I must admit I was very happy to interview Terry.  I remember listening to Frank Zappa when I was younger and being fascinated by the sheer amount of music blasting out of the speakers.  In the early 80's, I remember Spring Session M by Missing Persons.  I was not a big new wave fan but I liked this band because they had a new spin.  They were taking new wave further than it had been taken before.  UK was like this for progressive rock in the late 1970's.  The jazz rock Becker Brothers were also pushing the envelope for that genre as well.  The tie that binds all of the aforementioned artists is Terry Bozzio.  He has a background that combines rock, jazz and classical music. 

The rock drummer stereotype is one of a dumb guy with tattoos that loves to beat on things.  The wild man of the band.  If you are expecting an interview with a Tommy Lee type drummer you are going to be very disappointed.   Terry Bozzio is Tommy Lee's intellectual polar opposite!  Bozzio, not only loves music, he understands music.  This is not only to say that he is a virtuoso, it also means he relates to music on every level; physically, emotionally and mentally.   He has taken the necessary means to develop his talent, skill and creativity.   As a solo drum artist, he is re-inventing the drum kit.  Terry Bozzio is a very intelligent, emotional and intense person.  It was my pleasure to interview him about his newest CD, Bozzio, Levin, Stevens Situation Dangerous.  We also discussed  music, philosophy, Zappa, Jeff Beck, the music business and much more.  Read on and enjoy the most comprehensive and in depth interview of Terry Bozzio on the internet.    

Terry Bozzio: Hi Jeb, how ya doing?

Jeb: How you doing, Terry!

TB: I’m getting ready to start touring again! I’m busy and then not busy throughout the year! Spring and fall are busy. I have been home pretty much all summer. I did some work with the Louisville Ballet for a few days. That was fun! Other than that it has been home repairs, kids and dogs! Just off time.

Jeb: I have been listening to Bozzio, Stevens, Levin: Situation Dangerous. This is actually the second CD you three have put out isn’t it?

TB: The first was called Black Light Syndrome, which was just a play on the letters of our names, BLS. There was one song that had the real, psychedelic, 60’s acid vibe on it. We did all the tracking in about three days. Steve took the tape home and did overdubbing for a week and then we mixed it for about a week. About half the tracks were made up on the spot. The other half, Steve and I did together. He had never really worked on an improvisational record. He was kind of afraid, as would most people. I trust the process. My ego, the conscience part of my brain, doesn’t really know jack! You just kind of let go! The real creativity is in the subconscience. Most of my ideas seem to just happen and I don't know they are going to happen. I want to work more with people on that level. People who think compositionally, musically and use all they know but don’t do too much work with the left brain up front. So, we came out to Austin and jammed in my basement. We had 20 minute jams and I would analyze them. I would hear a section in between dead space. There is an organic flow to the composition and you would find that out of 20 minutes, there will be 4-5 sections and that is enough to make a song out of. They have this intuitive direction to them that you would not normally have if you were thinking, "Okay, I have this lick, now where is the next lick going to be." At any rate, we did a few songs based on some of the things we improvised in my garage. The others, like The Flamenco Tune and The Book Of Hours, from the first album, are just completely off the cuff. They are really magical and beautiful. It took us a while, but we got back in the studio and did this second record. This time we had more time. We had a week to write and 10 days to record. The result is a lot more cohesive than the first album.

Jeb: Your still only talking two and a half weeks.

TB: We knock it out. Like I said, thinking about it is anti-creative. You know how it is, you are scared to death and you go out in front of an audience, the adrenaline, the energy and the sort of do or die, in the moment event of a performance, makes your brain switch into this place where the creative act has to happen. I like to keep that sort of energy in all the work that I do, including the studio. I find that I have struggled the most when I’ve got too much time and I can sit there and analyze to the point where I am judging and criticizing. Not like where you are in the moment and you have to accept what it is. You can pretty much make anything out of anything if you have that attitude.

Jeb: I think the spark for the greatest songs comes from inspiration.

TB: Only one half of one record I ever recorded with Frank Zappa was done in the studio in the record plant. I was with him for three years and ten records. The rest was recorded pretty much live. There was a track here and there for Orchestral Favorites or others that was in the studio but even a lot of that was taken from 45 minute jams that he cut down the best 13 minutes started overdubbing. The basis of what was there was the incredible energy that's spontaneous instead of all worked out.

Jeb: Steve Stevens playing is shockingly good!

TB: I agree. The way the whole project came about, was Pete Morticelli, from Magna Carta label used to be my manager. We are good friends and I do a lot of projects for him. He is the record label owner and he said he wanted to put me with a copy of rock names. His tastes are more commercial or progressive rock. He felt that the three-name thing was the way to go. He thought we could do an album, tour Japan and make some money. My wife came up with idea of Steve Stevens. I liked Steve's work. The work he did was so tasteful and he was so much of Billy Idol's sound. If you listen to all the little parts and the arrangement and production values, it was all coming from Steve. He has a great variety of sounds and textures. I knew he could play on that level but I had no idea he could play on this level. The guy is really smoking’. He is an excellent musician with a whole lot of chops and diversity. He has a wide pallet of sounds. He has the flamenco influence and the acoustical playing. He can play tasteful and melodic. You can hear a little Robert Fripp in his playing. A lot of his influences are close to mine. He came to see me play a solo drum concert at House Of Blues. It was important for him to hear me in my own element. If he wasn’t able to get that then I knew we would not be able to work well together. He liked what I did and he understood it. I went over to his house after that and he played me some of his solo stuff. I heard a side of him that nobody knows about. I knew we had to get a really good bass player because this should not just be a throw together project to make money in Japan. We thought of Tony Levin but we did not think he would be available or interested. He was both! Tony was the crown jewel in the collaboration. He has a fully developed personality, with a sonic style that has a whole lot of scope. He plays several different basses and the stick. He plays with a bow. He plays an electronic cello. The music is a sum of the three different personalities. On that day, we came together and that’s what we did with the time allotted to us. I think the music would sound completely different if any of the personalities changed.

Jeb: Do you play live or is this just a studio thing?

TB: We have been wanting to play live ever since we did this! It has been very difficult. As you know, playing instrumental music puts a strike against you. The places you have to play are lousy rock or jazz clubs. We’ve been looking for opening acts on tour but nothing has come about yet. We have looked into setting up some of our own gigs on the coast, places like the Knitting Factory or a loft or gallery setting. We want people to have expectations for an artistic, musical ensemble playing instrumental music as opposed to a rock show. People might have expectations at a rock club for something different than they are going to see, especially based on our past affiliations. Anyway, we keep trying, man! There is talk about some stuff after the first of the year but nothing solid yet. We are all older guys. We are not going to go out for 10 hours driving to get to a club.

Jeb: Tell me about your solo drum concerts?

TB: I have a pretty big drum set. I have taken a more keyboardistic approach to the drums. I have an octave and a third of piccolo toms that are tuned to a diatonic scale. I have 15 tom toms to play melodically on in one set. I have different sets of eight open China symbols or bells. Several bass drums. I can get a lot of different textures, orchestrally. Because I have at least eight notes in every bank of sounds, I can play melodies. The diatonic is like the white notes of the piano. It is limited harmonically but in that, I am able to do quite a bit. By changing the tonal center, I can apply different modes. By arpeggioting the different modes, I can create chord progressions and harmonic changes. Basically, I have learned to accompany myself like a piano player would play a bass line with his left hand a solo with his right hand. I can make a complete musical statement on the drums all by myself. I have been doing this for about 15 years all over the world. Most recently, I have been able to compose music to go along with my solo drum stuff. I wrote for a string quintet and a woodwind quintet and got to premier that in Austria at the Vienna Jazz Festival. This summer, I went down to Louisville and did my solo drum music with the ballet company down there. That was a big success as well. I am looking to get more into that area. Combining what I do and bringing my rock name and my drum fame to the classical arts audience. They can get something fresh and bring in a younger audience and I can legitimize what I do. The drum set is a young installment. I’m taking a classical approach to it and trying to push the envelope forward.

Jeb: My background is as a guitarist. I take what inspires me an put it into the guitar. Hearing how you do this with the drums is amazing. This is uncharted territory.

TB: It is. It is hard to describe from a marketing standpoint. Agents and managers hear about some guy playing drums by himself and think that is not going to fill a hall. I make my living doing around 50 dates a year filling halls! It’s going to take someone who can market this as something that has never been done before.

Jeb: It has to be easy to lose yourself in the performance.

TB: I’m in another world. Time stops. It is a time travel event. I go into a trance and I take the audience with me. A couple of hours go by and they go ‘Wow! Where was I?"

Jeb: How is this different than playing with bands?

TB: The band situations are all different. Some can do that and others are subject to the perimeters and styles of the different personalities they are playing with. Polytown is way more esoteric than Bozzio, Levins, Stevens. Jeff Beck is way more rock and roll than Bozzio, Levins, Stevens. Missing Persons was trying to be a new wave pop band. We were trying to be as inventive as possible in the perimeters of what commercial radio would play. Now, I don’t really think that way. Zappa never thought that way. We had everything from classical to humor to fusion and everything in between. It’s all different. The only thing I can say is the bands like Polytown, The Lonely Bears and Bozzio, Levins, Stevens, I have a lot more of my personality in those collaborations. I have come into my own in terms of developing my sonic personality. With Zappa and Beck, it was more of a sideman mentality. I was very happy to be involved in both projects but I did not have as much creatively and freedom. With Missing Persons, we chose to be very free within self-imposed, restricting areas. The most freedom I have is when I play by myself. I can create bass lines on low toms and solo against that with my left hand on high toms. I can be the whole band and the whole musical event. You don’t have to deal with other personalities. You don’t have to compromise. Thankfully, drummers and my fans around the world keep coming back to see me. I keep coming up with new stuff for them to hear!

Jeb: You are a leader in the field!

TB: For the most part. I have been voted into Modern Drummers Hall Of Fame. They have these reader polls and they have never been able to really classify me! They are sadly behind the times. All magazines are worried about whose on the cover and who can sell the most units. It’s like a popularity contest instead of what’s going on in the percussion community. I had been around close to 10 years as a commercially known, working drumming. I was with Zappa, then UK, then the Brecker Brothers and then I did Missing Persons. By 84-85, about ten years after Zappa, they voted me the best up and coming drummer! I never placed in the top categories! Maybe I was in the top five in progressive rock drummer a couple of times! I never won any readers polls. A few years back , they just put me directly into the Hall Of Fame! They couldn’t categorize me!

Jeb: They had to give up! It was easier to put you in the Hall than to put you in a category!

TB: Being original has it’s good point but it also has it’s bad points! You can’t put a label on what I do.

Jeb: That is a Catch 22. It sounds like you would rather be true to what you create than to make a ton of money.

TB: Unbelievably enough, coming out of Missing Persons and then getting into Jeff Beck, I thought the only way I could survive as a musician was to do what Phil Collins did. You know, write songs and then sing them myself. It was really a struggle. I had written 30 pop songs and did several demo deals but it never came together. It was really very taxing work. My motives were about surviving in the music business rather than asking myself, "What is the artistic statement I am supposed to make as a human being before I die?" Who knows how many heart beats and breaths I get to take? Playing the drums is the best thing that I do. I decided to just apply myself to my installment. As unlikely and stupid as that seems it worked. I mean drummers never get on the cover of Rolling Stone! We don’t even get copyright coverage or publishing coverage on our drum parts! I just started to get proactive every day. There were several events that happened that turned my head more inside and more towards the discipline of applying musical techniques that had been around for 400 years to the drum set. I really wanted to develop the instrument, the drum set is only about 100 years old. By following this and being true to my artist sensibilities, I started to get sponsored by drum and cymbal companies and I am in demand to play to drummers all over the world. It’s completely outside the music business but I make a great sort of middle class existence here. I get to travel around and play for drummers! They pay me for this!

Jeb: The old adage of do what you love and things will work out is true.

TB: You know that guy, Norman Vincent Peal, who wrote The Power Of Positive Thinking? It’s about his life experiences he has had. On one of them, he was on vacation on an island and his wife and him split up and went different places. They met up later and his wife told him that she had bought a present for him. He opens up the box, excited like a little kid, but then gets a disappointed look on his face when he sees that it is just a hat. She tells him to check out the hat. He looks inside the hat and stitched into it is a little embroidered farm scene. There are rolling hills, a windmill, a little river and some sheep. There is a little label that says, "My name is Joe Blow and we live on the banks of this river. We use only organic dyes and we raise our own sheep. We weave this material to be strong enough to last a lifetime but loose enough to wear. It is the best job I can do and I hope it gives you a lot of enjoyment." This is the secret to life. It’s just a damn hat! I’m just a damn drummer! But I am going to be the best drummer that I can be and somebody is going to buy my hat!

Jeb: You sound convincing in living that theory.

TB: Why would I lie (laughter)!! Bozzio, Levins, Stevens is not the kind of record that will get any airplay and it is the most commercial thing I have done in three years!

Jeb: Is music spiritual to you?

TB: I’m not religious. I don’t subscribe to any religious tenants. I am a spiritual person. I’ve done a lot of reading of philosophy, Jung especially. There are all these inner relationships in terms of the cosmology that we live in. Music is a symbol of the truth of nature. It is also a metaphor of what’s going on in the system that we live in, the universe. Our lungs, our breathing has a certain frequency. Our heart beat is at a certain frequency. Our brain waves are at a certain frequency. What we see, that we refer to as color, is light being refracted and read by our retina at certain frequencies. The stars and the planets have a pitch that they are moving at. All things are inner related. We have phases of the moon, the rising and the setting of the sun etc.. If you were to bounce all of this stuff up to our 20 hertz to 20 thousand hertz hearing range, by doubling it you go up an octave. You will get to a point where it will be perceived as a tempo or a pitch. Music is the harmony for all things happening in the universe. It’s the same in an orchestra. You have low instruments and high instruments. You have different tambours. It is a miraculous thing that the human ear can hear and pick all this stuff out. Music is the way of nature and life. It is a beautiful thing. People in trance with drumming. You can take them into your own little world and take them on this little adventure.

Jeb: Jung is very interesting.

TB: Jung and Joseph Campbell. He makes Jung easy to understand. There is the Law Of Opposites. That holds true in music. There is a balance in life. Psychological health relates to music, for instance, The Law Of Compensation in music is something that is intricate melodically but it tends not to be so intricate harmonically and rhythmically. Anyone of those three seem to lower the intrinsic value of the other. Think of Debussy. Not much going on rhythmically but it is harmonically deep and beautiful. Now think of Indian Music. The rhythms are really intense but harmonically it is on a drone. There is natural compensation. There is a balance, especially in drumming, that correlates to Jung’s aspects. The psyche is a Greek work for soul. We have these four elements of our soul, which are the intellect, emotions, physical and the intuitive or semi-spiritual aspect. All of these things have to be firing on the same level to do a really good job as a drummer. You can see the type of musicians or drummers who are way over balanced or under balanced in one area. Like the intuitive type who can do amazing things but you can’t ask him to repeat himself because he does not know what he just did! Then you have the animal that is a physical powerhouse but has no intellect whatsoever. Then you have the intellectual, say a classical percussionist who can read fly specs but ask him to do a bosanova with some feeling and he is lost! The emotional type can be an amazingly soulful musician but God forbid, he has a fight with his girlfriend and he can’t play. You have to have the emotion, the intellect, the physical and the intuition all firing on an equal level. I find I am most balanced in my life when I am sitting behind a drum set. The rest of my life, I can go overboard in any direction! I try to be balanced there too! Drumming gives me that center and I try and share that with others.

Jeb: How do you do that? At the same time, we are not a machine. We can’t split ourselves 25% across the board.

TB: It is a discipline. It is an experience you learn to trust and therefore develop consistency. I know if I just show up and play an hour a day..... if I just sit behind the drums and don’t play, something is going to move me. Some idea is going to come. If I am repeating a figure over and over to get the coordination to do it, the mind can’t stand the repetition. It starts to daydream. You start to hear themes that go over the repetition. Before you know it, you’ve got three themes. You go out and take the plunge and go out in front of an audience. You take all that you have got, your compositional studies and your musical knowledge of the science, the physical stuff you have worked out so that you have the motor memory to realize your ideas, you are intuitive where you don’t know what is going to come next and you let your hands and fingers fly and let go. At the same time, you are highly conscience in that moment so that you realize what just happened so that you can repeat it and develop it. You use it in a way where it is not just an event that happens once. You put your emotions and your feeling into it. My musical expression is all pretty dark. There are a lot of elements in my playing that are emotions and feelings that we have as human beings that we don’t like to share, or it is inappropriate to act out in real life. It’s okay to play the drums like a murderer or a total dictator. It’s okay to be an arrogant person and have those attitudes and feelings in a musical instrument. It’s not okay to do that in real life. It is a great way to relieve yourself from these things that are inherent in our nature. It gives an outlet. Some may do it in sports. For me it is by bashing and calling up images of war or thunder and lightening, really destructive sort of energies that we all have and are capable of but don’t have an appropriate outlet in civilized society. Consequentially, I can get all these aggressions out and be a nice guy in real life (laughter).

Jeb: You were a very young man when you became a professional drummer.

TB: Either that or I am very old man now (more laughter)! I started with Zappa when I was 24. I am going to be 50. I think drumming has kept me young, that and my genes. I can get away looking 35-40. Playing drums is good cardiovascular exercise. That and eating right, moderation, crap like that! I’m kind of a slow starter. I did not start playing drums until I was 13 and didn’t get serious about them until I was 18. I majored in music in college and turned professional at age 20. I was in San Francisco and got the call from Zappa when I was 24. I didn’t start Missing Persons until I was 30.

Jeb: How does one just get a call from Frank Zappa?

TB: Actually, I was playing with a guy named Eddie Hendrickson, who was with Herbie Hancock in the ‘70’s, used George Duke on a record. George said Frank had been auditioning drummers but had not found one in Los Angeles and that he was starting to look in other towns. He asked Eddie if he knew anyone and Eddie said, "My drummer Terry is really good. He should check him out." I got George’s number and called. He said it was an open audition and that I should fly myself down to LA. Three days before the audition, I bought my first Zappa album! It scared me sleepless! I walked into a big rehearsal studio. I’d never seen that many amplifier cases let alone all the sound and lighting stuff he had. He had the most difficult music I had ever seen set out all over the stage. I was asked to sight-read some of it and memorize some stuff in odd times and play in odd meters why George Duke soloed. We played a blues shuffle. At the end of it he said, " I like the way you play and I want to hear you after the rest of these guys." 25 drummers start shaking their heads and they said, "Nobody wants to play after Terry." So Frank says, "You got the gig!"

Jeb: You were on some of the most classic Zappa albums.

TB: I was in the last version of the Mothers Of Invention, which included Captain Beefheart! I’m really glad to have had been involved in the Mothers. There were the original Mothers and then they kind of got into the bigger bands. The third solid band was with Duke and Flo and Eddie and all that. I was in the tail end of that. No one was doing what Napoleon did, so I started to put the devil’s mask on and act out! I sang lead on some stuff. I did what I thought Frank would want. I did what I was used to having happen and no one was doing. I picked up the torch and did some comedy stuff.

Jeb: How interesting was Frank to work with?

TB: He was a genius on at least eight different levels. He was a genius as a comedian, as a writer, as a 20th century classical composer, as a band leader, as a rock star, as a guitarist... you name it. Any of his interviews are some of the best literature you can get your hands on. I just loved being around the guy. It was very tough. It was like Marine boot camp. I was very young and I really didn’t have a life. You pretty much had to have no life. You have to dedicate your life to Zappa and his music. I was fortunate and got a huge education. Damn near everything the guy ever told me that I didn’t want to believe, be it naivete or denial, has come true. As dark and cynical the guy was, he never told a lie!

Jeb: Give me an example.

TB: When I was in Missing Persons, he told me, "You think no one is paying for your records to get on the air?" I refused to believe that. I thought we had worked our way up and that we had a grass roots following. I thought we were getting requests for airplay. The next year, our promo guy got fired from Capital records, something about a Mafia connection! The second record stiffed. It was just like he said. You don’t own the music if you sign with a record label. He always said, don’t give away your publishing, form your own label and all that stuff. When your young and you don’t have a name, you can’t do that. Since I have a name with him, I can now do that. I have my own record company and put out my own records and sell them on the web site to people all over the world thanks to Frank taking me all over the world and giving me the credibility for playing with him.

Jeb: I had never heard that. You want to think that does not happen in music.

TB: You like to believe it’s a nice rosy world but man, the business world and politics is just a load of shit! Whoever can shovel the sweetest smelling shit will get elected. Music is an art form, it is a beautiful thing. The music business and what one has to go through to get one’s music heard borders on criminal. It behooves the record company to find a young band that is going to be the next biggest thing and sink a few thousand bucks into their record and their promo machine. They make the big dough, they get a 10% percent royalty and the record company makes a gazillion bucks, 90%. A year or two years later, the sophomore jinx happens and they are dropped from the label and they move on. They don’t nurture the guys careers. They are better off doing that then sticking with a band like Aerosmith, who has to get 10 million dollars upfront and the record could stiff. If you were in that position, would you rather risk a few hundred thousand or a quarter of a million on a band that could sell a zillion and get 90%, or pay a whole lot of royalties and ten million to Aerosmith and have the record stiff?

Jeb: I liked the music that was not in the Top 40. I like the Joe’s Garage Zappa era. I think it is a shame that it does not get the respect it deserves.

TB: It’s not the respect. I am very well respected. People in the music business still think I’m a great drummer. I get calls for different situations but for the most part they are not what I am interested in. There really is not an outlet for anything that does not fit into the five major radio format category. Even a poor symphony orchestra can’t record 20th Century music. They are lucky to get an old fart Beethoven recording. It’s the same thing with Jazz. The Marsellis Brothers are probably the best technical musicians on the planet, yet what they are doing is not even post bebop. Miles Davis would have never done that. He would have moved along seven times over. Nobody is innovating. Since the 60’s when Hendrix died and Cream broke up, that was about it for rock and roll, in terms of mass response for what is interesting. I had a lot of respect in the 70’s for Yes and ELP but I didn’t like that kind of music. I liked Weather Report and stuff. I don’t hear anything anymore that was near the innovation of the 60’s. Bill Graham would have a concert at the Fillmore that would have Ravi Shenkar, Charles Lloyd and the Grateful Dead. That’s eclectic. People would say, "Wow, listen to what these guys do in India" and "Wow, listen to this great jazz guy" and "Wow, listen to these guys who live up the street and take a lot of LSD and play rock/folk." They got exposed to a wide variety of music and it was way more open. Somebody figured out how to formulate it and sell it. Everyone, including Graham, said this is our demographic and this is what we are going to go for. In all aspects of music and art, the innovators stay on the fringe. You have lucky innovators like Miles Davis, who was able to play large venues throughout his life. In rock and roll you have people who play 1200 seat theaters instead of a lousy rock club. Like a Todd Rundgren, they get to survive. They are respected but they are on the fringe. There is no outlet for musicians who can play and want to do something new. There is a great musicologist by the name of Nicholas Slonimsky He has a book called A Lexicon Of Musical Invective. It is all the bad reviews of all the great composers since the time of Beethoven. I’m telling you, the most down the middle of the classical highway music got compared to riots and animals at zoos! At any rate, at the heading of his book, there is a quote that says this is all about human nature and the non-acceptance of the non-familiar. If you are going to go out there and hack your way through the jungle to find something new, you are going to come back and say, "Look what I found" and some people are going to go, "Who cares" and some people are going to go, "I don’t get it and I don’t want it. Give me what if familiar to me." Maybe a small amount are going to go, "Wow, this is incredible." That’s who you cater to. You go where you are wanted and you go where you are liked and you innovate for people who like to hear innovations. It’s to bad the arts are not supported more. In Europe, there are festivals in every tiny little town where you can get paid really good dough. It gives prestige to their town to get a guy from America to go over there and play. It gives support to the arts. The European audience is more accustomed to hearing interesting music so they are not expecting a typical pop show. We can make a living over there. Here in the States it is rare to find a venue for anything that is not in the main five.

Jeb: What do you think of the Mickey Hart stuff?

TB: I think Mickey has done a tremendous service to percussionists by writing his two books. I’m glad he put his Planet Drum tours together. They are some guys I have played with and they are some of the best percussionists in the world. They represent different cultures. Mickey, as a drummer himself, is really not that special. His playing with those guys is not that special. I really don’t listen to much that he does. I think his books are really a gift to any drummer who is interested in discovering his roots and tying it into the psychology and dignity and heritage that’s there. He really reminded us of all of that.

Jeb: What is next for Terry Bozzio? You have pushed the envelope, so what direction will you go now?

TB: I don’t know where I go. I don’t how I got where I got. I just kind of follow where the question mark or the sense of awe is. I’m getting more into composing. I like the idea of my solo drumming with ballet company’s. I don’t want to say anything to jinx it, but it seems that’s where the hope is for me. Because of the visual image of the dance audience, someone might accept that I, as a drummer can make music by myself and that people can dance to it and therefore it is a viable commodity. My desire is to go there. In terms of drumming, I keep finding new ways to play and new areas to explore. Sometimes I design my own instruments or design parts. For instance, I have a tuning device that will help lock the tuning down because the pitch is crucial. I can’t have my tom toms going out of tune. I get some royalties and hopefully, drummers will want these things for more or less sophisticated applications they have. I have some educational books and videos coming out. I will do more collaborations with other musicians. Possibly Steve Lukather. I would love to do something with Jennifer Batten or Warren from Missing Persons. There are so many musicians I would love to be able to play with. It is just tough to find a record label that thinks that particular group of people sounds good to them. I can’t really fund collaborations. I can fund my solo projects but not BLS.

Jeb: Is there someplace we can help you promote?

TB: My website TerryBozzio.com. Just let people know the stuff is out! Tell people the Bozzio, Levin, Stevens is out.

Jeb: Looking back, is there anything that you would do different?

TB: When I look back and I was broke, I could taken that gig with Mick Jagger or Rod Stewart. Maybe learned more at an earlier age. It’s so pointless to look back. Life is a learning process every day. Even the worst things that have happened to me have turned out to be the best things. I learned big lessons that have got me to where I am now. Where I am now is a pretty good space. I can’t believe I have made a living as a drummer since I was 20. That’s 30 years that I haven’t had to have a day job! For the most of that, I have done a lot of projects, commercial or not, that I am proud of. I have done very few projects that I could care less about. That means I was able to do what I wanted to do and now I am able to do exactly what I want to do. Not too many people can say they can do that. I feel blessed and therefore, I would not want to change anything! Who knows where I might have been if I had taken one of these commercial gigs. I might have made a lot of money and turned into a drug addict!

Jeb: You have worked with some great guitar players. What is it like to play with one of my favorites, Jeff Beck.

TB: Jeff Beck is one of those guys who is touched by God. He doesn’t really know what he’s doing. He’s not that schooled. He hardly ever tunes it! He just stands there and bends every note perfectly in to tune. He has perfect rhythmic feel. His touch and his tone are stupid! He hardly uses any effects. It’s all on the guitar and his fingers. He does little tricks like pulling the whammy bar and getting that growl sound. He hits harmonics and bends the whammy bar and bends it to a little melody. Anyone I have ever played with who used a whammy bar, including Vai, who tries to bend notes in to tune, can’t get anywhere close to Jeff. He’s as good as a guy with a musical saw at an amateur hour. He can bend the damn note into submission. He has a wonderful feel. There is something special about him. There was something special about Zappa. The way he opened the wah wah pedal and did all that spacey crap! He had a unique style, with those weird groupings and bizarre hammer on effects. Then there is Steve Vai. His pallet is just ridiculous. He is nothing less than perfect. He plays so fast and so clean and so right. He is brilliant in his own way. What can I say, I have been blessed to play with a lot of great guys and I am probably forgetting a few.

Jeb: I appreciate your taking the time out of your day and talking to me.

TB: I appreciate you promoting our record and all. It’s been a pleasure to talk to you and I will see you soon!