Neil Peart Quotes

I go to a very visual place when I'm singing. It's very cinematic and I get this feeling of space. I love when music does that.

I think the drummer should sit back there and play some drums, and never mind about the tunes. Just get up there and wail behind whoever is sitting up there playing the solo. And this is what is lacking, definitely lacking in music today.

Drums just always sounded like the most fun part of that good music for me.

Drums were my first instrument, my first love. I need rhythm, something that moves.

How can you not love a man banging on the drums? He knows how to keep a rhythm.

I don't think I approach my songs differently from other artists. You get a big picture of it, and you imagine the song and hear and feel it, and that big picture is like a snapshot, and it comes to you as fast as it takes to click a camera.

I love the way Pharell is laying down great drum tracks. He is a great drummer.

When I make music, it's a very visual thing. Conjures up a lot of images.

When I'm making music, I can hear all the parts, all the instruments. I can hear what it should be.

I've played the drums for so long, I can't imagine saying goodbye to it.

Being a drummer, I'm always like, 'Oh, that's got a funky beat. That's cool,' and I like to dance.

It's as if my left heel is my bass drum and my right heel is the floor tom-tom. I can get snare out of my right toe by not putting it down on the floor hard, and, if I want cymbals, I land flat on both feet, full strength on the floor.

Playing drums, for me, is like breathing. It's like thinking. It's like eating. It's like walking.

Energy wise, playing the drums was a lot of fun; I just felt like it was a natural fit for me.

Well, I have to have some type of visual in my head to finish a song. I can't finish a song if I can't see anything.

I'm always seeing stuff and imagining scenes in my head when I'm making music.

I lie more with drums and the more heavy and darker aspects of music.

As with any art, you create it [drumming] out of something that isn't there. It's very architectural. It's the architecture of whatever piece of music I'm playing. I think the whole idea of drumming is to allow other people around you to more easily express themselves.

The focus of my playing is the groove, and every time I find a new rhythm, I find I can write a bunch of new songs. Learning how to dance, or drum, or to swing my body in a new way is the fundamental way I find a new riff. Because when you learn to swing your body in a new way, you begin to swing with your instrument differently.

All my best drumming, I'm sure, has never been recorded.

I'm a street player, and all of my influences come from bands that I was listening to at the time when I was growing up. I was very impressed with guys like Mitch Mitchell. I liked rock and roll drummers, and I loved rhythm and blues guys like Clyde Stubblefield with James Brown. Man, that band blew me away all of the time.

I just play music by listening and responding, so I don't know anything about writing songs or arranging and all of this stuff. You know, it's in my head, but I don't know how to get it out.

My brother was a drummer, and he was always, like, smashing the kit around when I was a kid, and my dad was, like, one of them old musicians, and he played in, like, loads of different bands in the '70s and '80s. Him and my brother were kind of like my main inspirations.

I find that drummers are the coolest people in the world. I play a little bit of drums.

It's really hard for me to finish a song unless I have a strong visual in my head while I'm writing it.