Sick Drummer Magazine

Friday, 14 August 2009 12:02

SDM: The first thing that I'd like to ask is, have you seen sickdrummer.com or Sick Drummer Magazine yet?

VP: Ah, I did see it the other day. First time, I thought it was great, man.

SDM: What do you think of the idea behind Sick Drummer Magazine versus the other drumming magazines who, until we came along, never really touched on the extreme metal talent?

VP: It's beautiful, you know. It's something that we need for our genre, and it's a great thing to have. Sometimes the metal community gets overlooked by the larger media so to speak, so it's great to have you guys there.

SDM: Nice. Okay, so going back now, you've probably been asked every fucking question that you could ever hope to be asked by a million people, so we're going to try and come up with something a little different, anyway.

VP: Okay.

SDM: Can you tell me how much of a role music played in your household growing up, and maybe how your father or any other family members might have influenced you musically?

VP: It was a huge part of us growing up. My dad's a musician, country and western musician, also a recording engineer. That's where I picked up my recording skills. We were always exposed to music, always around it. We were always getting to see the hot local players. Me and my brother would just go sit in the studio and watch, you know, and learn from that. And it was always really inspiring, you know, it always made us want to play music. So even though my dad always listened to country, me and my brother, the minute we heard Kiss Alive!, we knew that metal was what we wanted to do, and proceeded from there.

SDM: That's funny. I mean, growing up in my house, my parents were from Scotland, so it was always like the Rolling Stones and the Beatles on a Sunday when we were cleaning the house and stuff. Was it always like country stuff, or was there --

VP: Ah, no, no, my dad was a huge Beatles fan. But it was mostly country. You know, you'd walk in the house, and there'd be David Allen Coe'd be playing. It was really kind of strange, because we ended up working with him eventually. But like I said, once we got the music bug, you know, me and Dime played our own records all the time, as loud as we could do it, and once we started jamming, it was over from that point.

SDM: So how do you think your drumming differed pre-Cowboys From Hell?

VP: Ah, I think it really hasn't changed a whole lot over the years. I've had a lot of different drummers influence me, but I always liked incorporating the rudimental style of drumming into the drumset. And I think I really brought that out from the Cowboys From Hell record on through Far Beyond Driven, and still to this day. I still use paradiddles and things in my drumming. And you know, certain drummers come along at certain times. My very favorite, first drummer that really influenced me was Tommy Aldridge; first time I heard him play "Boom Boom Out Go The Lights" he was doing all these crazy triplets with his feet and stuff. I went, man, I've got to get another bass drum, so I went to my dad and said, I've got to get another bass drum, and he said, "What's wrong with the one you've got, son?" "Nothin', I need two." "Two bass drums?" "Yeah, two bass drums, dude.". So he hooked me up, and it's on from there.

SDM: That's funny, man. You're not the first person who's said that to me in an interview, and it's funny each time I hear it. "What do you mean, you need two?". So, looking back at what was available in the early '80s, what do you think has been the biggest improvement for you in music, meaning looking at the gear you played, recording technology, promotional tools. What's made the biggest impact, now as a musician?

VP: Oh, I'd say, without a doubt, the invention of digital audio. Being able to record in ProTools. Before it was such a mammoth task to get these amazing sounds, you had to have these hundred thousand dollar consoles and all kinds of analog gear, and really, a room full of everything, and now you can walk out of the studio with your laptop and have the whole recording session on it. It's pretty insane.

SDM: Yeah, it's making a lot easier for a lot of people. But you see the downside of it now, too, where half the stuff we hear on some of these records, and don't get me wrong, I love it all, but the sound replacement has gotten to be too much of a habit, and we're not hearing what drummers are actually doing, which kinda sucks.

VP: Right, right, I think it's definitely a two-edged sword. When I listen back to Moving Pictures by Rush, or any of my classic records, there's so much depth there when you listen to the record, because it's analog, and analog has all that natural compression on it and everything. Digital really does sterilize it quite a bit, and then of course, like you said, it's made it real easy for half-assed people to get away with it. They can go on there and club their way through things, à la Lars Ulrich [laughing]. And then they can sit there and have the engineer fix it all for them. Nothing against Lars, we all do that stuff, everybody does.

SDM: I'll take that out.

VP: It's nothing, we're buds. But you know, everybody does it. A), it's a time saver, and B), it's too easy to say "chop that one right there and just use the same one over again".

SDM: Exactly, you know, go into the studio and hit each drum once and then, "see ya!".

VP: Yeah.

SDM: So, what's your favorite Pantera song to play live?

VP: Ah, man, probably one of the most challenging ones that we ever did was Slaughtered off of Far Beyond Driven. It's got some real pounding double kick stuff, and it's just a really demanding song all the way through. I just remember every time we'd get to the end [hums rhythm], the whole fucking crowd would just go crazy. So that was, as far as technically difficult and really demanding, that was really the most. And then, of course, playing the song Cowboys From Hell never got old, just because everybody loved it so much, you know.

SDM: Talking about crowds going wild, that was another question. Looking back at Monsters of Rock in Moscow '91, or '92 Monsters of Rock in Italy, or even as far as '98-'99 with the shows you guys did in Chile, Argentina, which show of that magnitude was most memorable to you, and why?

VP: The '92 Monsters of Rock in Moscow was just incredible, man. We'd actually been off the road for about a month, and we were already in the studio recording Vulgar Display of Power, and we got a call from our A&R guy, and he says, "Hey, how would you guys like to go open a show for AC/DC and Metallica in Moscow?". Fucking killer. "Well pack your shit, you're flying out next Tuesday." It was that quick. So we didn't really have a chance to rehearse or get back in the live playing mode, we just flew over there, and once we got there, we had no idea of the magnitude, the size, or how many people were going to be there. They estimate nearly a million people, which is twice as big as Woodstock. That's huge, you know. It was basically a gift; you know, they just had the coup in Russia, and it was a way for us to kinda Westernize them with our music. Because our music had never been available there before, except on the black market. So it was like a gift from Time-Warner, and a way to introduce the people of Russia to Western music. So we flew over there, we played thirty minutes, which felt like it went by in ten seconds, the crowd treated us like Led Zeppelin, and it was just amazing, and then we got to sit on the side of the stage and watch Metallica rip it up. Then, of course, AC/DC got up and just killed it. It was an amazing event, something I'll never forget. They actually made a documentary about it, called "For Those About To Rock", that's really cool. I dunno if it's still in print, but you can probably find it on the Internet somewhere. But yeah, it was really amazing. The Russian army didn't know what to expect, and the kids, the people there, started going crazy. So they just started beating them. There were all these insane beatings going on while we were playing. Just because they didn't understand, you know.