Neil Peart 1952-2020

The measure of a life is a measure of love and respect
So hard to earn, so easily burned
In the fullness of time
A garden to nurture and protect
-- Rush, The Garden

I remember the first time I heard Rush very clearly. It was 1981, and I was a 14-year-old snot-nosed punk who had "discovered" Frank Zappa's Sheik Yerbouti and Black Sabbath's Paranoid just a year or so prior, introducing me to completely different noises to what I had been used to (basically country, AM pop, and '70s soul). I had that feeling you have when you're young and think you've got the inside track on something, like no one else was hip to it. That's part of the fun of being a teenager -- you have no clue yet just how clueless you really are about everything.

Anyway, so I had an older "cool" cousin who lived at the top of the wellhouse on my grandparents' dairy. He helped with milking the herd in exchange for room and board, and occasionally liked to head into town to tie one on and look for strange. He had an unfortunate knack for getting caught heading back home from the bar, and after a few repeat performances the county decided to provide him room and board for a few months.

So I asked him if I could borrow a few of his records while he was away, as I had gotten a new JC Penney stereo for Christmas, but had nothing to play on it, nor a job to buy records. (The following school year, as a sophomore, I began making money at school, selling term papers and skimming off a football pool I ran. Capitalism!)

I borrowed maybe eight records, paying special attention to the double live sets he had. Of those, three were soon to be permanently seared into my brain:  Rush's All the World's a Stage, Zeppelin's Song Remains the Same movie soundtrack, and Jethro Tull's Live Bursting Out. Each of these albums expanded my listening horizons in various ways, opening my ears to new musical ideas.




But by far it was Rush that had the most immediate, dramatic impact on me with that live album. Recorded at Toronto's Massey Hall on the 2112 tour in 1976, with (supposedly) no overdubs, All the World's a Stage is packed with muscular riffing, virtuoso musicianship, extended song structures as well as concise rock gems. Yes, Geddy Lee's banshee vocals were an acquired taste, but he and the band more than made up for it with their impressive chops and tight interplay.

I played drums at the time, and Neil Peart (as well as John Bonham, of course) was a huge inspiration, showing infinite possibilities on a seemingly finite set of instruments. Forty years later, I still listen to the album at least a few times a year. I really couldn't guess how many times I've listened to it.

Given the band's longevity and now-iconic status, it's easy to forget how close to extinction they were at the time. The band's first three albums sold poorly, with the third album, Caress of Steel, still being their all-time worst seller. Mercury was ready to drop them, and instead of succumbing to music industry pressures and cranking out warmed-over Zep retreads, they went ahead and made side one of the next album a suite-length retelling of Ayn Rand's novella Anthem.

Whatever you think of the results, that take some serious cojones. The gamble paid off, and Rush went even further down that path with their next two albums, decamping to Wales' Rockfield Studios and recording most of A Farewell to Kings and Hemispheres live and outdoors. (If you listen to Closer to the Heart on headphones, you can faintly hear birds chirping in the background. Those are real birds.)

They were determined to do their own thing their way, and it paid off for them with an intensely loyal fan base. Even when they started chasing trends through the '80s, they did it with their own stamp. And much of that is directly due to Neil Peart's uncompromising vision for the band's music overall, as well as for his own drumming and songwriting.

Because of the 2112 suite and the song Anthem, Peart was unfairly labeled a "Randroid," although he described himself as a "left-libertarian" and was more attracted to Anthem's theme of individuality and self-sufficiency than any sort of objectivism. Songs such as The Camera Eye and The Big Money show that he was also influenced by John Dos Passos. Mostly Peart seemed to be a fan of challenging ideas, and challenging himself to bring those ideas to a hard-rock audience that wasn't typically drawn to themes of subtlety or complexity.

In the mid-'90s, Peart dealt with the crushing losses of his 19-year-old daughter in a car accident, and his wife to cancer a year later. Though he quit the band for a few years and returned as the new century began, Rush's output was never going to return to what it was; the band recorded only three studio albums after they regrouped, but did augment that with at least six live albums that I know of.

Here is something I always admired about Peart's commitment to his craft:  in 1994, long established as the undisputed dean of hard-rock drumming, Peart started taking lessons, from a jazz drummer no less. As Peart tells it, Freddie Gruber helped him improve his approach to drumming, changed his grip, showed him how to swing the groove. All these little subtle things that non-musicians couldn't care less about anyway, but were vital to Peart's personal ethos. You are not good enough, and you never will be. The good news is, if you can find joy in the quest for excellence, you discover the real goal. These are essential lessons for anyone in any line of work who takes seriously what they do. And again, it takes some real balls to be at the top of your game, and to have the humility to completely tear your technique apart and rebuild it, to always be a student, even as a master.

And that doesn't even touch on Peart's constant quest for excellence as a lyricist, which could be bombastic or earnest, but also frequently touched on complex issues in an approachable way. He challenged himself to avoid the tropes of rock lyrics as a matter of principle, and carved a respectable batting average at it.

I see a lot of folks throwing lines from the hits as tribute, but given the circumstances, I felt like their final studio track, The Garden, was more appropriate. I recall hearing it for the first time when the Clockwork Angels album came out, and immediately knowing that this was it, that there would be no more studio albums. It sounded and felt very much like a valedictory, and a wonderfully poignant one at that.

It's not an exaggeration to say that Peart probably influenced more rock drummers than anyone, and maybe even more drummers in general than anyone since Buddy Rich. Maybe even more musicians than anyone in the last thirty years or so. Rock and metal and the many sub-genres and permutations no longer have any real traction on the charts these days, but if you know where to look on YouTube, there are more of those bands than ever. A lot of them are very good, and many of them are influenced at least indirectly by bands like Rush and drummers like Neil Peart.

He made a clear, tangible impact on the world of music, and on countless practitioners of the craft (to be pretentious about it). He made it cool to be a dork, to really care about the music and not just toss it off like a disposable commodity. Progressive rock and metal, much deeper genres than many people may realize (in terms of how many bands there are out there), are different and better because Peart and his band stuck to their guns, and they were pretty good guns.

Rest in peace, Professor.