Neil Peart Quotes

I love Sly Stone and James Brown and Stevie Wonder, and I want my music to reflect some of that.

I'm somebody who listens to a lot of funk, a lot of James Brown, and I want to be somebody who contributes all that energy to the mainstream.

I love Motown, but I've obviously always been more of a Memphis soul fan. If it's Stax or Motown, I go Stax.

I was never really that interested in the punk movement. I was a blues guy: I liked Motown, James Brown.

I was a James Brown junkie as a kid.

I was introduced to soul music at a very young age - my mom was a soul singer.

I'm coming from a Ginuwine and Usher background: slow and smooth songs. And that's why I really connected to Sam Cooke, because he was just very smooth. It's not like the James Brown types, which is all great stuff, but he was totally set apart from those guys.

I grew up listening to old soul.

Charles and I are from Augusta, Ga. - so we come from James Brown territory, soul music and Motown. And Charles has always had a lot of Southern rock in there as well.

Absolutely, I grew up listening to soul music. People like Stevie, Aretha, Ray Charles, Michael and Prince. My parents' record collection was all I had when I was a little kid. If it wasn't that, it was something else in their collection.

I listened to everything. To the early Motown groups - the Four Tops and the Temptations - to Johnny Mathis, Gloria Lynne - my sisters loved her. Sarah Vaughan. Everything.

Kelly Clarkson definitely reminds me of Motown. She's pop, but she's also very, very soulful.

I fell in love with R&B music at a young age. The energy and aesthetic of that genre strike an emotional chord with me.

When I hear a singer, I want them to be passionate and intense, and soul singers like Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett always seemed to do exactly that.

People like to compartmentalise music, especially African-American music, but it's really one thing. One very wide thing. I mean, it's like all those great records by Marvin Gaye and James Brown back in the day - there are tonnes of jazz musicians playing on them.

I started playing with this band, the Polyester Players. It was my introduction into funk. So I went and got a James Brown record. 'Black Caesar' is a film score, but it's so dope.

As a kid, I loved to sing along to the Drifters and Otis Redding.

I always loved James Brown, Diana Ross, Aretha Franklin, Sam Cooke.

I have always loved soul singers.

I love the Memphis sound. When I was 16-and-a-half, with my driver's permit, I was playing New Jersey clubs in a 10-piece band; we had a horn section and would play great, great songs like 'Hold On! I'm Comin'' and 'Knock on Wood' and 'Midnight Hour.'

The first artist I really loved was Stevie Wonder. That opened the doors to other soul singers like Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin.

I love soul music, that's my real love in life and in whatever shape or form it is.

I would say our sound is soul pop.

I stumbled into soul music at a very young age. It had something that really spoke to me.

I grew in the inner city, listening to Stevie Wonder, Donny Hathaway, James Brown, The Commodores - lots of soul music.