When did neil peart become a big deal????

Spirit of the Radio got some play then they got real big with Moving Pictures to the extent folks checked out 2112 and other parts of the back catalog.

 

I wish I could remember exactly when, but I want to say it was around 1980 that I saw a clip of Neil drumming and thought, "Who's this guy trying to be Keith Moon?"

A 12-year-old's perspective is not very discerning, but at least I know now that Neil is a huge fan of Keith.

 

I'm sure this was happening at many a garage in 1980..

 

His talent was immediately evident to me, as were the talents of Alex and Geddy. I bought Caress of Steel right when it came out, and then went back and got the other two. The difference in drumming between the first two albums was huge. He started becoming a big deal after 2112....maybe the live album, because he started finishing high in the readers polls for Best Drummer for all the Rock Magazines I was reading. I remember there being a big discussion going around the school rock music enthusiasts about how exactly his last name was pronounced. We decided it must be Pert....like the shampoo. Oops.

 

Also featured on the cover for the first time in 1980.
The First Neil Peart Interview with Modern Drummer - Modern Drummer Magazine - April 1980

 

Never cared for Rush. They're excellent musicians, without any doubt and Pert writes really intelligent and thoughtful lyrics. Just could never get into them.

 

He was arguably one of the "best" drummers in the 70's and 80's in particular winning huge props for his solo's. I feel he kind of started a lot of the big double bass and tom fills that became common shortly afterwards with other big "rock" drummers and fans. He was very influential in that regard along with putting the spotlight on the drum solo. Think about some other guys that became big after that time period, and I'm pretty sure they'll say how big of an influence Peart was to them; guys like Tommy Aldridge, Mike Portnoy, etc

 

I know nothing about drumming, but I love watching his instructional drum videos. They are so technical but he makes it looks so easy and interesting.

His 2011's Taking Center Stage 3-DVD instructional set was fantastic and I have it. It was made during Rush's 2010/2011 Time Machine Tour and includes actual live performances from the drum perspective with all cameras on him and drums/percussion high in the mix (though, you can see Geddy and Alex every now and then when they cross over into one of the cameras that was filming Neil and faintly hear the bass and guitars in the mix.) The DVD set also contains in-studio rehearsal footage along with instructional commentary by Neil. I believe it also has bonus footage of live performance from the Snakes & Arrows tour.

 

good for you....

 

The picture of his drum set on this record pretty much got everyone's attention in my world, at the time, and more or less put him on the map. I mean, that is one serious drum kit, and this was definitely truth in advertising. Once I heard it, I bought it. Still my favorite Rush record by far.

 

Very good for me indeed. There are so many great musicians living and dead that it seems that putting Peart up on some kind of pedestal is an inane idea.

 

?

 

I suspect that the minute people heard "Anthem" for the first time when Fly By Night was released, Audiences must have realized that Rush's new Drummer was something special, that everyone was about to take on a special journey.

 

Such a great scene, from a fantastic series. People on that team really do like Rush, because some of those same peeps did a huge homage to Rush in "I Love You Man"

 

and this...

 

I had seen an ad for tbe first Rush album in circus magazine when it was first released and special ordered it thru my record store. When their second album was released i bought that too and i noticed a big difference in the drums. The sound AND the technical ability. The new drummer named Neil Peart sounded pretty fantastic.

 

What's larger than global? Perhaps "universal," but we don't know what they dig on where the Silver Surfer surfs.

The point was - and is - we can site personal experience, which is largely subjective, or we can go by what points us closer to the facts.

The fact is, if you're a drummer and you make it to the cover of Modern Drummer, you've made the scene, which I think is what the OP was asking.

But why Permanent Waves? I can only hazard to guess that it's one thing to be in a band that is progressive enough to make complicated arrangements pretty fancy on the drums. It's quite another thing, though, to aim for more radio play, without compromising your style, while making the complicated sound easy - radio friendly - even though your peers know it's not easy at all.

I think that was Neil Peart in 1980. The flash was all there, but it was masked to serve the music. This is better known as "taste.'

 

@EVOLVIST It's ludicrous argument considering Peart and the boys were about to release 2112 when the magazine started in January 1977. Do you really think a U.S.A. magazine starting up to be a contender is going to put a Canadian drummer on its first issue? He was already well known by this point and Mr. Bonham and Mr. Moon couldn't touch him nor could anyone else for that matter.

 

In the 80's a band I was in had a drummer who loved Rush. I'm pretty sure he read me the lyrics to "Trees". Wanted to show me how deep they got. I never cared for them myself.

Whilst driving around listening to the local FM rock station a Rush song came on. It turned into spot the lifted drum pattern. Every 20-30 seconds I was going "Hey, our guy plays that exact thing in that one song". Repeat for the next 5 to 6 minutes.

It still fit in more than not with the weirdo noise punk pop the rest of us were playing.

 

Any magazine that's votes him "Most Promising New Drummer" in 1980 shouldn't really be calling itself Modern Drummer, IMO. When did they report John Bonham passed away....1986?

 

Yeah... it was those epic Tom Sawyer drum fills that bought him to my attention... when you are in the car playing those air-drum fills, it rivals headbanging to 'Bohemian Rhapsody'.

 

I agree, 1980 seems awful late to be crowning Peart as "Most Promising New Drummer". If rock critics hadn't noticed him by 1976, then their head was in the sand. 2112, All The World's A Stage, and Hemispheres were all released well before 1980. Hell, I remember talking about Rush at school, and seeing pics from magazines when I was a 4th grader (1978-1979).

 

This is the correct answer .

 

I'll second a lot of others and say he really came into the mainstream around 'Moving Pictures'. Tom Sawyer got huge airplay in my small town of Ft. Wayne, Indiana and don't forget the early days of MTV where the live clip of that song was in pretty heavy rotation.