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" 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

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" Stamina is the force that drives the drumming; it's not really a sprint. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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

California

Home

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Anytime I have an idea, I'll make sure that I put it down so that when we do sit down to write an album, I don't have to dream it all out of thin air. I don't have to be creative on the spur of the moment, or spontaneously artistic. I just take advantage of whenever creativity strikes. "

" It astonished me in the early Nineties to suddenly have musicians admit that they had been inspired and influenced by us. That meant a lot at that time. But of course, being human, the... disrespect isn't even strong enough a word, is it? The opprobrium was painful. Being popular and hated is not satisfying. "

Neil Peart

Time

Strong

" 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. "

" 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. "

" If you've got a problem, take it out on a drum. "

" 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. "

" Too much attention and hoopla doesn't agree with my temperament. "

" When Mr. Ludwig invented the bass-drum pedal, that's what made the drum set possible. "

Neil Peart

Drum

Set

" When I started playing, I played in R&B bands. I played James Brown, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding and all that. "

" 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. "

" To me, drum soloing is like doing a marathon and solving equations at the same time. "

" 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. "

" Playing a three-hour Rush show is like running a marathon while solving equations. "

" There is no blood in jazz drumming, and there are no bullies in jazz drumming. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Rudimental snare work is something I've always loved. "

" I had spindly little ankles, and growing up in Canada, I couldn't skate. I was no good at any sports so was very much a pariah through those adolescent years. "

" 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. "

" If I go play golf with the guys, it's intended to be a joke. "

Neil Peart

Play

Joke

" If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. "

" 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. "

" 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. "