Neil Peart
Even as a kid, I never wanted to be famous; I wanted to be good.Collection: Famous
I'm learning all the time. I'm evolving all the time as a human being. I'm getting better, I hope, in all of the important ways.Collection: Learning
To get nostalgic about other people's music, or even about your own, makes a terrible statement about the condition of your life and your prospects for the future. I have no patience with that kind of attitude, whether it's on radio or among friends.Collection: Patience
It was actually drumming that gave me the stamina to get into sports later. I started playing drums at 13, and when I got to the international touring level... I got interested in cross-country skiing, long-distance swimming, bicycling... things that require stamina, not finesse.Collection: Sports
If I have to travel, I'm going to travel my way and travel in the real world. And I'm going to have conversations every day with people in rest stops and people in gas stations and people in hotels and diners. That nourishes me.Collection: Travel
Drumming completely eclipsed my life from age 13, when I started drum lessons. Everything disappeared. I'd done well in school up until that time. I was fairly adjusted socially up until that time. And I became completely monomania, obsessed all through my teens. Nothing else existed anymore.Collection: Age
I had spindly little ankles, and growing up in Canada, I couldn't skate. I was no good at any sports so was very much a pariah through those adolescent years.Collection: Sports
I believe in taxation and health care that is outside the usual libertarian mandate, because I don't want people to have to suffer. It's as simple as that.Collection: Health
The real test of a musician is live performance. It's one thing to spend a long time learning how to play well in the studio, but to do it in front of people is what keeps me coming back to touring.Collection: Learning
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
What is a master but a master student? And if that's true, then there's a responsibility on you to keep getting better and to explore avenues of your profession.
I've heard the stories. Like, Eric Clapton said he wanted to burn his guitar when he heard Jimi Hendrix play. I never understood that because, when I went and saw a great drummer or heard one, all I wanted to do was practice.
Do yourself a favor. Don't ever say to me, 'Everything happens for a reason.'
If you've got a problem, take it out on a drum.
There is no blood in jazz drumming, and there are no bullies in jazz drumming.
The reality is that my style of drumming is largely an athletic undertaking, and it does not pain me to realize that, like all athletes, there comes a time to... take yourself out of the game.
Stamina is the force that drives the drumming; it's not really a sprint.
Live shows were always religion for us. We never played a show - whether it was in front of 15 people or 15,000 - where it wasn't everything we had that night.
It astonished me in the early Nineties to suddenly have musicians admit that they had been inspired and influenced by us. That meant a lot at that time. But of course, being human, the... disrespect isn't even strong enough a word, is it? The opprobrium was painful. Being popular and hated is not satisfying.
If I go play golf with the guys, it's intended to be a joke.
What I've learned over the years is that the craft of songwriting is trying to take the personal and make it universal - or in the case of telling a story, taking the universal and making it personal.
For me to call myself a musician, it's necessary to play live, and it rewards so much - not just in the pay cheque sense but what it does for my playing. I feel it through a tour - I feel it at the end of a tour - all that I've gathered, and especially now that I am improvising so much.
The government's only functions are to protect the rights of the individual; therefore, you need a police force and an army.
The thing for me about Ayn Rand is that her philosophy is the only one applicable to the world today - in every sense. If you take her ideas, then take them farther in your own mind, you can find answers to pretty well everything on an individual basis.
I'd be very honored to be the ambassador to drum solos.
It seems to me that's the only way you can have a truly creative aggregate of people is if they're all contributing in different ways.
The Seven Cities of Gold always fascinated me. Southwestern U.S. history especially fascinates me. The whole spur of the Spanish exploration of the Southwestern U.S. was the search for these mythical Seven Cities of Gold.
People don't realize the limitations of 200 words, and the way they get chiselled down into a song that has to be sung.
When I was young, my ambitions were very modest. I thought, 'If only I could play at the battle of the bands at the Y, that would be the culmination of existence!' And then the roller rink, and you work your way up branch by branch.
For a person of my sensibility, you're only left with the Democratic party.
Performing live in front of an audience is such a matter of will - all of those things you can do just fine in your basement, suddenly you have to do them in front of hundreds or thousands of people, and it becomes a different matter entirely.
Too much attention and hoopla doesn't agree with my temperament.
I think, in music, you're always hoping that you'll have a like-minded audience and that the music you like making will appeal to them, too.
I am the audience. I want to observe people. Even when I'm playing drums onstage, I'm watching people. I'm looking at them and their faces and their T-shirts and their signs. And travelling by motorcycle, especially, the world is just coming at me.
I expect if you're a professional public speaker, you probably wouldn't want to go onstage and sing and play drums.
For me, drum elements are like hieroglyphics - I think of a certain physical figure, and a little three-dimensional glyph will appear in my mind as I'm playing.
I don't like lyrics that are just thrown together, that were obviously written as you went along, or the song was already written and the guy made up the lyrics in five minutes.
People say to me, 'Are you still excited when you go on tour?' Should I be excited about leaving my family? No, and no one should. It's as simple as that. If you put aside the fantasy of it, it is what it is and has to be done. And that's fine, and I pour my entire energy and enthusiasm into it, but of course, I'm of two minds about the whole idea.
I'm still no good at ball-and-stick games. If I go play golf with the guys, it's intended to be a joke.
I want to be an improviser, and I've worked very hard at that. It's an art. You don't just play whatever comes into your head; you have to be very deliberate about what you do.
Extroverts never understand introverts, and it was like that in school days. I read recently that all of us can be defined in adult life by the way others perceived us in high school.
When Mr. Ludwig invented the bass-drum pedal, that's what made the drum set possible.
Rudimental snare work is something I've always loved.
Once, I went speeding past an old couple and smiled as I imagined their conversation: him grumbling about me and her telling him not to be such an old grouch. Then, suddenly I was in tears, thinking, 'I'll never get to be a grumpy old grandpa!'
It's not the music you hear in your head that other people are going to hear. You have to be able to make it true enough to the image in your head, and that's where technique and technology come in, for sure, and knowledge. It's not true and will never be true that someone who knows nothing can sit in a basement and make great music.
When I started playing, I played in R&B bands. I played James Brown, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding and all that.
Now I call myself a bleeding heart libertarian. Because I do believe in the principles of Libertarianism as an ideal - because I'm an idealist.
There's still a lot I'm angry about, a lot of human behaviour that's appalling and despicable, but you choose what you can fight against. I always thought if I could just put something in words perfectly enough, people would get the idea and it would change things.
To me, drum soloing is like doing a marathon and solving equations at the same time.
I try not to repeat myself in fills in all the Rush songs unless it is something simple or something I feel is my own characteristic thing.