The drummer Neil Peart thought could be too “self-indulgent”
No drummer can spend their entire lives laying down the same beat every time they play. If all that anyone had to look forward to when playing live was having a couple of fills sprinkled into the mix, chances are they would want to rip their heart out the minute they got to the second or third night of any given tour. Although Neil Peart could afford to bring out the big guns whenever he played live with Rush, he admitted that there was a way for someone to go too overboard into boring territory.
Then again, “going overboard” was practically the creed behind the Canadian power trio’s best work. Despite them having some of the most celebrated records in the history of prog, there are still pieces of their songs that can get a bit too monotonous for someone only familiar with the likes of Boston and Journey, especially when setting up the atmosphere during most of their elongated pieces.
For anyone who waited through those moments, though, they were often rewarded by the greatest musicianship anyone had ever seen. Peart was already on another plane compared to every other drummer, but seeing him hit the drums with that level of precision is enough to give any other drummer secondhand tendonitis watching some of his drum solos from his prime.
But like any powerhouse, Peart wouldn’t have been here without John Bonham. He may have considered himself one of the biggest fans of The Who, but a lot of the soul behind Peart’s drumming came from him listening to Bonham, whether that was hearing those massive kick drums that kick off ‘Good Times Bad Times’ or watching him deliver a clinic in how to make a small kit sound massive on ‘When the Levee Breaks’.
And like all musical heroes from his day, ‘Bonzo’ knew how to show off. As if ‘Moby Dick’ wasn’t a firm indicator of what he could do in a studio environment, hearing him fly off the handle on various bootlegs showed him to be a wild animal, especially when he forgot about the sticks and played the drums with his hands. There’s a lot of showmanship behind it, but Peart admitted that there were moments when he began to tune out.
For as much reverence that has been put on Bonham’s body of work, Peart did find that parts of it could get a bit too much to handle, saying, “Stewart Copeland [is] very ‘anti-drum solo.’ Yet he jokes that when he was a kid, any drummer who didn’t play drum solos was ‘lame.’ But it can be too much of a good thing, sure. Take John Bonham, who’s a drummer I greatly admire: I watch some of his performances, and they’re fantastic, but you know, it gets long and self-indulgent.”
That’s probably why Peart eventually got to work with people like Freddy Gruber to improve his technique later on in his career. He had done his fair share of drum acrobatics in his time, but even when crafting some of the finest tracks of his career, it was important for him to realise when his playing was starting to get a little bit stiffer than what he had originally envisioned.
And listening to every drum performance he gave after that, Peart was far more interested in making the solo breathe rather than throwing caution to the wind and demolishing his kit. After all, the show is all about bringing music, and it’s important to have the solos tell the story rather than mindlessly thrashing away.
