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Creativity Quote by Lou Gramm

"It's only in the seventies that I put the sticks down and I moved to the front"

About this Quote

There’s a quiet plot twist baked into Gramm’s plainspoken line: the moment an anonymous worker becomes a face. “Put the sticks down” isn’t just a logistical detail about leaving the drum kit; it’s a pivot from keeping time to taking it. In rock, the drummer is the engine and the furniture at once - essential, overlooked, literally stuck in the back. Moving “to the front” signals a bid for authorship, visibility, and control over how the music lands in a room.

The phrasing matters. Gramm doesn’t mythologize it. No destiny talk, no tortured artist rhetoric. That understatement reads like someone who knows the ecosystem of bands: roles are assigned early, often by necessity, and breaking out of them takes a particular kind of nerve. The “only in the seventies” timestamp does real work too. The decade rewarded frontmen who could carry both grit and polish, as arena rock scaled up and radio tightened its format. A singer wasn’t just another musician; he was the brand’s microphone, the conduit for the hook, the guy whose hair and silhouette ended up on posters.

Subtext: ambition without apology, but also a hint of belated permission. Gramm frames the move as a late adjustment, not a childhood plan, which makes it feel earned rather than manufactured. It’s the story of rock professionalism: you learn the craft in the shadows, then step forward when the culture is ready to amplify you.

Quote Details

TopicMusic
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Gramm, Lou. (2026, January 16). It's only in the seventies that I put the sticks down and I moved to the front. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/its-only-in-the-seventies-that-i-put-the-sticks-87778/

Chicago Style
Gramm, Lou. "It's only in the seventies that I put the sticks down and I moved to the front." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/its-only-in-the-seventies-that-i-put-the-sticks-87778/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"It's only in the seventies that I put the sticks down and I moved to the front." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/its-only-in-the-seventies-that-i-put-the-sticks-87778/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.

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Lou Gramm on Putting the Sticks Down and Moving to the Front
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About the Author

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Lou Gramm (born May 2, 1950) is a Musician from USA.

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