As we know, one of the stories of the year has been the resurrection of Rush and the way drummer Anika Nilles has pulled off one of rock’s biggest challenges – stepping into the shoes of the late great Neil Peart.
For the German drummer, it’s involved walking a fine line of absorbing Peart’s style without replicating it exactly, and in a new interview, Nilles has talked about exactly how she achieved that.
One of the standout challenges has been the drum fills on Tom Sawyer, one of the group’s iconic tracks, but according to Nilles, they were in many ways the easy parts. “That song requires a really specific feel. What happens playing-wise is doable. You have to get it into your DNA," she told Rolling Stone. "But the feeling of all of those parts is really special, and it’s also hard because I had to let go of some of my technique, which I usually use when I play those sneaky 16th notes. And to make the feel right and the sound right, I had to let go of that. I have to play more out of muscle power to make that sit right."
Specifically, Nilles explains, "The technique I’m using is coming from my wrist, and it creates two sounds. And for that song, you just need that one specific sound. And so you play more out of your forearm and less out of your wrist.
"I had to learn how to create that sound, and it’s definitely coming more out of a strong accent stroke all the time. So yeah, that’s a hard one to play.
Nilles explained how she has had to put aside a lot of her style and absorb Peart’s to make it work. “I have to let go of certain things which I trained on for many years to be perfect in that, but it doesn’t fit to the music, then that’s the task. So I do that."
She's also acquired a new admiration for Peart’s musicality. “He constantly built and built the drum part to a point where you think, ‘What the hell is going on?’ And he did that in detail along with the vocals. I think a big part of it is because he wrote the lyrics, so he was focused on lyrical parts and put that together with his drumming, and also melodically. And this is why you cannot just do your thing on it. You have to appreciate that and understand it as a musical composition in total.”
As she has mentioned in other interviews, Nilles wasn’t a die-hard Rush fan prior to getting the call from Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson. However, she very much is now.
“(A) couple of times I thought, “Why didn’t I learn and listen way earlier in my life to Rush?” she says. “Because I love it. The music is great. It’s so much fun to play. As soon you don’t have to think about parts anymore and can loosen up a little bit, it’s just so much fun to play with those guys.”
