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" I expect if you're a professional public speaker, you probably wouldn't want to go onstage and sing and play drums. "
Neil Peart
Expect
Want
Play
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" 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. "
Neil Peart
World
You
Ideas
" 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. "
Neil Peart
Good
Joke
Play
" 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. "
Neil Peart
Rich
Up
House
" 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. "
Neil Peart
People
Musicians
Rich
" 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. "
Neil Peart
Better
Getting Better
Responsibility
" For a person of my sensibility, you're only left with the Democratic party. "
Neil Peart
Only
Left
You
" 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. "
Neil Peart
You
Up
Together
" 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. "
Neil Peart
Night
People
Live
" 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. "
Neil Peart
Life
School
High School
" 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. "
Neil Peart
Learning
Time
People
" 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!' "
Neil Peart
Me
Thinking
Tears
" There is no blood in jazz drumming, and there are no bullies in jazz drumming. "
Neil Peart
Bullies
Drumming
Jazz
" If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. "
Neil Peart
You
Still
Choose
" 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. "
Neil Peart
Gold
History
Search
" 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. "
Neil Peart
Principles
Believe
Heart
" 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. "
Neil Peart
Started
Sports
Skiing
" 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. "
Neil Peart
Morality
Always
Simple
" 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. "
Neil Peart
Me
California
Home
" Our songs were not written to be listened to in headphones or on the radio. They were written to be played. All of the little infinite detail that went into the arrangements and giving ourselves lots of breathing room in terms of playing what we wanted to play and using up any ideas that we had - all of those were conceived to be performed. "
Neil Peart
Play
Ideas
Giving
" 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. "
Neil Peart
Time
Hope
Getting Better
" 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. "
Neil Peart
Music
Life
Future
" 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. "
Neil Peart
Great
Music
You
" 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. "
Neil Peart
Head
Hard
Want
" 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. "
Neil Peart
Me
Yourself
Time
" Playing a three-hour Rush show is like running a marathon while solving equations. "
Neil Peart
Playing
Running
Marathon
" 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. "
Neil Peart
Play
Team
Good
" 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. "
Neil Peart
People
Audience
Live
" We don't want to be Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones. That type of thing wasn't what we were after. It was most important for each of us to be equal in input and output - each of us has to pull the same amount, musically, in composition and in every sense of being in the band. "
Neil Peart
Important
Equal
Band
" 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 help panhandlers, but other people are, 'Oh look at that - why doesn't he get a job?' While I believe in all that freedom, I also believe that no one should suffer needlessly. "
Neil Peart
Live
People
Way
" 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. "
Neil Peart
Rest
World
Travel