Any drummer that's halfway decent will always get into a staring contest with the work of Neil Peart.
While everyone will have their own separate taste in what a drummer should sound like, it's hard not to respect the amount of power that 'The Professor' put into nearly every single fill he played, even if he was playing the most straight ahead beat. Although a lot of his greatest moments were the equivalent of going through a percussion decathlon half the time, Peart knew the importance behind showing off and being musically tasteful.
Granted, was anyone coming to Rush for a bunch of downtempo acoustic ditties after 1976? Absolutely not. Everyone and their mother knew that Peart had one of the greatest gifts for drums at the time, and even if he had his own heroes like Bill Bruford and Phil Collins, there was no sense in anyone trying to compete with him when listening to a track like '2112'. Peart practically soared through every song in the same way a virtuoso guitar player might, but he was far from a musical snob, either.
Whereas most prog giants would turn their nose up at any other style of music that dared to step to their level, Peart never stopped being a fan of different bands that were coming up. Everyone in the group loved acts like Yes, Genesis, and especially Led Zeppelin, but by the time the 1980s kicked in, Peart wasn't afraid to throw in tunes that were reminiscent of The Police or Ultravox, either.
It was all about learning new techniques whenever he could find them, and after going through prog, it isn't hard for many enthusiasts to start making their way over to fusion as well. Collins had already had his stint in Brand X, and the biggest monsters of their instruments like Jaco Pastorius and Larry Carlton came from jazz, but Peart wanted to go a little bit deeper than normal.
Amid the different prog records that were coming his way, Peart remembered being transfixed listening to a record called Movements by bandleader Johnny Harris. Harris has already been a fixture of pop music arranging for the likes of Tom Jones and Lulu beforehand, but when delving into his solo work, Peart found that the drumming that left such a mark on him was nowhere to be found.
While the drummer on Movements was later identified as Brian French, Peart couldn't even begin to express the kind of mark that was left on him after hearing the record, saying, "More than anything, I loved the construction of the drum parts, so intricately designed and elegant, in styles ranging from laid-back funk to driving energy, and delivered with a great natural sound, and perfect time and feel. Twenty years later I listened again to that record and realized how much the drummer had influenced me, especially in the building of drum parts for songs-and I didn't even know his name!"
And while Peart's method can sound like him trying to fit as many notes into a song as possible, he was never in danger of overplaying. His drumming was the percussive equivalent to songwriting, and what French did was take the basis of what drums could be and give them that same linear structure that Peart would do later on.
It's easy to see the influence of people like John Bonham, Keith Moon, and even Hal Blaine on Peart's drumming, but whereas most percussionists talk about serving the song and not overplaying, Peart developed the skill of playing just enough to make every song a musical adventure.