Welcome to our collection of quotes by Neil Peart. We hope you enjoy pondering them and please share widely.
Wikipedia Summary for Neil Peart
Neil Ellwood Peart OC (September 12, 1952 – January 7, 2020) was a Canadian musician, songwriter, and author, best known as the drummer and primary lyricist of the rock band Rush. Peart earned numerous awards for his musical performances, including an induction into the Modern Drummer Readers Poll Hall of Fame in 1983, making him the youngest person ever so honoured. Known to fans by the nickname 'The Professor', his drumming was renowned for its technical proficiency and his live performances for their exacting nature and stamina.
Peart was born in Hamilton, Ontario, and grew up in Port Dalhousie (now part of St. Catharines). During adolescence, he floated between regional bands in pursuit of a career as a full-time drummer. After a discouraging stint in England, Peart returned home to concentrate on music where he joined Rush, a Toronto band, in mid-1974, six years after its formation. Together they released nineteen studio albums, with ten exceeding a million copies sold in the United States. Billboard ranks the band third for the "most consecutive gold or platinum albums by a rock band".
Early in his career, Peart's performance style was deeply rooted in hard rock. He drew most of his inspiration from drummers such as Keith Moon, Ginger Baker, and John Bonham, players who were at the forefront of the British hard rock scene. As time passed, he began to emulate jazz and big band musicians Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich. In 1994, Peart became a friend and pupil of jazz instructor Freddie Gruber. It was during this time that Peart decided to revamp his playing style by incorporating jazz and swing components.
In addition to serving as Rush's primary lyricist, Peart published several memoirs about his travels. His lyrics for Rush addressed universal themes and diverse subjects including science fiction, fantasy, and philosophy, as well as secular, humanitarian, and libertarian themes. Peart wrote a total of seven nonfiction books focused on his travels and personal stories.
On December 7, 2015, Peart announced his retirement from music in an interview with Drumhead Magazine, though bandmate Geddy Lee insisted Peart was quoted out of context, and suggested Peart was "simply taking a break". However, in January 2018, bandmate Alex Lifeson confirmed that Rush was retiring due to Peart's health issues. During his last years Peart lived in Santa Monica, California, with his wife, Carrie Nuttall, and daughter. After a three and a half year illness, Peart died of glioblastoma on January 7, 2020, at age 67.
To me, the highest expression of life is art with jokes. It's very rarified, very difficult to accomplish if you want to be more than just funny, and more than just jokes about human gaseousness.
Racetracks are designed to make it as difficult as possible to get around that corner fast. And some ramps, by necessity, are that way, too.
Even as a kid, I never wanted to be famous; I wanted to be good.
If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice.
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!
No his mind is not for rent
To any god or government
Always hopeful, yet discontent
He knows changes aren't permanent
But change is.
Once I had defined myself as a compositional drummer, I thought, Well, I want to be an improvisational drummer.
Do yourself a favor. Don't ever say to me, 'Everything happens for a reason.'
Living in the limelight: the universal dream for those who wish to SEEM. Those who wish to BE, must put aside the alienation, get on with the fascination, the real relation, the underlying theme.
From first to last, the peak is never passed. Something always fires the light that gets in your eyes.
Lessons taught but never learned, all around us anger burns. Guide the future by the past. Long ago the mould was cast.
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.
Ignorance and prejudice and fear go hand in hand.
You can twist perception, reality won't budge.
Half the world cries
Half the world laughs
Half the world tries
To be the other half.
It was actually drumming that gave me the stamina to get into sports later.
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.
You just become adaptable and try to lead a good life in ways that make sense, regardless. Because I know at the end of it, if I'm going to meet Jesus or Allah or Buddha, I'm going to be all right.
Geddy once joked, 'You're the only guy I know who rehearses to rehearse!
Everything in moderation, with occasional excess.
I'd be very honored to be the ambassador to drum solos.
All the world's indeed a stage
And we are merely players
Performers and portrayers
Each another's audience outside the gilded cage.
What a young musician's dream, to say, Look at those chrome drums. Look at that 22-inch ride cymbal. I'll have those. It was one of those unparalleled exciting days of your life.
I have come to believe that anger and grudges are burning embers in the heart.
Extroverts never understand introverts, and it was like that in school days.
Different hearts beat on different strings.
Pure libertarianism believes that people will be generous and help each other. Well, they won't. I wish it were so, and I live that way.
I remain the optimist: you just do your best and hope for the best. But it's an evolving state of mind.
Live for yourself... there's no one else more worth living for.
Like a force of nature love can fade with the stars at dawn.
Look in, look the storm in the eye. Look out, to the sea and the sky. Look around, at the sight and sound. Look in, look out, look around.
Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
If the future's looking dark, We're the ones who have to shine. If there's no one in control, We're the ones who draw the line. Though we live in trying times, We're the ones who have to try. And we know that time has wings, So we're the ones who have to fly.
Time is a gypsy caravan
Steals away in the night
To leave you stranded in dreamland
Distance is a long-range filter
Memory a flickering light
Left behind in the heartland.
If you want something done right, just forget it.
Waiting for the winds of change to sweep the clouds away. Waiting for the rainbow's end to cast its gold your way ... You don't get something for nothing. You can't have freedom for free.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start to mold a new reality closer to the heart.
Quick to judge, quick to anger, slow to understand... prejudice, fear and ignorance walk hand-in-hand.
It's always a happy day when YYZ appears on our luggage tags.
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.
More a paraphrase than a quote, really, but it comes from a prayer which was stitched into a sampler above my grandmother's bed. It began like this: 'Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep...'
All this machinery making modern music can still be open-hearted. Not so boldly charted, it's really just a question of your honesty.
Better the pride that resides as a citizen of the world than a pride that divides when a colorful rag is unfurled.
If I go play golf with the guys, it's intended to be a joke.
Rudimental snare work is something I've always loved.
If drummers are 'anti-solo,' that's up to them. They're musicians, and they can play whatever they want. But my inspirations early on were people like Buddy Rich, seeing him on 'The Tonight Show', or Gene Krupa.
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.
Let your heart be the anchor and the beat of your song.
Lotus-land as it appears in 'Free Will' is simply a metaphor for an idealized background, a 'land of milk and honey.' It is sometimes also used as a pejorative name for Los Angeles, though that was not in my mind when I wrote it.
The tarot card 'The Tower' seemed a chilling reflection of the events of September 11, 2001.
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.
When I'm riding my motorcycle, I'm glad to be alive. When I stop riding my motorcycle, I'm glad to be alive.
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'm less comfortable in a gregarious social situation, and you can be introverted and still share everything. It just means that you're guarded.
People don't realize the limitations of 200 words, and the way they get chiselled down into a song that has to be sung.
Playing a three-hour Rush show is like running a marathon while solving equations.
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.
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.
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.
To me, the highest expression of life is art with jokes. It's very rarified, very difficult to accomplish if you want to be more than just funny and more than just jokes about human gaseousness.
To me, drum soloing is like doing a marathon and solving equations at the same time.
You have to know when you're at the top of your particular mountain, I guess. Maybe not the summit, but as high as you can go.
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!'
The government's only functions are to protect the rights of the individual; therefore, you need a police force and an army.
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.
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.
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.
If it's cross-country ski season, I'll be out doing that, or snowshoeing up in Quebec. In my California home, I go to the local Y and I like doing yoga. It's been hugely beneficial to me in injury avoidance.
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
If you've got a problem, take it out on a drum.
In 2007, I studied with Peter Erskine because I was doing a Buddy Rich tribute concert, and I wanted to take my big-band drumming up a level. I went over to Peter's house with my sticks, feeling like a 13-year-old again.
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.
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 sang the hymns, and I read the Bible stories, but I was always perplexed, like, 'Really? Jesus wants you for a sunbeam? For a what?'
It's interesting. I've known quite a few good athletes that can't begin to play a beat on the drum set. Most team sport is about the smooth fluidity of hand-eye coordination and physical grace, where drumming is much more about splitting all those things up.
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.
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.
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.
When I started playing, I played in RandB bands. I played James Brown, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding and all that.
There is no blood in jazz drumming, and there are no bullies in jazz drumming.
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.
When Mr. Ludwig invented the bass-drum pedal, that's what made the drum set possible.
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 expect if you're a professional public speaker, you probably wouldn't want to go onstage and sing and play drums.
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.
Ever since I was a kid, I always wanted to play music that I liked, and even when I was in cover bands when I was a teenager we only played cover tunes that we liked. That was the simple morality that I grew up with.