“Tremendous authority”: Three of the greatest drummers of all time, according to Neil Peart
Being a drummer wasn’t an easy game in a band like Rush. Not only did it require the kind of energetic pacing and know-how needed to keep up with some of the most complex music in history, but it also demanded an intense level of creative spirit to maintain the same appeal as the other members’ work. Thankfully, with Neil Peart behind the kit, things were always in good hands.
Incidentally, Peart’s membership in the band seemed to stem from equal parts happenstance and capability. After all, Peart happened to be in the right circles at the right time, and, lucky for Rush, he also had exactly what they needed. After trying out several different drummers, only Peart seemed to share their joint “strong musical empathy” while also having things in common outside of the music.
And with the right chemistry, everything naturally fell into place. This immediate connection enabled them to focus on the complexity of their music without having to divvy time and energy with onboarding, operating on the same page to get the job done. This is a rarity in music, especially when finding the right drummer, so enlisting Peart always felt like lightning in a bottle.
Perhaps the defining characteristic of this recipe was Peart always knowing what a good drummer should be. In his view, there was no singular defining criteria that made it possible but rather a series of different assets that created magic. In his world, flavour came from percussionists who moulded their craft with confidence and grounding and ones who were open to ideas but knew how to execute them.
In many ways, this is why Manu Katché became a significant focal point. Known for his work with Robbie Robertson, Joni Mitchell, and Peter Gabriel, Katché represented this holistic notion that good drummers hold a certain essence of knowledgability: “You can listen to some simple drummers and tell they know everything,” Peart told Modern Drummer Magazine in 1989. “It’s implicit. they have a certain confidence and agility on the drumset. Most of [Katché’s] drumming is very simple, but it is so elegant.”
This elegance is also what drew him to the late Kevin Wilkinson, who, in Peart’s eyes, also “plays very simple patterns with very few fills, but again, what he plays is so elegant, and right for the music, and you can tell he has confidence.” However, what also made him a master of the art was how he could play complex material “with such authority that they just flow by you smoothly”. Many drummers, according to Peart, get too lost in the nuances that break up the flow, but ones like Wilkinson had an effortless knack for it.
While there are similar reasons he admired Phil Gould, he also claimed Gould to have a penchant for nailing the “feel”, especially when it’s far less easily explainable. For instance, Gould had “tremendous authority”, just like Katché and Wilkinson, but he also knew how to execute different dynamics, particularly when they felt simple one minute and complex the next. However, all of these drummers don’t exactly represent Peart’s favourite style, despite his endearment.
“The three drummers I mentioned I can count among my favourite drummers, although they don’t play the kind of drumming that I like playing,” he said, admitting that, while it’s the music he likes, it isn’t always the same as the style he enjoys playing. However, the “infectious” nature of their playing no doubt inspired him to re-evaluate his own approach, adopting different ideas to be the best possible percussionist he could be in one of the most demanding bands in history.
