DISTURBED Drummer Was Initially Nervous About New Bassist

March 31, 2006

DISTURBED drummer Mike Wengren spoke with Time Off magazine about the band's line-up change since their last visit to Australia, with original bass-player Fuzz being replaced by ex-UNION UNDERGROUND member John Moyer. "I was a little nervous about that at first — John is a different player than our original bass player," Wengren recalled. "John is a pitch player and he's a lot more staccato and a lot more even. But John did a great job of fitting in. The bass guitar was never anything that I really followed myself as a drummer so the impact on me hasn't been too great.

"The thing that I work off as the drummer is the guitar. We play a lot of tight, syncopated rhythms, and Danny [Donegan; guitar] and I have played together for years, even for years before DISTURBED. It was more of an issue finding a guy who was going to be able to come in and slide in the middle of us and find his place and John's done a really good job of doing that. He's really kicking ass live and we're really getting a chance to know him and his personality and he really complements the band live on stage as well.

"[The personnel change] didn't really affect the writing process at all for 'Ten Thousand Fists'. The riffs usually start out with Danny — he comes up with them and he'll throw them at me. I'll lay down a beat and Danny and I will work on a rough structure, a rough idea of a song with two or three parts. And then when we get that together we'll pass the song on over to David [Draiman; vocals] and he'll come up with his melody line and it just builds from there. It's definitely a collaborative effort."

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