Neil Peart’s first-ever drumming heroes: “My first inspiration”
The notion of rock and roll is built on freedom. That’s why, under the umbrella term, is a cacophony of different genres and styles that all remain nestled beneath the warm glow of the moniker. Rock and roll, in essence, was always about sheer rebellion. Rebelling against the world, your parents or music itself. it encouraged its patrons to move forward into the wilderness and uncover new music to weave into the fabric of rock. As one of its most favoured sons, it is unsurprising that Neil Peart brought in a diverse array of styles to Rush.
Originally a three-piece blues-based hard rock outfit in the vein of Cream or Blue Cheer, the Canadian band were aiming for more complex and progressive arrangements when Peart auditioned to replace original drummer John Rutsey. Peart had remarkable time and precision, but with a ferocious delivery and unstoppable energy, it was clear who he was basing his style on.
That would be The Who’s legendarily combustible drummer, Keith Moon. “Keith Moon had a wonderful way of framing the vocals,” Peart explained in the bonus features to the band’s appearance on the Classic Albums programme. “You can hear that it’s apparent chaos, but it’s not at all, it’s a very carefully designed chaos that frames the essence of the song. And it’s something that I learned early on was to do that: to frame the vocals and occasionally come in and punch up them.”
But before Moon, Peart was absorbing influences from drummers that had nothing to do with rock music, namely jazz bandleader Gene Krupa. “My first inspiration I always say was Gene Krupa, because when I was 11 or 12, I saw the movie called The Gene Krupa Story. Sal Mineo actually played Gene Krupa in it, but he did a great job of miming Gene Krupa’s drumming. And it seemed so glamorous and exciting and dangerous: Gene Krupa gets arrested for marijuana in it,” Peart said with a sly smile.
“I started playing in ’65, at age 13, and I played along with the AM radio in those days,” Peart added. It was through the popular music of the day that Peart gained another key influence. “Many of us in my generation often joke that our six favourite drummers were all Hal Blaine, because when I was playing along to Simon & Garfunkel, or The Byrds, or The Association: all these bands, they were all Hal Blaine playing drums on them.”
“I had a little AM radio, and a four piece drum set on the radiator beside me,” he continued. “I had a plastic radio that I played along with. Then when I started buying records, that’s when the first records I bought were by The Who and Blue Cheer.”
Peart also revealed that his early bands often played San Francisco-based rock, including The Grateful Dead, Moby Grape, and Jefferson Airplane. But it was the supercharged drumming of Moon that made Peart into the powerhouse drummer he eventually became, even if he always carried a little bit of jazz with him into his arrangements.
Moon may have been the man who shaped his style, but the spark of intrigue came directly from the two masters of pop and jazz, Hal Blaine and Gene Krupa. Without them, Peart would have likely just picked up a guitar like everybody else.
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