During Silesia Drum Festival in w Chorzów, Poland, we had the opportunity to interview the artists who performed on stage that day.
Today, Dutch master player, René Creemers, talks about his favourite drummers.
I think the first drummer that I saw live was at a live performance of Focus, which was a Dutch band. And the drummer was Pierre van der Linden. He had a big influence on my playing at that time. That was 1970, I think. It’s a very long time ago.
Later, I discovered Billy Cobham, like everybody else. I did the same, of course. And he was a big influence on my playing. And later it was guys like Vinnie Colaiuta, of course, but also Steve Gadd, of course. The famous drummers, but those were always, I would say, groove players.
These days, I’m also searching for other styles of playing because I’ve seen what groove players play in the last 40, 50 years. Now, I’m also more interested in sound players, sometimes even drummers like Christian Lillinger, who is a German drummer from Berlin. He is playing really new music and he has a different approach to playing drums.
So I’m searching for other new guys, but I’m still a lover of drummers such as, let’s say, Keith Carlock, for instance. There are so many good drummers at the moment, and today at this festival, man, they make me nervous, of course. It’s quite logical, yeah. Every time you have such a day as today, in the morning, you’re a bit insecure, you know. Even though you’ve been doing this for 50 years, you know. That will never go away. No, it won’t.
