Listen to Neil Peart’s astonishing isolated drums on Rush song ‘Vital Signs’
If you’re looking for insight into Neil Peart’s drumming, you’ve come to the right place. The Rush musician is widely regarded as one of the most talented drummers in the history of rock music, and in this isolated recording of his work on the 1981 single ‘Vital Signs’, he’s at the top of his game.
Featured on Rush’s Moving Pictures album, ‘Vital Signs’ was written and recorded on the fly while the band were in the studio working on material for the album. According to vocalist Geddy Lee, they wrote it in under five minutes. That haste is palpable in the recording, and the hit became both a fan and band favourite once the group’s fanbase had been given time to get used to its inhuman rhythms and technospeak vocals.
Initially, though, Peart, Geddy and the other Rush members had mixed feelings about ‘Vital Signs’. In a 1986 edition of Guitar for the Practicing Musician, Peart confessed: “At the time it was a very transitional song. Everybody had mixed feelings about it, but at the same time, it expressed something essential that I wanted to say. That’s a song that has a marriage of vocals and lyrics I’m very happy with. But it took our audience a long time to get it, because it was rhythmically very different for us and it demanded the audience to respond in a different rhythmic way.”
He continued: “There was no heavy downbeat; it was all counterpoint between upbeat and downbeat, and there was some reflection of reggae influence and a reflection of the more refined areas of new wave music that we had sort of takes under our umbrella and made happen. That song took about three tours to catch on. It was kind of a baby for us. We kept playing it and wouldn’t give up. We put it in our encore last tour – putting it in the most exciting part of the set possible – and just demanded that people accept it because we believed in it.”
This isolated recording reveals that Peart’s snare is actually a tinny 8-bit sample, which is contrasted with a real snare about two minutes in, adding a new layer of momentum. The track continues to divide Rush fans to this day, but those who love it are united by a common appreciation for the band’s diversity and dexterity, and for the impossibly metrical rhythms of the great Neil Peart.
