My 2020 blogging season kicks off on a bit of a somber note, thanks to the untimely passing late last week of one Neil Peart, the great drummer for Rush. Mr. Neil held a rather unique position of all the drummers near and dear to me, being the first pure "metronomic" drummer I became aware of. To be sure, the ultimate impact he had on my own tub-thumping abilities was considerable, although it took more than a little time for his influence to really sink in. And therein lies the tale.
I was probably around 11 or 12 when I heard Rush for the first time. As luck would have it, my baptismal tune was the great "2112 Overture / Temple of Syrinx." I already had a couple years' intensive study of my original four drum Mentors {Ginger Baker, Mitch Mitchell, Keith Moon, and Nigel Olsson} under my belt, but Mr. Neil blew me away with his tasty, and incredibly precise chops. I literally hadn't heard rock drumming like that before, which is part of the reason why Mr. Neil's influence on me was time-release, rather than immediate. I simply could not fully wrap my head around what I was hearing, at first blush.
Thankfully, the proper explanation of Mr. Neil's technique that I was seeking was run down to me the first week of seventh grade, courtesy my symphonic band teacher. Good old Director Finbloom explained to me the two basic timekeeping elements of trap-drumming: swing, and metronomic. Swing allows you tremendous flexibility to essentially treat the tempo like a rubber band with no penalties for doing so. Swing is the essence of jazz, and is also the main cornerstone of successful freeform improvisation. As such, it's also quite well-suited for the likes of blues, rock, pop, and country.
On the other hand, metronomic timekeeping demands rigid adherence to the tempo at all times, which requires absolute discipline on the drummers' part. Whilst it's still possible to make with the improv when it's called for, doing so in metronomic time is always an exercise in walking the razor's edge, much more so than swing-improv. Make a mistake in metronomic time, and you're liable to ruin the entire piece on the spot, like a jeweler shattering instead of cutting a diamond; whereas a boo-boo in swing time more often than not becomes a "happy accident."
Thus did I learn the truth about Mr. Neil's special magic. Yet despite my new enlightenment, I remained somewhat ambivalent about testing the metronomic waters myself. And for good reason, too. I quickly discovered the chief negative aspect of metronomic playing, namely that it's damn near impossible to convey deep emotion wherever and whenever the spirit moves you, if at all. I mean, get real - how much drama and pathos {or any other emotion} can be conveyed by a bleedin' METRONOME, you know? Technical precision is one thing, but 99.99% of the time it comes across stone cold, in terms of raw feelings. In other words, a drum machine's still a drum machine, whether synthetic or organic.
Ironically enough, Mr. Neil subscribed to the above notion himself - it's precisely why he spent several years in the latter portion of his career in earnest study of jazz {swing} drumming. The effect his studies had on him was immediate and powerful, and gave even his most progressive previous works a new richness in sound, when his enhanced technique was applied. Myself, I was as blas`e about Mr. Neil's mastery of The SLOP as I could be, 'cos by that point in time I had been gleefully slopping my way through "Syrinx," "Tom Sawyer," and "YYZed" in concert for almost two full decades, so I already knew well what the bulk of the slop-possibilities were.
On a final note, I do regret that I never reached out to Mr. Neil like I did with Mitch, Ginger, and Nigel, if only just to thank him for his inspiration. I'll just have to be content with the fact that in addition to becoming a second-tier drum Mentor to me, Mr. Neil was also the gateway to my discovery of many other crackerjack strict-timers like Jon Hiseman, Simon Phillips, Ric Parnell, and Lars Ulrich. In the end, it's all good.
Go carefully, Mr. Neil - and thanks again for being such a wonderful influence. Yours is a spirit I'll miss something fierce.
More shortly...........
