“My brain was sweating”: The most challenging musician Chester Thompson ever drummed with

Posted On May 18, 2025May 18, 2025

The role of the drummer can never be understated. They need to be equal parts logical and chaotic, as when they drum, they not only need to hold the entire rhythm section together but also create a beat that keeps the song sounding unique. John Bonham, Keith Moon, and Chester Thompson can all attest to this. 

Every song has its own time signature, so by that logic, every song could have a very straightforward drum beat simply in keeping with that time signature. While that would work, it wouldn’t sound exciting, and songs would become repetitive. As such, drummers mix up beats and use drum fills to keep listeners engaged, but too much of this can make the song messy and challenging to listen to. The best drummers strike a balance somewhere in the middle of these two extremes, but it takes a great deal of knowledge to do that. 

The best drummers know when to give their all and when to hold back, and no formal education is available to master these skills. Instead, drummers just need to be able to feel whatever song they’re playing and understand when they need to give something and when they need to take something away.

How do you learn all of this? It’s easy: practice. This is exactly what Chester Thompson was exposed to when he initially started drumming with Frank Zappa. Zappa was highly dedicated to his craft, constantly making music and pushing himself creatively. He was also constantly fighting back claims that his live shows were disgusting, to the point that people shouldn’t go to them. While there was a lot of chaos involved in his gigs, he never did anything disgusting, as a lot of people claimed.

“There never was a gross-out contest. That was a rumour. Somebody’s imagination ran wild. Chemically bonded imagination,” said Zappa, “The rumour was that I went so far as to eat shit onstage. There were people who were terribly disappointed that I never ate shit onstage. But no, there never was anything resembling a gross-out contest.”

Frank Zappa had a strange imagination, but he used it in order to push himself as a musician and create mind-bending music, not to disgust people. If you need further proof, just ask Chester Thompson, who was put through his paces by Zappa when he started playing drums for him and realised how seriously Zappa took making music.

“People thought Zappa was some kind of freak-out hippy, but he was seriously dedicated,” recalled Thompson. “That was my first introduction to practising for 40 hours each week. It was eight hours a day and there was no time wasted. Every time we finished a rehearsal, I felt that my brain was sweating. It was really intense music, really difficult music, and I always say it was the best school I ever went to.”

In order to learn how you can apply yourself to music, you need to become familiar with sound. Frank Zappa made his band learn about becoming familiar with music by making them practice for hours. It was a gruelling task, but one which paid dividends in the long run. 

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