PLANET ROCK 39economical drumming, which seemed to
bring a new level of insight to his lyrics. “If we
keep our pride/Though paradise is lost/We
will pay the price/But we will not count the
cost,” sings Geddy Lee. How many drummers
does it take to give Shakespeare a run for his
money? Precisely, one.
“Pack up all those phantoms/Shoulder
that invisible load/Keep on riding
north and west/That wilderness road/
Like a ghost rider.”
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Only one thing was going to derail Neil
Peart’s ever upward trajectory: personal trageĥ
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old daughter, Selena, was killed in a car crash.
When Peart’s wife Jacqueline died of cancer
just 10 months later, Neil attributed her passĥ
ing to a “broken heart” as well as the disease.
“It was a slow suicide by apathy,” he recalled.
“She just didn’t care.”
Peart told his bandmates to consider him
retired, and began trying to process his grief.
He mostly did so alone, travelling some
55 ,000 miles across North and Central Amerĥ
ica by motorcycle, as documented in his
touching 2002 travel memoir Ghost Rider:
Travels On The Healing Road.
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me when I interviewed him and Geddy Lee in
Toronto in 200 3. “The book was a reminder
of just how dark those days were for Neil.”
“I’d get these postcards from him,” added
Lee. “That was his way of letting me know,
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moving around.’ We had this network of peoĥ
ple checking up on him behind the scenes.”
It had seemed that Rush was over, but
when Peart met Carrie Nuttall and married
her in September 2000, new love proved to be
the catalyst for his eventual return to the
band. After years of not playing drums, it took
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for Neil to reach peak virtuosity again for
2002’s Vapor Trails.
“Frankly, I don’t know how he did it”, Lee
told me. “It’s in his nature to be solitary and it
would have been much easier for him to run
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“Freeze this moment a little
bit longer/Make each sensation
a little bit stronger...”
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FIRE ī
Were there any jokes in Rush’s lyrics? Not
really. Not unless you count I Think I’m
Going Bald, written back around 197 5 when all
three members of Rush were
nothing if not hirsute. Yet this
was a trio that really liked to
laugh, and a band that shared a
surreal sense of humour. Witness
Lifeson’s infamous “blah, blah,
blah” speech during the band’s induction
into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in
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Spirit Of Radio. Most of all, though, witĥ
ness the drunken band dinner that Scot
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acclaimed 2010 Rush documentary
Beyond The Lighted Stage.
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years; I don’t even buy green bananas,”
jokes Peart, as they dine at a posh huntĥ
ing lodge. He’s mostly an audience for
Lee and Lifeson’s banter, but freed by
alcohol and four decades of deeply treaĥ
sured friendship, he’s soon crying with
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says of Lifeson. “Yes, but I look like one
too,” replies the guitarist. It’s heartbreaking
to watch that footage and know that Rush’s
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severed forever.
When Peart came back to Rush after the
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because of that bond. “He said that he owed
it to the concept of the band not to let it end
like that,” Lee told me in 200 3. “He felt it
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I thought that was quite a statement.”
Despite Peart’s great physical pain and
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who knew they should quit before the diminĥ
ishing powers Neil sketched in 1982 Rush masĥ
terpiece Losing It became their own reality.
There’s another short section in Beyond
The Lighted Stage, where Lee and Lifeson
are pictured with fans at various backstagemeet and greets. One of them was at the
SECC Arena in Glasgow in 2007, and for a
split second there I am; me and my old pals
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$OH[ 1HLO GLGQ¶W GR PHHWĥDQGĥJUHHWV RI
course, and I never got to interview him, but
it’s a nice thought for me that, having seen
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That he will be greatly missed both as a
human being and a superhuman drummer
speaks volumes, but as The Garden, a song
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reminds us, Neil had already thought all that
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“The measure of a life is a measure of love
and respect,” he wrote. “So hard to earn so
easily burned.”
Job done, Mr Peart. You won our love and
respect and you aced it. So long and
WKDQNVIRUDOOWKH¿OOVOne little victory: at the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
induction ceremony, 2013;
(below) The Professor, ’78.