Considered one of the greatest drummers of all time, the late Neil Peart was also an incredible lyricist who wrote most of Rush’s lyrics over the decades. Besides being an avid reader and writer, he also paid close attention to other people’s music.
He was, of course, a big fan of Progressive Rock and Pink Floyd was one of the bands he admired. Peart once revealed which of their albums was, in his opinion, their greatest.
The Pink Floyd album Rush’s Neil Peart said was the greatest
Neil Peart followed Pink Floyd’s career from the band’s early days and in his opinion, “The Wall”, released in 1979, was their greatest album. He said so in his book “Traveling Music“, in which he recalls listening to “Wish You Were Here” during his motorcycle travels, while noting that he preferred the other album.
“Not the ideal listening environment (Slow moving traffic in Tucson, Arizona) for Pink Floyd’s mid 7os epic, Wish You Were Here, with its long, textural movements that seemed to breathe open space and menacing skies. The title song, and two of the album’s longest pieces, ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’ (Parts One and Two), were apparently addressed to one of the band’s founding members, Syd Barrett, who had left early on, after becoming mentally unstable as a result of his overenthusiastic use of LSD.”
“Other songs, like ‘Welcome to the Machine’ and ‘Have a Cigar,’ reflected Roger Waters‘ increasing cynicism about the music industry (‘You gotta get an album out, you owe it to the people/ we’re so happy we can hardly count’). These themes would eventually grow into Pink Floyd’s, and Roger Waters’s, greatest work, ‘The Wall’.”
Neil Peart continued:
“As a musician who lived through the kind of touring life Waters used as background in ‘The Wall’, I knew too well the combination of exhaustion, confusion, alienation, and fragility he described so masterfully (even the “swollen hand blues” he writes into one song. So symptomatic of the touring musician’s version of repetitive stress syndrome). Great lyrics and songwriting, wrenching vocals, and David Gilmour‘s sublime guitar work all came together on that one. (Also) are certainly evident on their earlier records, too, notably their all-time best-selling classic, ‘Dark Side of the Moon’.”
“A show from that tour which I attended in Toronto in 1970 or ’71 stands as one of my greatest concert experiences, along with another Pink
Floyd show at the Rainbow Theatre in London in 1972. The chart-busting popularity of ‘Dark Side of the Moon’, and the subsequent arena and stadium tours, were the proximate causes of many of the responses described in ‘Welcome to the Machine’ and ‘Have a Cigar’ on Wish You Were Here, and later, The Wall,” Neil Peart said.
“The Wall” is Pink Floyd’s second best-selling album, with more than 30 million copies sold. It’s only behind “The Dark Side of the Moon”, which has sold more than 45 million copies. It was the last of the band’s albums to feature all members of its classic lineup. At the time, the keyboardist Richard Wright was forced out of the band by Roger Waters. The singer and bassist left the group for good in the mid-1980s.
Although it was an album meant to be heard in its entirety, it contained several songs that became quite successful. Among them are “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)”, “Comfortably Numb” and “Hey You”.
He also admires Nick Mason as a drummer
Besides liking Pink Floyd’s music, Neil Peart also admired Nick Mason as a drummer. He once described the British musician’s style as simple but extremely tasteful. “Nick Mason from Pink Floyd has a different style. Very simplistic yet ultra tasteful. Always the right thing in the right place. I heard concert toms from Mason first, then I heard Kevin Ellman who put all his arms into it. You learn so many things here and there,” Neil Peart told Modern Drummer.
Curiously, Peart once admitted that Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” had a major influence on Rush‘s songwriting. One of the tracks that he said was “enormously” inspired by the band was “Limelight”. He explained that Roger Waters’ songwriting taught him that you need to write about something close to you. Something you truly understand and can accurately describe, including what really happens and the genuine feelings associated with it.
Although Neil Peart is best remembered an incredible drummer, he was Rush’s primary lyricist, a crucial part of Rush’s songwriting. He loved motorcycles, was an avid reader, and was also an author. His bibliography includes seven non-fiction books.