Former Shins drummer Jesse Sandoval has revealed that he was dismissed because he couldn’t play the parts correctly on the band’s songs.
Four months after his old band announced a new line up, Sandoval told the Portland Mercury: "I have a slower learning curve than polished musicians. There were some drumbeats that [frontman James Mercer] tried to do, that he asked me to do, and I just couldn’t do them."
Lead singer Mercer told Pitchfork that the reasons behind the dismissal’s of Sandoval and keyboardist Marty Crandal was "an aesthetic decision", but Sandoval said: "In the studio, I didn’t have the luxury to take lots of time to execute drum parts, and you can’t really piecemeal drums. So my weaknesses showed … working with [producer] Danger Mouse only exacerbated that fact.
He also added of Mercer: "It might be hard for him to say it, but – I got fired. There’s no other way of looking at it. He turned the page, he wanted to do something else, and he’s OK with that. And everybody, me included, can judge him."
