Creativity Quote by Pat Mastelotto

There is a quiet line in Pat Mastelotto's sentence that matters more than the name-drops: “roots.” He’s not just listing influences; he’s staking a claim about lineage, credibility, and the kind of musical citizenship he wants recognized. Beatles and Zeppelin aren’t niche references. They’re shorthand for a whole value system: songcraft that’s bold but melodic, virtuosity that still swings, studio experimentation that feels human instead of clinical. Saying “the whole 60’s side” widens the frame from two bands to an era-myth, a time when rock is imagined as both culturally central and creatively unbounded.

Coming from a drummer known for progressive and experimental contexts, the intent reads like preemptive framing. If your later work is polyrhythms, odd meters, and tech-forward textures, audiences can file you under “cold” or “cerebral.” Mastelotto slips in a rebuttal: the engine underneath is classic rock feel, not math. It’s also an argument about taste. The 60s, in this telling, is less a decade than a north star: bands that learned pop discipline and then broke rules with charisma.

There’s subtext, too, about generational positioning. Born in 1955, Mastelotto is early enough to have absorbed that music as a formative language, late enough to have watched it canonize into “heritage.” He’s aligning himself with the moment before rock became museum culture - and using that alignment to keep his own playing read as rooted, not merely complicated.