MEGADETH Drummer: 'I Have About As Many Injuries As A Football Player'

Don de Leaumont of The Great Southern Brainfart recently conducted an interview with MEGADETH drummer Shawn Drover. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

The Great Southern Brainfart: Hearing "Rust In Peace" in its entirety has been a real treat for the fans. Do you prefer doing this or doing an "anthology" type set list?

Drover: That's a good question. I like doing both, because, as far as I'm concerned, it's all fun. On its worst day, it's better than working for a living. This is what I was born to do and I'm lucky to be doing it at this level. It provides different challenges as a drummer. The fans want to hear everything as accurate as you can be and that's not easy. It may look easy, but it's not. "Rust In Peace" is a difficult record. There are a lot of tempo changes and all of these little quirks. The reward of that is that when you execute it as well as you can you can walk off stage with a big grin on your face saying, "We had a really killer show tonight!" You're always on your toes. It's certainly challenging but there's a great reward that comes with it as well.

The Great Southern Brainfart: Is there a particular MEGADETH song that you find to be more challenging than others to perform?

Drover: There isn't really anything that sticks out, but "Polaris" is tough because there's a lot of different, weird patterns and stuff with the drums. Trying to keep it tight with everything that's going on is harder than it may sound to pull off well. I've really got to have a lot of focus when I play that song. The same thing applies to when I play "Take No Prisoners". That's a tough one. There's so much going on in that song.

The Great Southern Brainfart: This style of music looks physically painful. How do you do this night after not without hurting yourself?

Drover: I do hurt myself. I'm in pain all the time. I have about as many injuries as a football player. I've had so many injuries since I've been in this band, I swear to God. [laughs] Right after I joined the band, after my first show I had to go to the hospital because I blew my ears out in rehearsals. I developed vertigo and had a severe ear infection. On the first leg of the tour, if you see pictures from 2004, I've got a set of headphones on. I had to wear them because I completely blew my ears out and the only way for it to subside and eventually go away was to use these super-isolated headphones so I could keep them at a low volume and not get the other outside noise. Over the course of that tour, it eventually went away. That was brutal. I had to have the placi removed from my knee from just the constant stress of playing. I fractured my right hand at the start of my first European tour that we did. It's like an athlete. You play injured and that's just the way it is. That's a long-winded answer to your question. [laughs] When I'm healthy, I'm very happy. I hit things with sticks for a living. What do you expect? [laughs]

The Great Southern Brainfart: When I asked Tom Hunting of EXODUS about his drumming technique, he had this to say: "One of the things he learned was that the faster you hit the snare with as much force as possible and the sooner you get out, the more it's gonna resonate. I tried to teach Drover that, but he, you know, he's stuck in his glam metal. [laughs]" Would you care to comment on that?

Drover: [smiles and shakes his head] The thing about Tom is that he has tree trunks for arms. The guy hits with such insane velocity and power that it's just… What can you say? The guy's brutal. He's a huge influence on my playing. When I discovered thrash, EXODUS was right up there with all the bands like METALLICA, SLAYER and ANTHRAX. Right off the bat I was a big fan of Tom's playing. He's a completely original thrash metal drummer. His rolls and the drum fills that he does are amazing, I think. I didn't realize until we toured with them in 2004 how hard he hits the snare. The drum set he's got now is a Yamaha and he's got probably the loudest snare, I would say, in the world. I've never heard a snare that loud where it was like crushing my head. I'm sure he took great joy in hitting a little bit harder just to piss everybody off because his snare sounded so fucking awesome. Tom's a great drummer, but I do have better hair than he does, so you can tell him that from me!

Read the entire interview from The Great Southern Brainfart.