Sheila E. drums up music & memoir
By George Varga11 A.M.DEC. 9, 2014

Just how physically challenging was it for Sheila E. to drum…wearing 6-inch stileto heels during Prince’s “Sign O’ The Times” tour in the late 1980s and on her own “Sex Cymbal” tour in 1991?

[H]er hands tingled, her body ached and…she collapsed and was partially paralyzed for two weeks.

“In addition to skewing my spine, pelvis and hips, I’d actually shortened my calf muscles,” she writes in…“The Beat of My Own Drum,” her new Atria Books memoir.

Because I was self-taught, I just arranged the drums the way it felt good to me and was making sure it looked good. There were a lot of things I should not have done.

“Drumming requires the same warm-up and training as when you’re an athlete, and that same sense purpose and passion for wanting to finish what you do and to try and be winner and do the best you can.”

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