“When people ask me what I play, the usual answer is ‘the drums’ because that is the instrument, but what I would like to say is, ‘I play the band.’ That is what I’m interested in.” So said Jon Hiseman, who died this past June 12 at age seventy-three, in an extended Modern Drummer interview with Simon Goodwin back in 1984. Behind this answer lay a key concept in Hiseman’s stated drumming philosophy: “The drums [are] less important to me than the musical context.”

November 2018 Issue