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In 1994 I was "staff instructor" at Orange County Drum & Percussion in Lake Forest, CA. (Yes the OCDP brand of drums) During my tenure there, many great players were coming in and hanging out. Taylor Hawkins was dropping in every so often to practice his audition tapes in my teaching room. Turns out he was learning the Alanis Morrissette gig!

Daniel Jensen (half owner of OCDP) came to me and told me of this drummer Adrian, a friend of his that needed some help with a situation. It turns out that his band was recording an album and if he did not get it together and learn to play with a click track, he would be replaced. So, I set about to unkink this problem.

The lesson took place at the Beacon Street house in Anaheim, Ca. and we did a 2 hour thing, during which I showed him several ways to approach the click. Once we "knocked the edges off" he became much more comfortable with the mechanical bitch that is a click, and I suppose the rest took a historical turn.

"Tragic Kingdom" did pretty well! Over 30 MILLION in sales! WooHoo! So, prior to "Return to Saturn", AY called me and I went to his posh Naples townhouse and taught him there for an afternoon. We went over hand stuff like posture, rudiments, groove, just basic things to "check up" on.

Since then, I've not spoken to him and as far as I know, he does not speak of our lessons in any print or interview medium. That's OK, because I know what my part in that whole paradigm was. I like to think that maybe I had a small hand in helping him achieve greatness, and that inspires me to want to do so for myself.