Experienced drummers have found that they’ve got a feeling inside them that they’ll follow through with. You’ve got to follow those feelings and trust yourself. If it’s wrong— and there isn’t any wrong, I don’t believe— you’ll find that that feeling didn’t work so well.
So the next time you get that feeling you’ll know what it leads to. That’s kind of what happens. Then you’ll find deeper feelings that are really genuine and after a while you can kind of tell when you’re in a really good one and you can follow that. Sometimes one will hit me for no reason but I’ll know I’m there. And I just follow that line. It doesn’t matter what I play as long as I stay with that feeling inside me.
It’s probably best not to analyze it too much. But we do a lot of clinics and these kids want to know what goes on in your head while you’re playing. It’s interesting to try to discover what it is and still not lose it.
All of us once in a while go to the top level, maybe once in a great while you go all the way up there, and you come back and you know it was hot. But the frustration is getting it again. There were nights with Woody when I’d really have a great night and then three months would pass— nothing! Really that long. It can be perfectly acceptable and sound great but that magic isn’t there.
As you’re into playing, you find that the magic is all you care about after awhile. That’s what you want to find and when you get it you want to hold onto it. The rest is just groping for the magic.
Jon von Ohlen, Down Beat Magazine, March 1972, interview by Jim Szantor
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Yeah man!