Sunday, June 12, 2011

Neil Peart Drum Solo on David Letterman

Neil Peart made an unorthodox network TV appearance on Thursday, on David Letterman. Reports from the taping were that Peart was nervous and dropped his sticks twice in the middle. But they had him re-do it after the audience left and presumably the below is a combo of the two. Regardless, the man is a fuckin machine and here you go! Can't wait to see the band in Portland later this month.

4 comments:

VoxMoose said...

Interesting thought: Neil's single performance on Letterman reached more people than an *entire* Rush tour. Letterman gets about 4.5 to 5 million viewers per night. An 80-show Rush tour would need to pack over 55k people per night to match.

Isorski said...

Tom that is truly amazing!!!

neddrum said...

I'm huge Peart fan but I didn't think his solo was that good - from the tape it looks like he loses his mojo about a third of the way through. Even before I read about the dropped sticks I could tell he looked nervous. Plus he buries his head right after the solo and stays that way until Dave walks out to thank him.

Isorski said...

Ned I agree - not his best moment. But for Neil, 70 percent is everyone else's 110! Also, this is a new thing for him - he actually improvises the first half of each solo. So maybe he was off that night?