dukeswh said:
And that drummer from Def Leppard is missing his whole arm?....
IIRC, he once said he had to learn to play the drums all over again and became a better drummer because of it. Got rid of a whole bunch of "lazy" habits.
http://www.thewavemag.com/pagegen.php?pagename=article&articleid=22659
is a pretty good article on it. A few bits:
TW: I was in high school when Hysteria came out and I remember everyone being very inspired by you in a “Wow. He has one arm and he’s still rocking!” sort of way.
RA: You know, I get that a lot and it’s really cool. I feel blessed that I’m in this situation. I remember when I first lost my arm – people would ask me for my autograph and they’d be standing there looking really sad. So I started doing these little stick people, a regular stick person with one arm holding a drumstick or a peace sign or whatever. Then their faces started lighting up. But it was kind of strange at first – people were sad for me and I didn’t necessarily wanna go there for myself because I’d been wallowing in that particular part of myself for a while. [The accident] put a giant full-stop at the end of that period of my life. It was like, “Okay, you’ve gotta do it differently now.”
TW: Yeah man! You’ve got the most famous non-arm in modern history.
RA: The funny thing is when people ask me where the arm is. I’m like, well, I don’t know where the (expletive deleted) thing is.
TW: Who designed your one-armed drum kit, and what does it entail, gear-wise?
RA: It’s half acoustic, half electronic. I use a real kick, a real snare and all real cymbals, and then I make samples of my real snare drum and place those in a sampler and trigger those sounds using my left foot on a foot pedal on the floor.