drums fit into a song, and how can you make the drums become another hook within a song? When you think about the word “hook,” it’s something you get hooked on that you want to have over and over, but it’s also something unpredictable—like when a fish gets hooked. Everything is fine, and suddenly, you’re hooked. Musically, I think of hooks both ways—you want to give listeners something unpredictable, but after they hear it over and over, it becomes predictable and then it’s a hook. I try to find my own hook amongst the hooks of the bass player, the guitar riff, and the poem. That was the magic of “Mountain Song” by Jane’s Addiction [from Nothing’s Shocking, 1988. The groove itself is very tribal. It’s simple, but it’s a complicated idea. One of the great drummers of all time, Kenny Aronoff, called me up because he was […]

November 2021 Issue