The one drummer Neil Peart said will never be seen again
There’s a good chance that the drumming community will continue to dissect what Neil Peart did for decades to come.
Plenty of drummers have made their living being an absolute powerhouse behind the kit, but what Peart was doing was beyond someone who was relying on pure rhythmic muscle. He had studied some of the greatest percussionists the world had ever seen, and while he was a true one-of-a-kind, he could also point out the kind of drummers that no one would ever be able to copy.
That said, the number-one rule for a while was to never talk to Peart about his god-like skills. For someone who could put together one of the best drum clinics anyone has ever heard, Peart was always self-effacing about his skills and would often get more than a little bit uncomfortable when someone dared to call him a legend. He simply had a job to do, and he happened to do it very well, but he wasn’t looking for the same kind of adulation that someone like John Bonham received.
Because, really, what Bonzo and Peart were doing were very different mindsets for someone to get into. A lot of what the Zeppelin madman did was follow the riffs that Jimmy Page came up with, whereas with Peart, his percussion parts were like songwriting in many respects. The melodic instruments may have had more attention, but there was no way to think about ‘Tom Sawyer’ without thinking of that insane drum break that happens in the middle of the tune before the final verse.
The whole thing felt like pure chaos at times, but when you listen to it, it’s insanely clinical in its preciseness. Peart was looking to make the kind of rhythm parts that most drummers had only dared to do, and when listening to what Keith Moon could do behind the kit, ‘The Professor’ fell in love with his playing from the moment that he heard his first Who songs. Then again, a lot of what Moon did wasn’t by design in any way.
For all of the self-esteem issues that he had during his time in The Who, Moon brought the drums out front to be the lead instrument more than a few times. A song like ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ might be more remembered today for those guitar stabs and one of the best screams in rock and roll history from Roger Daltrey, but right before that happens, hearing Moon go through every single fill that he can think of before having the rest of the band lock in with him is like watching a mad scientist finally having a breakthrough.
And for as much as Peart was a student of Moon’s drumming, he was the first to say that his style was in his spirit rather than the raw chops, saying, “It is ironic that I wanted to be in a band that played Who songs and, when I finally got into one, I discovered that I didn’t like playing drums like Keith Moon. I was fortunate enough to see The Who many times during the late ’60s and early ’70s and it was very sad to watch him decline and expire from the sheer exuberance of his life. There have been many other great drummers who have taught me things and inspired me, but his like we shall not see again.”
But it’s not like that reckless abandon hasn’t rubbed off on Peart in some capacity. He liked to keep things a lot more organised whenever he launched into a drum solo, but when looking at the way ‘Moon the Loon’ went across the kit, it wasn’t all that dissimilar from what Peart did, only with a bit more attention to detail behind the scenes.
It’s a shame that legions of new fans will never get to see what Moon was like in his prime, but not everything was about being there in the moment. Most of us are lucky to have Moon’s recordings preserved until the end of time, and listening to his fills, you can hear the same sense of excitement that got so many people hooked on rock and roll in the first place.
