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This is Later with Lee Matthews,
the Lee Matthews Podcast More what You Hear

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Weekday Afternoon's on the Drive. He's
known by musicians around the world as the

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Minister of Groove, Zoro and internationally
renowned rock star. One of the world's

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most respected and award winning drummers,
worked with the likes of Lenny Kravitz,

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Bobby Brown, Frankie Valley in the
Four Seasons New Edition, Jody Watley and

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many men Anymore. Behind the scenes, though, he's got a lot of

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stories to tell, and one of
those he's telling in his new memoir that

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he was here to talk to us
about today, Maria's Scarf, a memoir

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of a mother's love, a son's
perseverance and dreaming Big Zoro, you and

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I have something in common and that
we were raised by a strong single mother.

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Then we were both very, very
fortunate because we didn't choose that fate.

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But if you're going to be raised
by somebody, a strong single other

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is about the best thing you can
hope for. Yeah, I don't know

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if you witnessed. My father passed
away when I was very young, so

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I witnessed my mother getting stronger as
I aged did you notice that too with

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yours. Yeah well, now,
I mean I noticed that, but mine

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had to raise seven children alone,
with more wealth from any father, and

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so she did get stronger. But
I grew to have more respect for her

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as the years went. Now she's
been passed away for twenty years, but

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my respect meter has gone up even
more and more and more because I just

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as you get older, you just
realize how hard this had to have been.

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When you're a kid, you see
it, but you don't really quite

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understand the load they're caring. But
which is why I wrote the book to

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honor her memory and her legacy,
and to aspire mothers and fathers everywhere and

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never to give up on your kids, or never to give up on life,

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no matter how hard it looks,
that things could always turn around.

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You of all people being raised where
you were by a single mother, had

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every excuse in the book to turn
out a lot different than you did.

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And I mean that then turn out
in a bad way. Yeah, well

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I was again, I was fortunate
that everything in life is about who you're

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surrounded by. So you can be
in the worst setting, in the worst

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situations, but if you have somebody
who has vision that's the most important thing.

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And so my mother, when I
was a little kid, I asked

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if I could wear her scarf for
a school picture because I thought she looked

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really cool and there was a budding
rock star in me, even in the

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second grade that I wanted to come
out, but I just wanted to look

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different and cool. And she knelt
down tied her orange soaked scarf around my

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neck, and then she said,
one day, my precious son, you

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will do something fantasmical with your life. That was the words she used,

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fantastic, which was a mix between
fantastic and amazing. But she had this

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ability to this is a woman of
faith, so she had strong faith and

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God. So she had this ability
to teach me to look past my circumstances.

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And she really taught me how to
dream. And a lot of times

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she would use music to do it. She loved music immensely, so she

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would put on songs like Frank Sinatra's
High Hopes, Young at Heart, and

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she would set my heart to dreaming
so that I wasn't looking at the world

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around me going well, this is
never going to amount to anything. I

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look somewhere through the eyes of faith
and hope, and so I'm very grateful

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for that because you could be in
a different I could have turned out completely

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different had she not had vision and
faith, but she taught me those two

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important things. You are also bringing
up more remarkable similarities in our childhood's Zoro

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he's the drummer for Lenny Kravitz,
Bobby Brown, Frankie Valley and many others.

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His memoirs about his mother. And
that's the significance of the scarf in

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the title of the piece, and
is the scarf that you got to wear

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and the encouragement that was bere I'm
that scarf well. And she was just

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an amazing person. And so my
memoir is really about this beautiful bomb between

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mother and son. It's meant to
inspire people. So when people ask me,

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you know, in four words,
what will a reader get out of

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the book, And it's very simple. It is heartwarming, heart breaking,

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absolutely hilarious. But it will leave
you full of hope. And I wrote

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it and I've spent fifteen years working
on it, literally fifteen years, but

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I actually started a diary at the
age of ten that I kept writing in

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through my twenties. So in essence, I've been working on it for fifty

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years and I'm sixty one, but
the goal is to turn it into a

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movie in a Netflix series. So
think you know, Rudy Rocky the Blindside

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for a stump. It's an epic
overcoming story of you know, at one

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point living in a car and going
to It's my story of going from the

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slums to the spotlight, but with
the he of this incredible mother and this

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tight bond of my six siblings,
this type family that's just there for each

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other. So it's really a universal
story of love and hope and perseverance that

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leads to the dream. It leads
to my dream of becoming a world renown

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drummer, which was my dream from
a child. Maria's Scarf a memoir of

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a mother's love, a son's perseverance
and dreaming big Drummer. Zoro is the

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author of the book you mentioned music. My household as well as a child

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always filled with music. Sometimes it
was Frank Sinatra, sometimes it was show

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tunes. Mom wanted us to have
culture, so at the tender age of

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eight, she was bringing us to
see West Side Story. She was bringing

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us to see the sound of music, that kind of thing. Oh yeah,

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and so our mothers were similar because
at seven I got to go see

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the Temptations and the Supremes and concert
which I grew up in Compton, California.

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We loved soul music, but we
loved all kinds of music. And

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then at twelve she scrimped and saved
and took me to see Frank Sinatra in

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concert. And so she was always
playing music and doing the best she could

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to enrich our lives with those experiences. And what's very interesting in my mother's

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case, even though I grew up
in a jay poverty, she and her

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former life before I was born,
she was the daughter of a Supreme Court

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justice in Mexico City, so she
came very well to do, aristocratic family,

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diplomatic family who had presidents and movie
stars. Over of course, that

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wasn't my childhood at all. Mine
was so far removed from that. But

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as I got older, I realized
she was who she was, and she

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carried herself as that person she grew
up being, even though her life didn't

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turn out like that, and she
wanted to be an actress but was not

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able to do that because life got
in the way. So me succeeding as

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a drummer I got to live her
dreams for her. And she was an

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immigrant from mexic Go City and moved
to Los Angeles. So sometimes it's the

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it's the parents who set the stage
for the second generation to make it,

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you know, And in that case, that was her. And so it

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warmed my heart that that she loved
what I got to do. And one

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of her favorite groups was Frankie Valley
in the fourth Seasons, and I surprised

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her one time with I told her
I got her tickets to go see the

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group, but I didn't tell her
I was the drummer. And and then

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she goes to the group. She
was super excited. She goes, Oh,

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I wish you could come with me. I'm like, no, I

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can't because I got a different gig
that night. And then and then the

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burdens get pulled back. Frankie comes
out singing who loves You pretty Baby?

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And all of a sudden she sees
me on stage and I can hear her

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scream from the audience. It was
really you know, it really, it

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was really sweet. Why are the
drums for you? Zoro? Uh?

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You know, it's one of those
things I think instruments tick you. I

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didn't really drums. I just had
rhythm in me from what I was born,

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and I was always hitting things with
my hands. And in fact,

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that there's some super eight footage.
I was in that program, the Big

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Brother's Big Sisters program when I was
a kid. I wasn't a drummer.

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Then I was ten, twelve,
ten or twelve years old, and before

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they died, the Big brother and
Big Sister that were my mentors, they

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gave me this super eight footage that
I had never seen, and it was

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me banging on their son's drum set. He was a professional drummer and I

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had never even picked up a pair
of sticks. But when I saw the

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footage, man, I got so
emotional because I was like it was a

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prophetic super eight footage because I know
that i'd become a drummer, but I

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was always drawn to the rhythm and
always drawn to the you know, to

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the drums, and it's one of
those things I think it's just sort of

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God given. It's just in you, and all you have to do is

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be by it, and then it's
like a magnet. It draws you towards

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that that thing. And so when
I saw drummers, or when I heard

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funky rhythms. I was just man. I was all into it, and

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I actually never started until I got
discovered as the janitor at my high school.

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I was the after school janitor,
and my job was to clean the

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school and the last part of the
job was to clean the band room.

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And so after I was done cleaning
the bandroom, I had like ten minutes

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left and I would sneak on the
drums and just played them. I had

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never taken lessons, I didn't have
stakes. But the band director caught me

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one day and he goes, kid, he goes, you got an amazing

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rhythmic gift. And that's how I
got on all the school band programs,

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was being the janitor at the high
school. It really isn't a remarkable story.

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And he tells all about it in
Maria's Scarf, a memoir of a

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mother's love, a son's perseverance and
dreaming. Big professional and gifted drummer.

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Zoro. You know his work with
Lenny Kravitz, Frankie Valley and Sean Lennon

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and many others, and now his
writing is out everywhere. Thank you for

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bringing the story to a Zorro,
and I look forward to seeing it on

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the screen. Well, thank you
so much. It's been an honor and

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a privileged to be on your station. And thanks for great questions. I

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really appreciate it. Thanks for listening
to Later with Lee Matthews, the Lee

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Matthews Podcast, and remember to listen
to The Drive Live weekday afternoons from five

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to seven and iHeartMedia presentation