Neil Peart of RUSH - Drum Solo In Frankfurt | Drum Setup Guide ANALYSIS (Reaction) 

It's refreshing to see a reactor who actually digs a little deeper in an effort to understand an artist.

This drum solo was in the middle of a 3 hour show playing at break neck speed throughout. Stamina and intelligence hand in hand. The Professor we so miss you.

Neil was suffering with the flu during this performance and didn't feel it was one of his best. When he mentioned the changes in his life where he ended up riding his motorcycle 55,000 miles is when tragedy hit his life. His daughter died in car accident on her first day of university. Then his wife Jackie passed from cancer within the same year. He took that incredibly long journey and ended up in California where he met his second wife Carrie. She was an established photographer there so Neil ended up moving to California and they had a daughter whom he was teaching to drum. Unfortunately he didn't have much time with his second family as he developed cancer which took his life. I read one of his books Far and Away and I really enjoyed it. I am really enjoying the fact that you are doing these interviews before the songs. That is a great idea! These guys weren't your typical Rock stars and you see the glue of respect and brotherhood that held the band together for so many years. There is a piece called Dinner with Rush and it was a "business meeting " where the jokes and the wine flowed all evening. These guys had a true brotherhood and you will see what a lovable goofball Alex is. Most of Neil's solo was a composition but he did leave some space open in his set for free form. Cheers 🇨🇦

Watching this Brings back so many memories and just last night I was going through old purses and found my Clockwork Angel ticket stub. I miss Neil and the Guys so much.

Neil has done many different drum solos over the years that are just as great if not greater. Neil was always a drummer that was constantly try to improve thats why he was so great. Enjoy the ride that is 🤘RUSH🤘.Smiles 😃from 🇨🇦

Great job taking the time to listen and learn about Neil and his motivations before seeing his amazing performance.

Thank you for the heartfelt reaction, Neil was one of a kind. I’ve been a fan since the 1970s. Rush was such an amazing group.

No argument, the professor is your favorite drummers favorite drummer ! RIP Professor. Greetings from YYZ 🇨🇦

What I will always remember about drum solos was most bands would see some of the audience head to the bar. Except with Rush, Neil’s solo would start and people returned from the bar!

Hi King - Thanks for this. I appreciate your interest in uncovering what makes special people special. Among other important traits, Neil was driven by honesty. This is revealed both in his personal reflective assessment with his flaws and challenges as well as his objective considerations about humanity as a whole. This is what ultimately keeps people feeling good about having Neil as a role model. The main pull he has, though, is his clear desire to make the most out any "ordinary" day. His drumming passion and commitment to the band are his "business," and as he is touring, this is only 20% of his time. The sentiment he often expressed was essentially, "I put myself here at this place and time and I have to decide what to do for the next 10 hours, or 2 days between shows. What is the most excellent thing I can do for myself in that time frame based on where I am right now..."

I was a 15 year old school band drummer in 1982 and my first concert was Rush. My life changed forever that night and Neil became the biggest influence musically and lyrically in my life. R.I.P. Professor and thank you.👏

Seeing Rush live, it was a show within a show.

Very impressive intro and reaction. Rush has a massive library and all three members are highly intelligent, incredibly accomplished and very down to earth. They are rock royalty and a huge source of pride for many people. Very proud they are Canadian like myself. I'm sure you will do more Rush and I'd suggest the live concert you watched this solo from, R30 Live in Frankfurt, as a benchmark to their live performances. Tons of great songs and footage of them individually working their magic. Plus the things easily missed or taken for granted like pedals and triggers most other bands wouldn't even consider attempting. Cheers.

You questioned if this solo was defined or improvised and along the lines of Neil's honesty I stated previously, he has admitted his strained relationship with improvisation as it pertains to actual performance. He had an imbedded need to deliver the best performance he could every time out and while there is a great attraction for a rock drummer to "ball-out" and just go crazy, he knew that this meant sometimes the performance would be compromised. He could nor purposely risk a bad performance by rendering the quality to chance. It's just who he was.

All of his solos are arranged. The fact he can remember this night after night is crazy. No drum goes untouched

Notice how he talks. It’s like he is reading from a script, but he isn’t. He never says “uh” or stammers, or loses the word and no delay between any words. His mind moves fast.

I'm so glad you reacted to this right away. This performance is a good example of why Neil is THE PROFESSOR!

You might recall him mentioning that he had "suffered certain reversals in life" as he held up his second book. That's a typical understatement for Peart. What he was referring to was the summer of 1997, when his daughter was killed in a car crash, as well as the death of his wife about 9 months later (from cancer, although he would later say it was as much from a broken heart). These "reversals" led him to take 3-year hiatus from music - although, at the time, it was far from certain that he would ever play again. After riding across North America for a couple of years, he eventually met his current wife and moved to California. They had a daughter, which became a key reason for Peart's 2015 retirement. The other reason was that he had entered his 60's and didn't want to be one of those rock stars who kept playing after his skills had deteriorated. After all, the way he got jazzed about touring had nothing to do with his job but rather all of the adventures he could enjoy on his days off between concerts. Cruel fate visited him less than a year after his retirement in the form of incurable, terminal brain cancer. Because he was an intensely private man, he only told close friends and family about it, which meant that Geddy and Alex were forced to pervericate in response to questions such as "Will the band get back together, at least for a 19th studio album?" Fortunately for Peart, he responded well to genetic-based therapies, which allowed him to live for 4 more years, which he got to spend devoting himself to family. Needless to say, it was quite a gut punch for fans worldwide when his death was announced in January 2020. I think we're still all grateful for the legacies of word and music he left to posterity, though. His most certainly was a life well lived.

Loved your reaction and comments. This guy, Neil Peart, in my opinion, is and will be for a good amount of time, the GOAT.

Love your deep dives into Rush… keep it up, you won’t be disappointed!

Thank you for doing this so soon, also Neal was fighting the Flu during this performance, so it goes to show his professionalism and drive to please the Fan's. 😊

Thanks so much for including Neil's interviews. It adds so much to your reaction.

Neil didn't need a band, but I'm glad he had one!

I got to see him play 53 of these from 1978-2015 including the final show at the Forum in LA.... Sure miss these guys live.

Xanadu from Exit Stage Left, you get to see all 3 at their best!

Love how he mentioned going up the toms (and not just down.) It's something I used to do many years before actually seeing Neil do it. It's no different than hearing people tell me I do this like Neil does, or that. Things I never really gave much thought to except to say I'm sure tons of other drummers 100's of years before me probably did too. lol When you need a sound you have to find ways to introduce that craving.

🤗 Totally love the Professor interviews! 🥰🐰

RIP Neil Peart! Sure miss him and RUSH! 😢

I love how deep you go into your reactions! Especially, searching out interviews by the artists before watching them. Well done King Of Mix!

with all due respect, You are expeiencing The Professor. He took rock dumming to a new level. you will need to watch this clip to truly understand. The depth of RUSH's impact of music is profound. ~R.

For everyone’s info. This drum solo started from Neil’s back set of drums which are dedicated to the African sounds of drums, also his electric percussion synthesizers are on his right side. When Neil plays most of the songs, 90%, from the front kit, the percussion synthesizers are on the left side of his kit. This is his front kit with traditional drums , snares & cymballs

Listen to their ‘70 and ‘80s music when he had all the chimes, tubular bells and many more odd for Rock music, set up… you will be blown away.

I love watching the learning. One's jaw drops a little lower when one knows more about what goes into the magic. Rush is a very deep well. Welcome.

He had been in the band and was known as a great drummer for over 20 years. Then started taking more drum lessons to see if there was something he could learn. Now that is someone who is dedicated to his art.

You are exceptional. The best reaction videos ever!

Circa 1994- The Drum Master, Drumming has the power to unite people, no matter how varied their language or cultural background might be. On a recent trek through Africa, Neil Peart had a singular experience that proved just that. "I was in Gambia, walking through a small village, and I heard the sound of a drum. So of course I was curious! I looked into a compound and I could hear the drumming coming from a curtained room. I walked up to a woman doing laundry in front of the room. She could see my interest in the sound, so she waved me to go in. Inside I found a young, white missionary from a nearby Catholic school. Sitting across from him was the commanding presence of the local drum master. He was attempting to show the missionary how to play any kind of beat. The missionary was trying as hard as he could, but he wasn't having a lot of success." After a time the drum master, frustrated by the missionary's lack of ability, noticed the other man who had come into the room. The master had no idea who this person was, but he thought to himself, "Why not see if he can play?" According to Peart, what happened next was fascinating. "The drum master gestured to me to try and play a rhythm. So we began playing together, and he started smiling because he could tell I had a rhythm - maybe not his rhythm, but a rhythm of some kind. We were playing and playing, building the intensity, and little kids started coming in, laughing at the white man playing drums. Then a few women came into the room, and everybody began dancing to our beat! The master and I even started trading fours. It wasn't a spoken thing, but he could tell that I would lay out and listen to what he was doing for a certain amount of time, and then he would do the same. It was just a magical moment." When they finished, a confused and startled missionary ran up to Peart and asked, "How can you do that?" Chuckling to himself, Neil politely responded, "I'm in the business." World Inspiration Neil's love of bicycling and travel is well known - it's almost the stuff of legend. While on tour with Rush he's been known to avoid the tour bus and bike to the next town and venue. When not on the road with Rush, he has taken his bike to the four corners of the globe, including Europe, mainland China, and Africa. Upon entering Peart's Toronto home, one is immediately struck by the fact that this man has seen and experienced locales most people can't imagine. "Here's a prized possession of mine," he says proudly, showing a raw-metal sculpture standing about ten inches high and resembling a tribal version of Rodin's "The Thinker." "It's from Africa. It weighs about twenty pounds, and I had to carry it a hundred miles on my bike. but it was worth it." Neil's passion for authentic African art is obvious. Unique drums, with their rich, hand-carved elegance, are displayed in his home with reverence. Original Chinese gongs decorate a few of the walls. The decor hints at the fact that a drummer lives in the house, shouts at the fact that a word traveler resides there. Peart's love of travel is obvious, but does actually going to other parts of the world inspire him musically? "First of all, I think travel is very important for any person," he insists. "It's affected me enormously, and I'm sure it filters down to my work. Africa is not an abstraction to me anymore - neither is China. They're places I've experienced, places where I've met people, made friends - and just broadened my thinking. "I've written lyrics that were directly influenced by my travels abroad. In a drumming sense, I've had some interesting experiences in different countries, experiences that may not directly affect the way I play drums, but that certainly inspire my feelings about drumming. And I've gotten very interested in hand drumming. Lately I've been working on playing the djembe." One way Peart's wanderlust has directly affected the sound of his drums is through sampling. "One of the small drums I brought from China is an antique that's too fragile to play. So I took it and a few of the other delicate instruments that I own and sampled them - along with many of my other instruments like my temple blocks and glockenspiel. I've built up a huge library of sounds, and they've made their way onto our albums in many of the different patterns I play." A particular pattern Neil has recorded that demonstrates the value of "world inspiration" comes from Rush's last album, Roll The Bones. "On that record we had a song called 'Heresy' that had a drum pattern I heard when I was in Togo. I was laying on a rooftop one night and heard two drummers playing in the next valley, and the rhythm stuck in my head. When we started working on the song I realized that beat would complement it well."

Excellent reaction.

Fascinating!

Sir, you did your homework. Continue exploring Rush, it is an amazing, deep rabbit hole. Nice job learning about why Neil is called The Professor.

Fantastic review and nice collection of videos, thank you.

Out of all the reaction video's I watch i just gotta say you're one of the best. The fact that you do some research to educate yourself about the band or people in the band who intrigue you says a lot. I look forward to seeing all your future reactions. Btw... his 2nd book, Ghost Rider, is the best. He wrote it just after his daughter died in a car accident and shortly after his wife died of cancer. He took off on his motorcycle and the future of Rush was in serious doubt. It is one of the best reads there is.

his early writing was very lord of the rings type stuff along with zepplin vibes , then it got no radio play

Great drummer indeed. He's on my mount rushmore of drummers. As far as being the best drummer I have ever seen, I would have to say el estepario siberiano is the best I have ever seen.

Neil wrote all of Rush’s lyrics as well.

IMO the Elite Drummers are Neil, Danny Carey from Tool, John Bohnam from Zeppelin, Buddy Rich, and Vinny Paul from Pantera. Danny is a Master of Poly-Rhythm`s check out Pneuma Live, camera view. And, John Bohnam`s, Moby Dick Live are definitely worth seeing. A few others are awesome are, Alex Van Halen, Ginger Baker, and Keith Moon from The Who...

A real pleasure to watch this video, thanks for taking the time to review and react! Cheers mate

Enjoyed this reaction. Thanks for doing these.

Neil was born September 12, 1952 and died January 7, 2020 (aged 67)

You're welcome. Looking forward to more of your reviews. Maybe review Triumph. Another Canadian 3 piece group. Very different. Rock rock . Super live performances

Nice how you build it up, compliments!

He also wrote all the bands lyrics as well.

Just discovered your channel & I love how you played interviews before the video reaction. Rush is a definite rabbit hole to go down if, as it appears you do, appreciate great musical artistry!

I am really impress4d into the depth you look into the artists.. Great job. and Great reaction

Peart sounds like hurt lol. Watching now. Hope you enjoyed this great man’s skills like I did growing up

yep yep yep , told ya o7

Neil is a master but for me Bonham’s feel of the drums is something else ..

Just finished watching the rest of your video, THANK YOU !!! Really well put together for the great Neal Peart, he is missed

DC all the way for me.

Dude. Google Carl Palmer ✌🏼❤️

I got a radio version .😊 #7

26:14 mother frakker !]

What's the name of this video? And is it on RU-vid, please and thank you.

This man was a genius his songs were trilogies and too long for radio.

Neil would not be happy even being considered :best drummer ever" click bait title.

His first wife died of breast cancer before. he decided to ride across the country And that was a reason he did that. He was heartbroken, and he had to find himself again.