was Steve Morse Band, Dixie Dregs, Stanley
Clark, all of this really progressive music and
George was really into that. He was quite good
at figuring stuff out, Steve Vai, getting Guitar
Player Magazine and there would be the little
red thing you would pull out with the Attitude
Song in it. So we would learn this stuff and it
was really challenging for me as a drummer
because that stuff is challenging. George was
so passionate about it, I don’t think I was that
passionate about it, but because of him and
his influence we played that type of music. He
ended up teaching me to play guitar.
So that was really my early days of becoming
a drummer. There still wasn’t any thinking that I
would become a professional musician and be
getting paid to do it. It wasn’t until a couple of
years later that George again, when my parents
moved up into another state a long way away,
he came up and visited and that’s when we
started the Newsboys. It was really his being
so driven and just having massive ambition. I
just wasn’t that ambitious. But he challenged
me, and the next thing I know I’m buying Rod
Morgensteins “Grooving In Styles” through
[Peter] When I was fifteen… I sort of from drums, and how big each of our drum kits was. mail order catalogues and learning how to
between the age of about eleven or twelve I think I told him my drum kit was twenty-three read. My Dad was very supportive, my parents
through fifteen I could play drums fairly well for pieces because it had twenty three pieces in being pastors. And they liked extra musicians
a kid but I kind of just really put it aside because it including cymbal stands (Laughs) and drum hanging around because they could use us for
I started to get into aquatics and life-saving, pedals, a couple of sticks, you know. I counted the church service (Laughs). My parents had
like being a life guard, because we lived near twenty-three in my head quickly you know. a garage we didn’t have any cars in, and we
the beach. That and surfing really started to
would close the door and put mattresses on
become more of an important thing in my life. [WM] He’s thinking of Rush, he’s thinking of the wall and egg cartons and we just decked
And I was home schooled for a few years so I Neil Peart. out this garage. So they were very supportive
kind of still stayed on the drums and was really
that way so that helped a lot. So that was the
into music like most kids, but it really wasn’t [Peter] Exactly. So we hit it off, and he until I was about fifteen years old, I got put lived a fair bit away from me but he would into a Christian school for not very long, but come down to my house. We had this really [WM] Did you still have that same Pearl kit, or
in that time I met a guy who is still my friend old stereo system in my bedroom that was did you have a new kit by then?
today named George Perdikis. We just started one of the ones with the speakers in it and a talking, we were fifteen, we kind of both didn’t radio and turntable, and we converted that [Peter] No, I got a new kit by then. I worked a
fit in too well at school and we started talking into a guitar amp. We would just jam, jam on lot of odd jobs, landscaping, I used to sell cakes
about music, and he was really driven as far as Beatles songs and Rush tunes, whatever we door to door, little cakes called Lamingtons,
music. He was a great guitarist at fifteen, one could figure out and play. Especially back macadamia nuts door to door, very humbling.
of these guys that could play all sorts of Rush then, we’d go to import record stores and try But yeah, I did it to pay for drums. My next
songs, really technical. So there was George, and find records. You know, groups like Rush kit that I bought up there was a Tama, I think
myself, and another drummer, and I think I you couldn’t find their records in Australia. It because of Neil Peart, I think it was a Swing
remember George asking us both if we played was a lot of progressive stuff thinking back, it style, kind of low end but it sounded good.
110
January 2019
early days of me being a drummer.
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