Rock rarely stops to let the drummer play alone, but progressive rock, with its long forms and its taste for the virtuoso, made room for it on record as well as on stage. The best prog rock drum solos of all time are listed here in the order they were released, from 1970 to 2019, with the facts that matter for each one: where it appears, how it came to be recorded and what the players themselves and the critics have said about it. Five solos first, then the drummers whose recorded features are worth tracking down next.

Carl Palmer — “Tank” (1970)

“Tank” is on Emerson, Lake & Palmer, the trio’s debut, recorded at Advision Studios in London in the summer of 1970. Palmer wrote it with Keith Emerson, and it is a keyboard, bass and drums workout that ultimately gives way to a full drum solo. Modern Drummer, in its series on the greats of the instrument, calls it Palmer’s “solo vehicle” and ranks him among “the most entertaining drum soloists ever”; Bruce Eder, reviewing the album for AllMusic, writes that it made Palmer “the idol of many thousands of would-be drummers”. Palmer had come to the band from Atomic Rooster and the Crazy World of Arthur Brown. Later remixed editions of the album add a separate, untitled drum solo, similar to but not the same as a section of “Tank”. For the band’s whole run, see the best Emerson, Lake & Palmer albums.

Ian Paice — “The Mule” (1972)

Deep Purple sat on the hard-rock edge of the early progressive movement, and “The Mule” shows how a drum feature grew on stage. The studio version, on Fireball (1971), runs a little over five minutes; on the live Made in Japan (1972) it is around twice as long. Paice has said the song was essentially written for him to solo on, and that he rated the Made in Japan solo the best he played that year. Louder goes further and argues that it displaced Ginger Baker’s “Toad” as the benchmark rock drum solo of its day. Rolling Stone placed Paice 21st in its 2016 list of the 100 greatest drummers of all time.

Neil Peart — “The Rhythm Method” (1989)

Peart’s drum solo was a fixture of Rush concerts, and the version called “The Rhythm Method” was the first to appear on a Rush live album as a separate, completely unaccompanied track. It is on A Show of Hands (1989), recorded in Birmingham, and runs four and a half minutes on the CD; the concert video of the same name includes it too. Peart explained at the time that the big-band brass answering his drum breaks came from samples he triggered himself: in its first form, he said, they were horn shots taken from a Count Basie record, because he had grown up on that music. Greg Prato, for AllMusic, calls the solo “intricate”. Rolling Stone ranked Peart fourth among the 100 greatest drummers of all time, the highest place of any progressive-rock player on the list. More from the band in the best Rush songs guide.

Mike Portnoy — Live at Budokan (2004)

Dream Theater recorded Live at Budokan in Tokyo on 26 April 2004 and released it that October on CD, DVD and later Blu-ray. The drum solo is not in the Tokyo concert itself: time ran short, and “Caught in a Web”, which was due to carry an extended drum solo, was dropped from the set at the last minute. The solo is instead on the second disc of the video release, a twelve-minute performance filmed in Osaka. It is worth knowing that Portnoy is not a drummer who lives for the solo: Modern Drummer’s Mike Haid wrote that he is “not interested in solos and technical drumming achievements”, and Portnoy himself has described his main role in the band as shaping the songs. He was voted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 2004, at 37, the second-youngest inductee after Neil Peart, and has won the magazine’s readers’ poll for progressive-rock drummer a record thirteen times. See the best Dream Theater albums for the studio catalogue.

Danny Carey — “Chocolate Chip Trip” (2019)

The most recent entry is a studio track. “Chocolate Chip Trip” is on Tool’s Fear Inoculum (2019), the band’s first album in thirteen years, and it is the only instrumental on the physical CD; the digital edition adds three more. The track is a showcase for Carey’s drums, and Blabbermouth’s review singled it out as the album’s clearest showcase for him. Carey ranked 26th in Rolling Stone’s 2016 list of the greatest drummers. Tool sit on the heavy, modern side of progressive music, and the track is proof that the drum solo did not end with the 1970s.

More prog drummers to hear alone

Several other players in the genre are worth following into their solo features. Bill Bruford, of Yes, King Crimson and his own bands, ranked 16th in the same Rolling Stone list, and Terry Bozzio, listed for his work with Frank Zappa, ranked 17th. Christian Vander founded Magma in 1969 and drives its music from the kit. Gavin Harrison has held the drum chair in both Porcupine Tree and King Crimson. Separate guides to the recorded solos of several of these players are on the way.

Go deeper

Meet the players behind these solos in my countdown of the best prog drummers of all time, then explore the tracks where the kit steals the show among the finest drum performances in prog. Widen the rhythmic picture with the genre’s greatest percussionists, the drummers who also sing and the most memorable drum sounds on record, or return to the prog musicians hub and the greatest progressive rock songs. If you want the full story of the bands behind these drummers, it is in my Beyond the Sound books, one volume per scene.

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