"I Don't Want to be Just a Metal Guy," an Interview with Drummer Ralph Alexander
- Jessie Jimenez
- 3 days ago
- 11 min read
Updated: 8 minutes ago
The audience’s eyes are locked, unwavering from the flashing lights, the elevated stage, and the vocalist’s screams that are turning the air sharp with emotion. Then, as if someone had flipped a switch, the audiences eyes dart to stage right. Five cymbals crash around a singular drummer. The drummer can’t rest during the physical onslaught of meticulously planned movements amid a song’s breakdown. His face is masked by a balaclava, same as the guitarist and bassist, but the savage concentration is apparent even through the mask. Ralph Alexander, currently the drummer for the alternative metal artist Poppy also known for his use of the Moog Taurus synthesizer, was interviewed before Poppy’s San Antonio show on the “They’re All Around Us Tour.” He answered questions of lifelong goals, drugless highs in Times Square, Zildjian ambassadorship, and not being able to afford Taco Bell after a gig.
Q. How did you get involved with Poppy?
Ralph Alexander: I was in couple different bands on the same management company. When they fell apart, I quit one, the other one stopped playing. I was available. We had a mutual manager, he reached out to me and asked if I wanted to play for her.
Q. So going from bands like CRX, to The Dose, and then Poppy. What have you picked up as a drummer from genre to genre?
There's just different requirements. So, I played in a blues rock band called the Heavy Heavy Hearts, and that was all about pocket and feel and playing a little loose. And then other gigs like this one, it's all about being very concise and very exact and very fast, hard-hitting stuff like that., It's just knowing which gigs require what, and which ones require other things, because you'll get fired if you don’t.
Q. Now that you visited the Zildjian factory, walk me through the experience and what it meant to you.
Oh, man so I've played Zildjian cymbals since I was a kid, and it was kind of a joke in my family about how obsessed I was with Zildjian. So, to get invited to the factory, as an artist, is a big full circle, 20-year moment, that I’ve been waiting for since I was 13 years old. That company is especially special because they're on their 15th or 16th generation. They’ve been owned by the same family for 400 years. So, the history is like my second passion. I love it. I walked over to the Alamo earlier. I just love seeing that stuff. So, to be a part of that 400-year rich history of amazing artists and drummers, It was just wild, humbling, and I was very grateful to be there. My rep, Eric Gross, is a super great guy and he took care of me.
Q. How'd you get involved with being an ambassador for them?
I was with another company, that was great, but we weren’t really a great fit. A friend of mine, his name's Eric Lederman, works for the Seth Meyers show. I had played on that show doing a drummer week fill in thing. He's a huge Zildjian guy just like me, and he basically just offered like, ‘hey, anytime you want to jump over and play these guys, I can get you in touch with their guy.’ And one day, I just gave him a call. I was like, ‘Yeah, I think ready to jump over and if you can help with that.’
Q. How would other drummers go about becoming an ambassador, getting that sort of brand recognition?
The relationship has to be mutually beneficial. When I was a kid, I was like, ‘Well, I'm fucking awesome. I should be on any company that want to be on,’ and I would send emails. This is just a brief thing. I’d email one or two companies, like, ‘hey, I can play “Raining Blood” by Slayer. I can do other shit. I should play your stuff.’ They never responded. You have to have something to offer them. So, I didn't get any endorsements until 2021, and that was when we were doing our second headline tour. So, you have to be in a gig, or, honestly, a lot of kids these days that, you just have a lot of followers. You post drumming videos, and you get a bunch of likes, and you get a bunch of followers that'll get an endorsement
Q. You've played a couple late night shows what was that like?
Kimmel and Cordon were just like your band shows up and you play. “Good Morning America” was the most stressful, because that really is live. Kimmell and Cordon, you can tape a performance. They want you to get it once, but if something catastrophic happens, you can do it again. “Good Morning America,” you can’t do it again. That's why that was stressful. I remember my back was up against the window during the show we're playing, I think it was like four and a half million people watch that show. I turned around and I look out, and it's Times Square. It's seven o'clock in the morning. It's super, super early. They have the band's picture up on one of the screens, and I see my face in Times Square while I'm playing. And a lot of times you don't want to have like to overthink things when you're doing that kind of stuff. You just want to just play and get out right but then that was like, oh shit, I had to take a breath. That was stressful, but fun.
Q. What were the moments after like, after you processed seeing you face in Times Square?
“Good Morning America” was super weird because we got done and we are immediately flying home afterwards. So, I played it. It was a rental kit, so I didn't have to pack anything up. I just grabbed my sticks and my pedal, got back, went straight to JFK, got to my gate, and by the time I got to my gate and was sitting waiting for the plane, the show is still on. It's like an hour later, and there's the hosts that I was just hanging out with, and I'm watching TV with other people that are sitting there waiting for their gate, and I was just on that an hour ago, and I'm sitting here waiting my plane, and I've never done drugs or anything in my life, but for a second, I understood why these people do drugs. It's like, you have this, incredible psychotic high, and then an hour later, you're sitting in a gate around a bunch of strangers that are watching the thing you were just on. They have no idea you were there. Man, I want to maintain that high all day. It can be a lot to process sometimes, for sure.
Q. have you been able to get that high again through performances or gigs?
Yeah, anytime I play, my big brother, just joined a band for the first time in his life. In his first show, I texted him after I was like, good luck chasing that dragon the rest of your life. Because I remember my first show, horrifyingly terrifying but amazing at the same time, like I want to have that forever. I told my girlfriend the other day, we were talking about drugs and shit, not that we do them. We're just talking about this business. And I was like, there’s no greater high to me, at least that I've ever experienced than playing a really great show, feeling really great about your part of it, getting off stage and just feeling fulfilled as a player, I don't know any other high that would ever come close.
Q. You post a variety of covers on your social media. You've done “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen, Bruno Mars, and Aphex Twins. Why do you do such a range?
I do a lot of recording at home. I have my own studio. So, if anyone ever, like stumbles on my page, I don't ever want anyone to think that I'm just a metal guy. That's my big thing. I don't want to be just a metal guy. That's what I get paid to do, but my favorite music if I had to pick a desert island playlist, it would be Motown. I love Motown, some of the greatest hits ever. I love playing metal it's super fun and extremely challenging. But I always just try and showcase that’s not it. That's like 25% of what I try and do. So I always try and find something super different. Anyone that checks out the page, it's not just gonna be Slayer covers. Sometimes I'll just be in my studio working on something, and I'll have, a mix on, and something will come up like, ‘Oh, that's cool. I gotta do something different than that. I can put a cool bass line underneath that.’ So, it's just always trying to be as different as possible.
Q. So, you talked a little bit about a desert island playlist, but if you were to think about some core memories that you've had with music. What would be on your core memories playlist?
Okay, funny enough, there's a bunch of songs as a kid that we listened to with my mom. It was a lot of Michael Jackson. This is the one song I used to sing as a kid. It was, “Bad.” That's the earliest memory of a song that I really liked. Then as a kid, I had the Mission Impossible Two soundtrack of all CDS to get. My mom bought it for me, and “I Disappear” by Metallica was on it, and I just thought that was the most badass song I'd ever heard in my life. Lars was a big influence early on, and then Zeppelin's immigrant song from the “How the West is Won” triple disc that I played a billion times. And then “Seasons in the Abyss” by Slayer, some Pantera songs in there, like “5 Minutes Alone.” It's a great song, or “I'm Broken,” some Radiohead songs, probably “Paranoid Android” would be great. It’s what got me into them. So, it's hard to pick, but those are probably the big hits, for sure.
Q. Can you recall any gigs you played when you first started playing gigs?
I did a gig one time when I was a kid. I think we were like, second band of like 10 bands one day. It's like a festival thing. And the promoter was like, hang out the rest of the show, and we'll pay you out. We're like, Alright, we're gonna get paid money. This is awesome. Then, it's like, 11 o'clock, and we’ve been there all day, we’re tired. We're like, man, it's not gonna be that much. But when you're like a kid, we're like, maybe we'll get like, 50 bucks or something out of it each. Guy comes up at the end of the night. He's got all these envelopes for all the bands, and he hands us ours, and he goes, ‘thanks for staying the whole day.’ He just wanted us to stay so the crowd didn't get smaller. We grab our envelope. We go look at it. It's $6 total. This is $2 each. We can't even go to Taco Bell.
Q. You have a tattoo on your arm, does that symbolize something?
Yeah, we got that on the Smashing Pumpkin’s tour. It's their song “Zero.” yeah, that was awesome. I got to hang out with Jimmy Chamberlain. It was great. He's one of my favorite drummers. His style is so unique and awesome. He was totally approachable and chatted with me every single day.
Q. Who would you want to meet to just pick their brain a little bit?
Dave Lambardo, and I'm going to meet him October 11, because he's playing a gig with us. I’m super stoked. This is a story that some people know. I have a shirt that I bought when I was a kid. It's a Slayer shirt, but one day, I just noticed that I kept wearing it to all, like the important gigs. These shows I was playing that were really great gigs, I was wearing my shirt. So I kind of developed this, oh, it's my lucky shirt thing in my head. So then anytime a big show was coming up, like, “Good Morning America,” I wore it. Then it kind of became this thing where It's like, alright, well, the day when ‘I make it’ I'm gonna retire the shirt, like a jersey, like, it's it got me to where I've made it. And then it kind of evolved into, I always wanted to play Madison Square Garden. And I thought, I'm gonna wear it when we play there, and then I'll never wear it again, which we did on the Pumpkins tour. We got to play Madison Square Garden. I wore it underneath my costume. And I haven't traveled or been anywhere in 20 years without it being in my backpack. So now the idea is, when I meet Dave in October, I'll get him to sign it, and then I can finally retire and stop because I'm just definitely afraid that I'm going to lose it on the road.
Q. So, what would be “making it” for you?
I don't think you ever make it, but it's different for everybody. I've come to the realization that making it for me personally, is just being accepted by your peers, having a feeling like there's mutual respect from people that you really look up to, I think that's the purest form of making it, because you've made it to their level. So, like Jimmy Chamberlain on the Pumpkin’s tour talked to me like an equal. He never talked down to me. He'd never be like, ‘pretty good kid.’ or ‘I look forward to seeing how you play in a couple years.’ He’d never do anything like that or ‘Hey, let me help you with improving this.’ Even though I would have loved if he helped him with anything, because he's amazing. It just felt like we were two drummers on the same tour, and that to me, that's making it more than any materialistic thing like a Grammy or money.
Q. How have your goals changed since you started drumming?
I was talking to my girlfriend about this the other day, that all of my wildest childhood dreams have come true, but they were modest, right?, I wanted to play Madison Square Garden, modest, compared to most kids that would be like, I want a Grammy or I want a billion dollars, whatever it is, mine was just like, I just want to play this venue one time. I want to be a Ludwig artist. I want to be a Zildjian artist, that kind of thing. I feel really fulfilled now. I think we should always have goals set, and once you reach a bunch of them, it's like, alright, now it's time to make some new ones, because you can't just rest on your laurels. We have to constantly grow. I have to think of like what I want to do now. Every day is the same in terms of like, I want to be the best drummer for the artists that I play with. I want to play the best shows I can play. I want to always improve technique and all this stuff, which is a daily thing. You just never feel satisfied every show I get on stage; I have a dozen things I need to work on that for the next one. So it's a constant search, but in a good way, that keeps you young forever.
Q. have there been any shows recently where you walked off the stage just completely dissatisfied?
Yeah, of course. I think everyone has that, unless you're crazy and you really think that you're like, the hottest shit ever. Likeour guitarist, he's amazing, and I can tell some shows he's definitely, he's bugged out over like, one bad note. I’ll tell him ‘dude, you were amazing the entire time.’ ‘No, I fucked up the guitar change was weird.’ II have things every night that I was like, I rushed in that, or I didn't get that solid. it just happens. A buddy of mine, his name's Anthony, he put it great. I saw him in Philly. He said, there's two kinds of mistakes. There's band mistakes and there's audience mistakes. Band mistakes is only the band would ever notice it. An audience mistake is so bad that the audience notices them. And I'd say, as long as you're just constantly making little band mistakes, who cares? It's a rock show. Nobody wants to go to rock show and see perfection. Yougo to a pop show for that, if you want to hear your favorite pop star sing it perfect every day. For rock show, it's good that there's little mistakes here and there.
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