If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
Neil PeartRead
If you've got a problem, take it out on a drum.
Interpretation
The quote encourages expressing frustrations through creative outlets rather than negatively affecting others.
Neil Peart emphasizes the importance of channeling one's emotions, particularly frustrations or problems, into a creative medium such as playing the drums. This approach not only serves as a form of emotional release but also allows individuals to transform their struggles into art, promoting personal well-being and self-expression.
In practice
Using this quote in a motivational speech about music therapy.
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
The real test of a musician is live performance. It's one thing to spend a long time learning how to play well in the studio, but to do it in front of people is what keeps me coming back to touring.
Performing live in front of an audience is such a matter of will - all of those things you can do just fine in your basement, suddenly you have to do them in front of hundreds or thousands of people, and it becomes a different matter entirely.
It seems to me that's the only way you can have a truly creative aggregate of people is if they're all contributing in different ways.
What I've learned over the years is that the craft of songwriting is trying to take the personal and make it universal - or in the case of telling a story, taking the universal and making it personal.
I've heard the stories. Like, Eric Clapton said he wanted to burn his guitar when he heard Jimi Hendrix play. I never understood that because, when I went and saw a great drummer or heard one, all I wanted to do was practice.
Whenever I'm in Kansas City, I think back to all the jazz-blues greats who played the blues here - like Count Basie, Charlie Parker and Jay McShann. I watched those guys jam in different places and heard a lot of things - but I couldn't do what they did. They were too good.
I think the problem with people, as they start to mature, they say, 'Rap is a young man's game,' and they keep trying to make young songs. But you don't know the slang - it changes every day, and you're just visiting. So you're trying to be something you're not, and the audience doesn't buy into that.
I'm from Kenner, Louisiana, where music is played for every occasion in life. There's music for being born, there's music for dying... It's just natural. Families get really good because they play a lot together.
A great song can make a terrible singer sound good, but a good singer - you put a great song on top of that, you're really in great shape!
No matter what type of equipment you have, you still have to have a certain talent to be able to make a good record.
I think that music opens portals and doorways into unknown sectors that it takes courage to leap into. I always think that there's a potential that we all have, and we can emerge, rise up to this potential, when necessary. We have to be fearless, courageous, and draw upon wisdom that we think we don't have.
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