Taking Center Stage
A lifetime of live performance
The Making of Taking Center Stage
In this four-part series, Hudson Music’s lead editor and co-producer of Taking Center Stage, Joe Bergamini, shares his personal insights and experiences from the process of planning and filming this unprecedented work.
Part 1: The Beginnings of an Idea
As I walked up the steps to the restaurant, I glanced over toward the parking lot, and it looked empty. I assumed the Ghost Rider had gone, and was speeding over some distant highway back toward the Pacific Ocean.
Part 2: Coming to an Accord, Production Begins
The months came and went, our lives went on, Hudson put out a bunch of other products, and then suddenly, just as I began to assume this whole Neil project was probably never going to happen, Paul and Rob notified me that Neil was coming to New York to play in a Buddy Rich tribute concert, and that he would make time to meet us for breakfast.
Taking Center Stage
A lifetime of live performance
The Making of Taking Center Stage
In this four-part series, Hudson Music’s lead editor and co-producer of Taking Center Stage, Joe Bergamini, shares his personal insights and experiences from the process of planning and filming this unprecedented work.
Part 1: The Beginnings of an Idea
As I walked up the steps to the restaurant, I glanced over toward the parking lot, and it looked empty. I assumed the Ghost Rider had gone, and was speeding over some distant highway back toward the Pacific Ocean.
Part 2: Coming to an Accord, Production Begins
The months came and went, our lives went on, Hudson put out a bunch of other products, and then suddenly, just as I began to assume this whole Neil project was probably never going to happen, Paul and Rob notified me that Neil was coming to New York to play in a Buddy Rich tribute concert, and that he would make time to meet us for breakfast.
Part 1: The Beginnings of an Idea
Waking just after sunrise, I stepped outside the door of my motel room in Stovepipe Wells, in Death Valley National Park, California. I had 
always wanted to see remote and breathtaking desert landscapes like this, but never really expected to have the opportunity. I took a short walk along the road next to the parking lot, admiring the sand dunes in the distance, and the jagged peaks of the Panamint Mountains marching away to the south. The tan of the desert sand mixing into the purple of the mountains and the deep blue of the early morning sky created one of those sights that you just take in for a moment, happy to be alive. I walked across the motel compound, past the stand of mesquite trees where a family of very large crows had kept watch on us for the last few days.
As I walked up the steps to the restaurant, I glanced over toward the parking lot, and it looked empty. I assumed the Ghost Rider had gone, and was speeding over some distant highway back toward the Pacific Ocean. I had planned on meeting the rest of the Hudson crew at 7 a.m. for breakfast, but was up early, so I figured I would get a cup of coffee, read, and enjoy the scenery. As the hostess led me toward the back of the restaurant, I rounded a corner and found that I had been mistaken—there was Neil Peart, the man who inspired an entire generation of guys like me to play drums, and one of the most revered rock musicians of all time, sitting there alone, looking over his journal. Even after having met him in 2008, and having worked fairly closely with him since then on the project which is the topic of this story, I paused. Neil glanced up, smiled, and invited me to join him. He showed me some of the newest “passport stamps” he had collected on his visits to national parks.
As we sat and talked for a few minutes, I couldn’t help but smile to myself, and feel thankful for the opportunity to know and work with Neil over the last couple of years. He turned out to be everything I expected: hard-working, intelligent, interesting, focused, and creative—and, even better, a really nice guy as well. Soon we were joined by the rest of the Hudson guys, and enjoyed a hearty breakfast together before Neil set off for home.
This journey of working with Neil on his new Hudson Music DVD, Taking Center Stage: A Lifetime of Live Performance, has been one of the most amazing experiences of my life. In my position with Hudson Music, and in my travels as a professional drummer, I have been very fortunate to meet (and in some cases get to know) almost all of my favorite drummers. And, of course, working with Rob Wallis and Paul Siegel as their Senior Drum Editor for Hudson Music has been an honor in itself, since they have trusted me to collaborate with them on projects with some of the greatest drummers on the planet. I have been a huge Rush fan since I was 12 years old, and in my younger years Neil was my hero. I wore out my VHS copy of Exit…Stage Left by repeatedly playing the video in slow motion to try to see what Neil was doing. I have seen Rush in concert just about every time they have come to the New York area, and even spent ten years playing in a Rush tribute band.
But as a fan of Neil’s, of course I became aware of his private lifestyle—exemplified by his never attending the kind of drum/music industry events at which I have met all the rest of my favorite drummers. Thus I believed I would never have the opportunity to meet him.
In early 2008, Paul and Rob mentioned to me that in conversations with Neil, they thought he might be open to the idea of doing another project. Having worked with Neil on both of his previous drum DVDs, they knew that he would not want to cover any of the same ground 
again, but would want to explore and explain new areas. Knowing how familiar I was with Neil’s work, Paul and Rob asked me to create an outline and proposal for him. This was exciting, but a huge assignment: trying to come up with something that would be interesting enough for Neil to want to do. It was also a major project for Hudson, so I didn’t want to screw it up!
I wanted to be able to discuss Neil’s entire body of work, including all the classic songs that made him the most emulated rock drummer of the late 1970s and the 1980s. However, I knew that Neil was a very forward-thinking artist, constantly in search of new ground, and not so interested in analyzing his past work. So this presented a structural challenge.
After bouncing several preliminary ideas off of Paul and Rob, the three of us took one of my extensive outlines covering Neil’s entire body of work, and fine-tuned it into a presentation for him. They sent it to Neil for his opinion, as I waited anxiously. Finally word came back from Neil, and he seemed impressed by the knowledge that was presented, and even somewhat interested. Since he wanted to continue the conversation further, the guys suggested that they bring me to meet Neil, both so that he could get to know me a little, and potentially discuss the project further. I was pleased at this, but still a little unsure as to whether it would lead to actually working on a project with him.
On July 12, 2008, Rob Wallis and I met up in the early afternoon outside of the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel, New Jersey. I had seen Rush in concert there several times, and had always dreamed of going backstage to meet Neil. Now that day had arrived, but it was not some autograph session. I was nervous. When it came right down to it, I started to feel that it would be much easier to just remain an admirer from afar, given what I thought Neil’s reaction would be like when he met someone like me, who was such a fan of his work. Finally the appointed time came, and we were ushered into (of all places) Neil’s bus. Rob went in first, and I nervously ascended the steps and stood just inside the door. To Neil, of course, it was just another day at work, and he emerged from the back of the bus wearing a baseball hat, and gave Rob a hug. My nervousness was increased by seeing how tall and heavily built he is in person. Rob introduced us and I shook Neil’s hand, and to my surprise, he mentioned a couple of things that he knew about me (I guess Paul and Rob had told him), and the name of a mutual friend at Sabian, Chris Stankee, and smiled.
After catching up with Rob for a while, and chatting with me a little, Neil invited us onto the stage to watch the soundcheck. I was beyond excited. As he led us to the backstage area and over to his drum set, I looked around and remembered walking into Madison Square Garden with my father in 1984 (my very first rock concert), at thirteen years old. Our seats were the absolute worst, in the top row of the arena, but I was transfixed by looking down at the beautiful red drums and gleaming cymbals.
Then Neil was suddenly motioning to me to climb up on the riser and take a seat on his drum throne.
As I watched the concert that evening, observing Neil playing some of my favorite songs once again, I saw him in an entirely different light. This day was a dream come true, something I will remember for the rest of my life. On the way home, my overriding feeling was a tremendous amount of gratitude to Rob and Paul for trusting me enough to bring me into this, and to Neil, who turned out to be gracious, charming, and friendly. If the whole story had ended there, I would have considered myself a really lucky guy. But after the soundcheck, as we said goodbye (although we had not talked about the project at all, interestingly), Neil shook my hand and said, “I’m looking forward to working with you.” All along this entire process, I had tons of questions for Rob and Paul about whether they thought things were going well. As we walked back to our cars that evening, Rob told me that he felt really good about how things were proceeding.
Part 2: Coming to an Accord, Production Begins
The months came and went, our lives went on, Hudson put out a bunch of other products, and then suddenly, just as I began to assume this whole Neil project was probably never going to happen, Paul and Rob notified me that Neil was coming to New York to play in a Buddy Rich tribute concert (along with Chad Smith, Terry Bozzio, Tommy Igoe, John Blackwell, and others), and that he would make time to meet us for breakfast. On October 19, 2008, Paul and Rob and I met Neil at his hotel, and this time the agenda was to start hammering out the project. Neil had obviously spent time with my outline, but was not feeling enthusiastic about revisiting the older material. He respected my ideas, but explained that reexamining the past like that just wasn’t interesting to him. In retrospect, my outline was wildly detailed, containing rare songs that he had not played for over ten years, and would have required a massive amount of research on his part into his past work. As we all poked at the remains of our pancakes, I began to feel the possibility of the project slipping away right there.
But another idea I had generated did catch Neil’s interest. It was based around his own writing about the song “Far Cry,” naming many of his influences on that drum part. I had called that theme “Connections,” with the aim of using that song to explore the eclectic nature of Neil’s drumming influences. As we continued to brainstorm, Neil agreed that he wanted to try to keep tweaking ideas until we nailed something that inspired him.
Following this meeting, we engaged in email exchanges over the course of several months, and Neil came up with the idea of basing the DVD on live performance. His first DVD, A Work in Progress, was about writing and recording the drum parts for a record. His second DVD, Anatomy of a Drum Solo, was about soloing. Neil thought the third DVD could cover the entire enterprise of preparing for a tour, and performing live: another area for which Neil is well known. In discussing live performance, we would need to show live performance, and that meant Rush songs—we would have the opportunity to discuss the details of his drum parts after all!So we finally had it: a concept that would tie together my desire to get into the nuts and bolts, with something that was intellectually engaging and worthwhile to Neil. Only a few more dozen hours of tweaking the outline, and we would be in business!
Neil still had limited interest in going back and explaining the drum parts that he had made up decades ago. He was enthused about discussing how his style has developed, and even the actual parts, but not sitting there and breaking down an old fill note-for-note. So he came up with a possible solution: we could film him in his private drum rehearsals before the upcoming tour, thereby obtaining the demonstration footage we would need for all the songs to be discussed.
Neil shared with me the tentative setlist for the upcoming Time Machine tour, and I set about listing some points of discussion for each song. Now the stage was set . . .
The filming of Taking Center Stage was unlike any project I have ever worked on. The first bits were shot at Neil’s rehearsals in May, 2010, then we filmed an entire Rush concert in July 2010, and finally captured the speaking parts in January, 2011. This required a massive degree of planning as to how the entire show would be cut together, which I did my best to organize as the months elapsed between the shoots. Along the way Neil, Rob, Paul and I would exchange ideas and notes on what we had filmed, so the program actually remained fluid all the way up until the editing stage. But in the end, the final program has come together in the most amazing way.
On May 5, 2010, Rob, Paul, and I, along with our director Gregory McKean, our longtime video engineer Dan Welch, and our veteran sound engineer, Sean McClintock, set off for California to meet up with Neil and film him in drum rehearsals at Drum Channel Studios, in Oxnard, California, near the Drum Workshop factory. As we rolled past the fragrant strawberry fields nearby, and pulled up to the warehouse complex where Neil was working—like the president of some musical country engaged in secret work at an undisclosed location—my anticipation was building. We walked through the loading dock and past the stacks of DW boxes, then road cases stenciled with “Rush.” Now Neil could be heard playing in the adjacent studio (for the record, he’s one of the hardest hitters I have ever heard).
We immediately set to work filming Neil’s rehearsals, as he played along to the recorded versions of each of the songs on the Time Machine setlist. We still didn’t know how much exposition we would get from Neil at these sessions, because he had stressed that his main job was to prepare for the tour. So although the cameras were rolling and the machines were on “Record,” the actual content was still far from finalized. However, Neil surprised us right off the bat by speaking to the camera, and giving us wonderful explanations of his approach to rehearsals, as well as insights into the construction of his new drum solo.
The cameras documented Neil playing along to every song in the setlist, to be used as demonstration segments on the DVD. (In the final DVD, there is a ton of footage of Neil playing all of his classic parts by himself, and most of them are also presented in slow motion for easy analysis, accompanied by PDF transcriptions.) Over the three days, between sessions of playing, Neil sat with me before the cameras and discussed wide-ranging topics related to live performance, but the highlight for me came when he asked me to sit with him in the control room and listen to one of the new Rush songs, “Caravan.” After sitting beside Neil in the studio to watch him play that song, we worked up some topics for discussion—resulting in an hour-long featurette about the creation of that drum part, entitled “The Story of ‘Caravan.’”
On the last day, the obligatory lunch at In-n-Out Burger completed our successful trip to Southern California!
The next necessary step was to film Neil playing the songs live, which was accomplished July 23, 2010, at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center in Saratoga, New York. The footage we captured there is a dream come true for fans of Neil who want to observe and understand his playing: four separate cameras look at him from various angles, showing Neil only, playing every song in the setlist. We also created a special audio mix for the concert performances, with the drums turned up slightly louder than normal. This aspect of the DVD is unprecedented; not only do you get to see and hear Neil talk about and demonstrate the drum parts, but you also get to see the entire concert documented especially for drummers.
Capturing the live footage in Saratoga was challenging, yet fun. We arrived in the afternoon, and while the film crew captured the entire setup of Neil’s kit (which is also included on the DVD), we met with Neil on the bus to discuss the plan for the day. Neil suggested we set up a camera in his dressing room right before showtime, and film him warming up, along with a little “preamble.” I scrambled to put together some notes for the interview, since I had not expected this.
As our cameras rolled, Neil discussed different topics related to live performance and soloing, and shared a lot of information about how he goes about his warm-up, what he is thinking about during the warm-up and show, and how he acquires new ideas even while warming up. I think viewers are really going to enjoy watching how relaxed Neil is in this interview, and seeing how much he still enjoys playing. His desire to continue to learn and grow as a drummer is inspirational.
On this particular day Neil also demonstrated his amazing professionalism. He had been combating an ear infection for a couple of weeks on the tour, to the point where one of his ears had almost completely closed up. A doctor arrived backstage to evaluate Neil’s condition, and despite the fact that one of his ears was so clogged up that he could barely hear, Neil put on an amazing performance that night. We were also able to document the soundcheck, and that is also included on the DVD.
After the show, we set out for home satisfied with another successful expedition, this time capturing and documenting the activity of an entire day backstage at a Rush concert—along with the complete concert—from a drummer’s perspective, for the first time ever.
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