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Why was Neil so polarizing among drummers?


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I’ve noticed In a lot of tributes to Neil there are still a lot of detractors.. I can’t think of another drummer who has such a huge fanbase but also quite a few critics.. what was it about Neil that caused this? Overexposure? Prog rock hatred? Geddys vocals?

Who are the main detractors?

 

On drum forums you will inevitably find guys ripping on Neil and tossing out “ overrated”, can’t swing, play jazz, too stiff etc

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Neil had unbelievable chops, which everyone can respect. But he was severely groove deficient. Listen to his versions of the debut album songs. They became choppy.

 

Often, the groove is in the places you don't play. Listen to a drummer like Phil Rudd on Back in Black, or Linus and Lucy from A Charlie Brown Christmas. The drums completely power those songs in a way that Neil never really did.

 

This is why I didn't like his drumming on What You're Doing.

 

Like others have stated, he was an excellent composer, but a terrible improviser. The result was like a more rigid Phil Collins. Collins could build but still improvise. With Neil's technical chops, I was surprised that he never figured that out. He should have been able to.

 

He liked having a road map. I can respect that. But from a listening standpoint, it was a bit inflexible and predictable.

 

I get that. But I also enjoyed listening to the parts Neil came up with far more than than Phil Collins.. with all due respect to Phil. I think improvising is a bit overrated and can sound like shit a lot of the time

 

As a very amateur jazz player, I love improv and I'm of the mind that if it sounds bad then it's more the player's fault than any fault of improvising in general. I'm also of the mind that you have to be able to improvise in order to write. Perhaps not in a sustained manner or in public, but you do have to generate your own ideas somehow. Seeing how amazing Neil was at composing drum parts, I honestly doubt he would've been half bad at improv if he'd really tried it out. I think that was one area Rush never really explored. Of course there must have been some improvisation in his drum solos each night (no two were exactly the same were they?), so perhaps that's all the improv Neil cared to do.

 

\\

 

have you listened to the improv jam with neil, alex and billy sheehan? i can dig it up if needed.

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Thank god Neil couldn't groove. Had he been able to, Rush would have disbanded by 1978 with their legacy relegated to the discount bins of history. Being the greatest drum composer in all of rock wasn't enough, I guess. People also need him to have groove. lol. I've seen kid drummers on YouTube with groove for days, on a level of any pro drummer, but those same kids and pro drummers couldn't compose a 2112 or a Tom Sawyer in a 100 lifetimes.

 

his drumming was perfect as a member of a power trio imo.

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I’ve always judged a musician by their body of work and playing within the context of the songs they are associated with. I think since the dawn of youtube , you can find guys with ridiculous chops, groove, swing etc.. and maybe guys like Neil aren’t valued as much? It seems that way
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Other drummers don't like Neil because they think they're just as good but only make $11/hr at Guitar Center and deliver pizzas off hours. Seriously, any musical 'competition' is just bullshit. Woohoo, you're the best player at your local Guitar Center...don't f***ing care dude...now give me 3 sets of Ernie Ball 10s will ya?

 

I might give opinions from his true piers some validity, but it really boils down to envy. I can't speak for Neil, but I don't think he was bothered by criticism; he followed his own path and could self-analyze his playing. He could have easily coasted and never bother to work with Gruber.

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There are two streams that came together to create modern rock music. There's one that originates in the blues, which is almost wholly based around improvisation and gives pride of place to a musician's ability to communicate emotion through feeling, and what we'd call groove. And then there's another stream that originates in Western classical music, which allows very little improvisation and instead uses esoteric stuff like modes and time signatures to communicate emotion instead.

 

The Beatles were essentially the first band to blend those streams together into something coherent. (There are some fantastic documentaries out there about this exact subject.) They found a half-way point where you could use the massive toolkit of classical music to create elaborate and sophisticated songs, but marry them to the expressiveness and directness of the blues. From that point forward, rock music existed on a spectrum between the two poles of blues and classical, and it created a tension between listeners who preferred one or the other.

 

By the late 60s, you had bands like Cream and Led Zeppelin, which leaned heavily towards the blues side, where songs were supposed to be direct, played with feeling, and drummers were supposed to groove their faces off. Not that they didn't play around with song structure and composition as well, but those things weren't the point of the music. It was explicitly about emoting through your instrument. To get Freudian, these bands were musical id; the unconscious, the primal, the animal.

 

And then you had bands like King Crimson and Genesis, where composition mattered and the classical influence was clear, and it was important to be able to pull off a solo in B Phyrgian over a drum pattern in 7. And likewise, it's not that there was no feeling and groove in their music. It's there. But if that's all you were listening for, you were bound to be confused and disappointed. These bands were pure super-ego: they demanded that you pay attention and think about their music.

 

The problem with Neil is that a lot of people lumped him in with the second crowd and saw him as this guy who had amazing technical ability but couldn't emote to save his life. But what they're missing is that most of Neil's early influences (and Alex's and Geddy's as well) came from the blues end of the spectrum - guys like Keith Moon, who is basically the musical id incarnate, and bands like Blue Cheer and Buffalo Springfield. That influence has always been the core of his playing. At heart, Neil was a blues drummer.

 

But because Rush wrote elaborate Genesis-like songs, and because they enjoyed playing complicated and intricate parts that couldn't be readily improvised on stage, they got pigeonholed early on. And then punk arrived, almost exactly when Rush released 2112, and the tension between the two kinds of rock exploded and became almost political, and it became fashionable to hate Neil Peart.

 

Some people are still living in the 70s. That's all there is to it. Anyone who actually listens to Neil's playing knows he's more than just a time signature-generating computer with drumsticks, but some people can't see past the ornate songs to the raw, expressive blues heart beating underneath.

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I would not say that Neil was polarizing, because for every jazz snob or player with no chops who said he overplayed, there were 100 who looked up to him.

 

What made Neil so incredible was that not only was he a pioneer but he never stopped learning and was never afraid to step out of his comfort zone. His strength and compositional skills were unparalleled, to say nothing about the length and influence of his career.

 

He was one in a lifetime.

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I’ve noticed In a lot of tributes to Neil there are still a lot of detractors.. I can’t think of another drummer who has such a huge fanbase but also quite a few critics.. what was it about Neil that caused this? Overexposure? Prog rock hatred? Geddys vocals?

 

A drummer buddy of mine, who loves Neil, said, back when he heard Burning for Buddy, "Neil swings like a rusty gate".

 

Neil was an incredible technical and compositional drummer, but that doesn't mean he didn't have weaknesses/failings.

^^^

(Neil probably would've agreed with that statement, or at least the 2nd half of it.)

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most likely it was because he was unable unwilling to pretend a stranger is a long-awaited friend?

 

fixed :)

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most likely it was because he was unable unwilling to pretend a stranger is a long-awaited friend?

 

fixed :)

 

well................ can"t is more unable than unwilling imo

 

hey, post in the cycling thread and lets spread bike stoke in TRF!

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I've heard of this before, and there was some truth to it before the 90s, but Neil made a significant improvement in his ability to swing and drum organically when he studied with Freddie Gruber...his work is a lot more fluid from T4E onwards.

 

I always point to Peaceable Kingdom as a good example of that. Yeah, seems a good chunk of Rush fans don't like that song much, even those who like Vapor Trails, but I happen to like it -- It's grimey and snarky, and it has some groove to it. It's not

, but it's there. It's the kind of playing Neil couldn't have pulled off pre-T4E.

 

Check out the "tarot card" sections at 1:18 and 2:58. Pretty good feel from Neil there.

 

http://youtu.be/uLB-olUHLac

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I’ve noticed In a lot of tributes to Neil there are still a lot of detractors.. I can’t think of another drummer who has such a huge fanbase but also quite a few critics.. what was it about Neil that caused this? Overexposure? Prog rock hatred? Geddys vocals?

 

what about mike portnoy?

 

seems he catches more shit than neil ever did.

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I’ve noticed In a lot of tributes to Neil there are still a lot of detractors.. I can’t think of another drummer who has such a huge fanbase but also quite a few critics.. what was it about Neil that caused this? Overexposure? Prog rock hatred? Geddys vocals?

Who are the main detractors?

 

On drum forums you will inevitably find guys ripping on Neil and tossing out “ overrated”, can’t swing, play jazz, too stiff etc

They're just parroting the well known negative narrative.

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I've heard of this before, and there was some truth to it before the 90s, but Neil made a significant improvement in his ability to swing and drum organically when he studied with Freddie Gruber...his work is a lot more fluid from T4E onwards.

 

I always point to Peaceable Kingdom as a good example of that. Yeah, seems a good chunk of Rush fans don't like that song much, even those who like Vapor Trails, but I happen to like it -- It's grimey and snarky, and it has some groove to it. It's not

, but it's there. It's the kind of playing Neil couldn't have pulled off pre-T4E.

 

Check out the "tarot card" sections at 1:18 and 2:58. Pretty good feel from Neil there.

 

http://youtu.be/uLB-olUHLac

 

cool

 

yeah i think its a testament to neils passion that he revisited his style later in life.

 

obviously neil got exposed to more music with groove as he got older. growing up i cant imagine he was exposed to much groovy music. could be wrong about that though?

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I’ve noticed In a lot of tributes to Neil there are still a lot of detractors.. I can’t think of another drummer who has such a huge fanbase but also quite a few critics.. what was it about Neil that caused this? Overexposure? Prog rock hatred? Geddys vocals?

 

what about mike portnoy?

 

seems he catches more shit than neil ever did.

 

deservedly so....he just refuses to play a groove.

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I’ve noticed In a lot of tributes to Neil there are still a lot of detractors.. I can’t think of another drummer who has such a huge fanbase but also quite a few critics.. what was it about Neil that caused this? Overexposure? Prog rock hatred? Geddys vocals?

 

what about mike portnoy?

 

seems he catches more shit than neil ever did.

 

deservedly so....he just refuses to play a groove.

 

LOL

 

he started another band this week too!

 

MP may not groove like the best but at least he is a fearless improviser. way more than neil imo.

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most likely it was because he was unable unwilling to pretend a stranger is a long-awaited friend?

 

fixed :)

 

well................ can"t is more unable than unwilling imo

 

Of course he could've pretended. It's just pretend -- you can pretend to do lots of things, including reacting to a stranger as if they were a good friend. He was unwilling to do so.

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most likely it was because he was unable unwilling to pretend a stranger is a long-awaited friend?

 

fixed :)

 

well................ can"t is more unable than unwilling imo

 

Of course he could've pretended. It's just pretend -- you can pretend to do lots of things, including reacting to a stranger as if they were a good friend. He was unwilling to do so.

 

well i will pretend i did not read this post if thats the case..........

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Neil had unbelievable chops, which everyone can respect. But he was severely groove deficient. Listen to his versions of the debut album songs. They became choppy.

 

Often, the groove is in the places you don't play. Listen to a drummer like Phil Rudd on Back in Black, or Linus and Lucy from A Charlie Brown Christmas. The drums completely power those songs in a way that Neil never really did.

 

This is why I didn't like his drumming on What You're Doing.

 

Like others have stated, he was an excellent composer, but a terrible improviser. The result was like a more rigid Phil Collins. Collins could build but still improvise. With Neil's technical chops, I was surprised that he never figured that out. He should have been able to.

 

He liked having a road map. I can respect that. But from a listening standpoint, it was a bit inflexible and predictable.

 

I get that. But I also enjoyed listening to the parts Neil came up with far more than than Phil Collins.. with all due respect to Phil. I think improvising is a bit overrated and can sound like shit a lot of the time

 

As a very amateur jazz player, I love improv and I'm of the mind that if it sounds bad then it's more the player's fault than any fault of improvising in general. I'm also of the mind that you have to be able to improvise in order to write. Perhaps not in a sustained manner or in public, but you do have to generate your own ideas somehow. Seeing how amazing Neil was at composing drum parts, I honestly doubt he would've been half bad at improv if he'd really tried it out. I think that was one area Rush never really explored. Of course there must have been some improvisation in his drum solos each night (no two were exactly the same were they?), so perhaps that's all the improv Neil cared to do.

 

\\

 

have you listened to the improv jam with neil, alex and billy sheehan? i can dig it up if needed.

 

I have not! Is it any good?

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There are two streams that came together to create modern rock music. There's one that originates in the blues, which is almost wholly based around improvisation and gives pride of place to a musician's ability to communicate emotion through feeling, and what we'd call groove. And then there's another stream that originates in Western classical music, which allows very little improvisation and instead uses esoteric stuff like modes and time signatures to communicate emotion instead.

 

The Beatles were essentially the first band to blend those streams together into something coherent. (There are some fantastic documentaries out there about this exact subject.) They found a half-way point where you could use the massive toolkit of classical music to create elaborate and sophisticated songs, but marry them to the expressiveness and directness of the blues. From that point forward, rock music existed on a spectrum between the two poles of blues and classical, and it created a tension between listeners who preferred one or the other.

 

By the late 60s, you had bands like Cream and Led Zeppelin, which leaned heavily towards the blues side, where songs were supposed to be direct, played with feeling, and drummers were supposed to groove their faces off. Not that they didn't play around with song structure and composition as well, but those things weren't the point of the music. It was explicitly about emoting through your instrument. To get Freudian, these bands were musical id; the unconscious, the primal, the animal.

 

And then you had bands like King Crimson and Genesis, where composition mattered and the classical influence was clear, and it was important to be able to pull off a solo in B Phyrgian over a drum pattern in 7. And likewise, it's not that there was no feeling and groove in their music. It's there. But if that's all you were listening for, you were bound to be confused and disappointed. These bands were pure super-ego: they demanded that you pay attention and think about their music.

 

The problem with Neil is that a lot of people lumped him in with the second crowd and saw him as this guy who had amazing technical ability but couldn't emote to save his life. But what they're missing is that most of Neil's early influences (and Alex's and Geddy's as well) came from the blues end of the spectrum - guys like Keith Moon, who is basically the musical id incarnate, and bands like Blue Cheer and Buffalo Springfield. That influence has always been the core of his playing. At heart, Neil was a blues drummer.

 

But because Rush wrote elaborate Genesis-like songs, and because they enjoyed playing complicated and intricate parts that couldn't be readily improvised on stage, they got pigeonholed early on. And then punk arrived, almost exactly when Rush released 2112, and the tension between the two kinds of rock exploded and became almost political, and it became fashionable to hate Neil Peart.

 

Some people are still living in the 70s. That's all there is to it. Anyone who actually listens to Neil's playing knows he's more than just a time signature-generating computer with drumsticks, but some people can't see past the ornate songs to the raw, expressive blues heart beating underneath.

 

Post of the day.

Edited by Entre_Perpetuo
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Neil had unbelievable chops, which everyone can respect. But he was severely groove deficient. Listen to his versions of the debut album songs. They became choppy.

 

Often, the groove is in the places you don't play. Listen to a drummer like Phil Rudd on Back in Black, or Linus and Lucy from A Charlie Brown Christmas. The drums completely power those songs in a way that Neil never really did.

 

This is why I didn't like his drumming on What You're Doing.

 

Like others have stated, he was an excellent composer, but a terrible improviser. The result was like a more rigid Phil Collins. Collins could build but still improvise. With Neil's technical chops, I was surprised that he never figured that out. He should have been able to.

 

He liked having a road map. I can respect that. But from a listening standpoint, it was a bit inflexible and predictable.

 

I get that. But I also enjoyed listening to the parts Neil came up with far more than than Phil Collins.. with all due respect to Phil. I think improvising is a bit overrated and can sound like shit a lot of the time

 

As a very amateur jazz player, I love improv and I'm of the mind that if it sounds bad then it's more the player's fault than any fault of improvising in general. I'm also of the mind that you have to be able to improvise in order to write. Perhaps not in a sustained manner or in public, but you do have to generate your own ideas somehow. Seeing how amazing Neil was at composing drum parts, I honestly doubt he would've been half bad at improv if he'd really tried it out. I think that was one area Rush never really explored. Of course there must have been some improvisation in his drum solos each night (no two were exactly the same were they?), so perhaps that's all the improv Neil cared to do.

 

\\

 

have you listened to the improv jam with neil, alex and billy sheehan? i can dig it up if needed.

 

I have not! Is it any good?

 

here you go. the full length is probably out there. i have a a mp3 copy somewhere

 

Edited by tangy
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I’ve noticed In a lot of tributes to Neil there are still a lot of detractors.. I can’t think of another drummer who has such a huge fanbase but also quite a few critics.. what was it about Neil that caused this? Overexposure? Prog rock hatred? Geddys vocals?

 

what about mike portnoy?

 

seems he catches more shit than neil ever did.

 

deservedly so....he just refuses to play a groove.

 

Mike Portnoy ACTUALLY is what everyone THINKS Neil Peart is.

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I've heard of this before, and there was some truth to it before the 90s, but Neil made a significant improvement in his ability to swing and drum organically when he studied with Freddie Gruber...his work is a lot more fluid from T4E onwards.

 

I always point to Peaceable Kingdom as a good example of that. Yeah, seems a good chunk of Rush fans don't like that song much, even those who like Vapor Trails, but I happen to like it -- It's grimey and snarky, and it has some groove to it. It's not

, but it's there. It's the kind of playing Neil couldn't have pulled off pre-T4E.

 

Check out the "tarot card" sections at 1:18 and 2:58. Pretty good feel from Neil there.

 

http://youtu.be/uLB-olUHLac

 

There's a little something there but it's easier to accomplish groove when you don't hit the snare with the force of Thor's hammer. Of course, Rush's music typically demanded a hard hitter. Groove tends to work better with a dynamic, light touch. Other hard rock drummers can do it like Bonham and Joey Kramer but a lot of the songs they played on begged for groove.

 

Neil may not have been an innate groover but dedication and practice early on would have helped him get a lot better at at. I think it was just a matter of what interested him at the time as well as the demands of the music he was playing.

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I knew a white guy who had been a professional Afro-Cuban drummer for years. I asked him about Neil Peart.

He replied, "You know, the problem with Neil Peart is ..." Then he stopped himself, thought about it. "No, never mind. There's nothing wrong with Neil Peart."

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