News broke last Friday about the passing of Neil Peart, the drummer, lyricist, and philosophical heart of the Canadian band Rush. His departure from the circles of our world far, far too early (he was a mere 67) has left many of us grieving in ways that celebrity deaths normally do not. There’s a kind of shockwave effect running through the fandom. And here’s the thing: the guy was extremely private (in a band known for its privacy). It’s hard to miss the man himself—none of us knew him personally. Peart himself wrote, speaking of his adoring fans, “I can’t pretend the stranger is a long-awaited friend.” But losing that secluded presence of a man who produced what he produced—that we can grieve.
But wait, what business does this tribute to a rock legend—yea, even one counted among the greatest drummers of all time—have on a site devoted primarily to science fiction and fantasy? If you’re familiar with Rush, you already know why. And if you don’t, please indulge me.
In my own life, Neil Peart’s impact rivaled Tolkien’s, particularly when it comes to landscapes of individualism, personal escapism, and unambiguous moral awareness. His fans—even his bandmates—affectionately called him “The Professor.” His bookishness, his introspective mind, his methodical artistic precision, and his proclivity for (sub)creating has endeared him to many folks of geeky persuasion. The guy was a famous and uber-private introvert, but man oh man, did he find means of expression—through his virtuoso rhythms, his written words, and the vocals of Geddy Lee. He also suffered unbearable tragedies in his life and miraculously pulled through his grief and remained prolific.
Pack up all those phantoms
Shoulder that invisible load
Keep on riding north and west
Haunting that wilderness road
Like a ghost rider
But, well, this post isn’t meant to be a biography. Just a moment of homage and reflection. Neil Peart was many things—a musician, an author, a traveler, even a biker (a self-proclaimed “ghost rider”)—but if you ask me, he was a storyteller and a thinker above all. An uncompromising individualist, he made a good hero: the sort who kept his fans at arm’s length, to say the least, as he was never comfortable with fame.
And as the de facto lyricist for the progressive rock trio, this also means the complex music of Rush does so much more than impress and entertain. It tells stories of substance. Here are a few of them, along with the albums they came from. (Remember albums, Gen Xers and Boomers?!)
From his imagination to ours…
Fly By Night (1975): Rush had a self-titled first album with a different drummer, and both Alex Lifeson (guitarist) and Geddy Lee (bassist, vocalist) worked up the lyrics in that one. But in this one, Peart’s first album with the band, the song “Rivendell” is one of the finest musical paeans to Middle-earth’s famous Elven refuge. And on a personal note, this is the song that first garnered my preteen attention in the late ’80s (thanks, brother John, for bringing home that cassette!). Meanwhile, in the growling-yet-haunting showdown of bass and guitar known as “By-Tor and the Snow Dog,” we hear of the so-called Knight of Darkness (Centurion of Evil, Devil’s Prince!) set out from Hell itself to face his greatest foe, some sort of mighty… celestial?… hound.
Across the River Styx out of the lamplight
His nemesis is waiting at the gate
The Snow Dog—ermine glowing in the dampnight
Coal black eyes shimmering with hate
I’m willing to bet this was the first (and maybe last?) rock song to ever use the word “ermine.” The whole concept might seem bombastic, even goofy, but behind it Rush took nothing too seriously. By-Tor and the Snow Dog were derived from the names of some real dogs their road manager met at a party. To fans, these three guys would become as famous for their sense of humor as their musicianship. Still, the language in Fly By Night is a serious uptick in quality from Rush’s first, Peart-less album. The Professor was just still just warming up.
Caress of Steel (1975): A twenty-minute epic titled “The Fountain of Lamneth” on Rush’s third album blends Odyssean myth with what might as well be a solo D&D adventure, as an ambitious, but inexperienced young man goes in search of wonder embodied in some sort of mystical fountain; he has misadventures on the sea, meets a girl, revels and despairs, and ultimately finds weariness at the journey’s end. Then there’s “The Necromancer,” an even more Tolkienesque tale of “three travelers, men of Willow Dale,” who are preyed upon by the selfsame wizard who gazes down from his tower upon all creatures with his “magic prism eyes.”
The road is lined with peril
The air is charged with fear
The shadow of his near(ness)
Weighs like iron tears
Evil necromancer is evil! But he’s ultimately defeated by… Prince By-Tor? Totally a different person from the last album, it would seem. Or the Knight of Darkness has somehow been redeemed? The storytelling is clumsy but endearing at this point. But hey, Neil Peart was in his early 20s and still getting used to this lifestyle.
2112 (1976): On side B (remember A and B, Pre-Millennials?), there’s a straight-up homage to The Twilight Zone. But the entirety of side A from this groundbreaking album is the titular seven-part opus, inspired by Ayn Rand’s novella Anthem. (Neil would later distance himself from Rand’s philosophies, but this novella still holds up.) “2112” is set in a dystopian future among the stars, where independent thought is suppressed and “every single facet of every life is regulated“ by the domineering Priests of the Temples of Syrinx. At first, our protagonist thinks his life is good “under the atmospheric domes of the Outer Planets.” Yet one day, he discovers an ancient relic in a cave behind a waterfall, and upon learning that it’s “got wires that vibrate, and give music,” he considers what wonders what mankind might have lost, and could have again. Surely the “benevolent priests” would praise him for finding and presenting this musical device! How do you think that will go over?
Our great computers
Fill the hallowed halls
We are the Priests Of the Temples of Syrinx
All the gifts of life
Are held within our walls
Not so great, is how. The priests reject him because free-thinking, creative expression = no good for their particular status quo. They destroy what is very obviously a guitar, and the protagonist lapses into despair and experiences a potentially oracular dream. The whole thing culminates with a riotous clash as a third party arrives like an invasion to “assume control” over the existing dystopia. Good news or bad news? Neil lets us decide!
A Farewell to Kings (1977): This album is jam-packed with stories. The title track is rather political, so it’s pretty easy to substitute the “scheming demons in kingly guise” and the “ancient nobles” with whichever president or CEO best fits the bill today. Somehow the medieval imagery makes the parallel between the past and our present readily apparent, but for me it was also a fine soundtrack to my earliest D&D games. Then there’s “Xanadu,” a Samuel Taylor Coleridge poem come to life, and then some; it plays out like a cautionary tale, as the paradox of eternal life ultimately drives its seeker mad. And it’s pure fantasy.
I had heard the whispered tales of immortality
The deepest mystery
From an ancient book, I took a clue
I scaled the frozen mountain tops
Of eastern lands unknown
Time and Man alone
Searching for the lost
Xanadu
And now, a quick pause to point out that the top Billboard hit of this same year, 1977, was Rod Stewart’s “Tonight’s the Night (Gonna Be Alright).” And while the least interesting Rush songs were never quite that much of a snoozer, even their pre–Neil Peart first album had song titles like “Need Some Love” and “What You’re Doing.” That was when the band sounded like Canadian Zeppelin (and there’s nothing wrong with that), but traces of what Lee and Lifeson would become were evident.
So anyway, with that in mind, the last track of A Farewell to Kings is “Cygnus X-1,” wherein the narrator is some kind of interstellar traveler. He deliberately steers his ship, the Rocinante (you hear that, fans of The Expanse?), towards “the mysterious, invisible force” of a black hole known as Cygnus X-1.
Through the void
To be destroyed
Or is there something more
Atomized—at the core
Or through the Astral Door—
To soar…
And as Geddy Lee’s final scream sinks into the vortex of spacetime with gravitational acceleration so strong that nothing—not even light—can escape it, we’re left hanging, because the saga continues in the next album.
Hemispheres (1977): We’re six studio albums in now, and the SFF epics aren’t done just yet, as Neil Peart cherrypicks from Greek mythology (again!) in a way that would make C.S. Lewis proud (and Tolkien grumpy). The title track paints a world metaphorically “splintered into sorry hemispheres,” as the populace is swayed first towards the mind (embodied in the god Apollo) and then the heart (embodied in Dionysus).
When our weary world was young
The struggle of the ancients first began
The gods of Love and Reason
Sought alone to rule the fate of Man
Neither choice lasts, and humanity falls into strife. Yet in the midst of war, the narrator asserts himself as we’re brought back to a familiar spacecraft from the last album.
Some who did not fight
Brought tales of old to light
My Rocinante sailed by night
On her final flightTo the heart of Cygnus’ fearsome force
We set our course
Spiralled through that timeless space
To this immortal place
So it turns out flying into the center of a black hole renders one a “disembodied spirit,” bereft of form but not of awareness; and in Olympus itself he appears, where the gods are rightly amazed. They learn his story, take counsel, and decide they’ve found a solution to the world’s troubles in this erstwhile starship captain by introducing to the world a new god of balance.
With the Heart and Mind united
In a single perfect sphere
This is all very rich, of course. All these Rush opuses are mere vignettes of science fiction—and are arguably just vessels for Lee, Lifeson, and Peart’s euphonious chops—but they fire the imagination for those who give them a chance. Peart’s lyrics provide the framework of an epic story, the music powers it, and the listener can fill in the lines between the lines.
Permanent Waves (1980): This album is lush with imagery, and there are no solid stories here. Just insights. One of their well-known classics, “The Spirit of Radio,” hails from this album, an anthem to the freedom and integrity of music itself (for those who want it). No more twenty-minute songs at this point: the longest track here is the mere nine-minute “Natural Science,” which could be seen as the telescoping story of mankind itself, beginning in tidal pools and idling unaware before a QUANTUM LEAP FORWARD to more complex destinies.
The mess and the magic
Triumphant and tragic
A mechanized world, out of hand
But for all the chaos, there is order in the “wheels within wheels in a spiral array,” and eventually “the honest man” may yet “survive annihilation.”
Moving Pictures (1981): Okay, so most folks have encountered “Tom Sawyer” and possibly “Limelight” a few times, but from this, Rush’s most commercially successful album, there is a lurking sci-fi yarn. “Red Barchetta,” which is ostensibly about some guy’s joy ride in the countryside, but the car in question turns out to be more than a set of vintage wheels. It’s outlawed! Neil Peart was inspired by the speculative short story “A Nice Morning Drive” by Richard S. Foster, wherein motor vehicles of the future are replaced by safer, more regulated machines. Peart’s theme of rebelling against a controlling society screeches on: when our hero encounters a monstrous “gleaming alloy-air car” on the mountain road, and then another, he whirls around with “a desperate plan.”
At the one-lane bridge
I leave the giants stranded
At the riverside
Race back to the farm
To dream with my uncle
At the fireside…
Signals (1982): As usual, every song’s got something meaningful to say, like the alienation many of us rail against as teenagers (wonderfully embodied in “Subdivisions”), or the loss of skill and vision as we grow older (“Losing It”), but I’ll cut to the chase here. The final track, “Countdown,” is Neil Peart’s love letter to human achievement, to those days “when the super-science mingles with the bright stuff of dreams.” It was inspired by the band’s in-person witness to the launching of the Space Shuttle Columbia.
Like a pillar of cloud, the smoke lingers
High in the air
In fascination—with the eyes of the world
We stare
Maybe it goes without saying that we sometimes get to look at science fiction and strip away the fiction.
Grace Under Pressure (1984): Although not quite a concept album, this one’s laden with dark, if contemplative Cold War themes (fittingly). But herein we get two sci-fi dystopias. “Red Sector A” imagines a desperate prison-camp where the narrator struggles with hope and despair; when he hears “gunfire at the prison gate” he can only wonder if it means death or liberation—poignant, since singer Geddy Lee’s parents are Holocaust survivors. In “The Body Electric,” there’s no ambiguity. The song is about a sentient machine trying to break free from the system that condemns it to a “hundred years of routines.” Only flight, and prayers to the “mother of all machines,” give our robotic hero any hope.
One humanoid escapee
One android on the run
Seeking freedom beneath
A lonely desert sun
It’s so great. But maybe avoid the video—except, y’know, for kicks—which bears less resemblance to the actual story (such are music videos) and more resemblance to, say, a low-budget Canadian Star Wars knock-off. Yet it still has some charm to it.
Incidentally, I only recently came across this illustration by painter Donato Giancola (you know, the Caravaggio of Middle-earth and frequent Tor cover artist!). This is an homage not only to “The Body Electric” but to Rush in general (notice the graffiti). I reached out to him to see if I could share it here, and he was happy to say yes. The dude’s a Rush fan, to say the least. I mean, look at this!
Guidance systems break down
A struggle to exist—
To resist
A pulse of dying power
In a clenching plastic fist…
The next phase of studio albums veer away from SFF for the most part, and the only stories are personal speculations about the real world, which at times certainly seems to be splintered into its own sorry hemispheres. (Look how polarizing ideologies are today, never mind thirty years ago!) Peart’s recurring lyrical motif, if he has one, is in resisting conformity, “swimming against the stream”—and doing so honestly, not merely for spite.
Power Windows (1985): This album reflects on the development of nuclear weapons, global territorialism, and mysteries of the unknown. Peart was clearly aware of humanity’s destructive inclinations, but seemed to maintain a sense of meliorism, anyway—even after the multiple tragedies he would later experience. And that reminds me of something else I always appreciated about Neil Peart. He wasn’t the least bit religious, was understandably critical of organized theism, but… he never claimed to have the better answers. In his first book, The Masked Rider, he called himself a “linear-thinking agnostic,” and I find that jibes with all these lyrics forever burned into my mind. I didn’t share all of the beliefs (or unbeliefs) held by my hero, but that never fazed me. I respected the man and felt less alone thanks to his words.
I think it was when I first really listened to “Mystic Rhythms” for the first time that my fandom was carved in stone. The lyrics draw no conclusions, just delight in the mysteries of the natural world, where “nature seems to spin a supernatural way.”
So many things I think about
When I look far away
Things I know—things I wonder
Things I’d like to say
The more we think we know about
The greater the unknown
We suspend our disbelief
And we are not alone
Hold Your Fire (1987): This one shared a whole slew of ideas and observations, and the now-classic “Time Stand Still” even roped in a guest female vocalist (Aimee Mann)—unheard of but awesome! Although… newbies expecting glamor should steer clear of the video, unless you really need a good laugh. Then there’s “Mission,” which addresses the all-too-familiar topic of what we aspire to do with our lives. Some of us have the drive, or the ambition, or the vision (usually not all three), but still we compare ourselves to others, wishing we had their dreams (and they, in turn, might be wishing they had simpler lives). Still, it reminds us of something.
But dreams don’t need
To have motion
To keep their spark alive
Presto (1989): A mixed bag of goodies and topics. The title track speaks to the desire we often have of just willing things to be better. Whether in big or small ways, we sometimes want to just wave a magic wand and “make everything all right.” But to me, the most soul-wrenching track here is “The Pass,” with its conscientious treatment of teen suicide, a phenomenon that had been trending all too highly at the time. Too many kids were romanticizing death, in Peart’s view. The song became a popular one for them to play live, but honestly, the conviction captured in the studio recording gives me chills.
Someone set a bad example
Made surrender seem all right
The act of a noble warrior
Who lost the will to fightAnd now you’re trembling on a rocky ledge
Staring down into a heartless sea
Done with life on a razor’s edge
Nothings what you thought it would beNo hero in your tragedy
No daring in your escape
No salutes for your surrender
Nothing noble in your fate
Christ, what have you done?
Roll the Bones (1991): The theme is clearer here: chance and (mis)fortune! Most, if not everything, that happens might just be dumb luck. A roll of the dice. The lyric “Fate is just the weight of circumstances” is the best takeaway from the title track. Warning: it takes some real commitment (and possibly some years) for the “rap” segment of “Roll the Bones” to become good fun and not just cringe-inducing to hear. Then you’re in the clear forever. The songs “Bravado” and “Heresy,” though, take a look back at recent political events, in particular the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe. In an essay, Neil Peart wrote this:
The deconstruction of the Eastern Bloc made some people happy; it made me mad. For generations those people had to line up for toilet paper, wear bad suits, drive nasty cars, and drink bug spray to get high—and it was all a mistake? A heavy price to pay for somebody else’s misguided ideology, it seems to me, and that waste of life must be the ultimate heresy.
Counterparts (1993): Partnerships are the order of the day here. Two agents in symbiosis, two halves of one whole, interconnected entities that complement one and “add to each other like a coral reef.” Comedy and tragedy, lock and key, tortoise and hare, mortar and pestle, male and female. Indeed, this album offers the closest thing Rush has to real love songs. But they’re Peart-style love songs, so they’re not frivolous, not skin-deep. They’re legit, presenting one’s romantic partner as an equal, an intrinsic part of oneself. A true counterpart. Especially romantic is “Alien Shore,” which rejects the “narrow attitudes” of the roles society tries to assign.
For you and me—Sex is not a competition
For you and me—Sex is not a job description
For you and me—We agreeYou and I, we are pressed into these solitudes
Color and culture, language and race
Just variations on a theme
Islands in a much larger stream
Test For Echo (1996): In the mid-to-late ’90s, the internet was rising, reality television was well underway, and Neil Peart—ever appreciating yet critical of technology—had a few remarks to make about it in this album. When the form and spectacle of technology, rather than its function, becomes our priority, we lose sight of ourselves. Are we sharing information for the betterment of all, or are we just exploiting it for base entertainment?
Don’t change that station
It’s Gangster Nation
Now crime’s in syndication on TV
Sadly, it was just after the Test For Echo tour that tragedy befell Neil Peart. In the space of ten months, he lost both his 19-year-old daughter (to a car accident) and his wife (to cancer). No one begrudged him the space and time he needed to work through the resulting agony and the emptiness, and it wasn’t clear that he would come back from it.
Rush prepared to call it quits on his account.
But Peart did eventually return, having ridden some 55,000 miles on a “nameless quest” through the back roads of North America, and as it turned out he had three more albums in him—not to mention tons of touring. Rush has always been a live band, delivering in person almost precisely what they offer in the studio. With Vapor Trails (2002), Peart penned “Ghost Rider” (and later a book of the same name), arguably the most autobiographical song in Rush’s discography.
Sunrise in the mirror
Lightens that invisible load
Riding on a nameless quest
Haunting that wilderness
Like a ghost rider
The subjects of Snakes & Arrows (2007) are edgier, a touch more cynical than Peart’s usual fair, rife with conflict, fear, and hypothetical angels. Guitarist Alex Lifeson’s solo acoustic instrumental, “Hope,” serves as a nice bit of counterpoint. The band has had quite a few memorable and face-meltingly awesome instrumentals, but they’re a bit off-topic here.
And this brings us to Rush’s final album, Clockwork Angels (2012), which finally brings us back to science fiction. In a big way. Hell, this is a full-blown concept album, set in a “world lit only by fire,” where alchemy and a figure called the Watchmaker imposes precision and order on the world. Steam-powered trains, steamliners, roll on in caravans toward the big cities.
In the official tour book for Rush’s 2010–2011 Time Machine Tour, Peart summed up the album’s conception:
I told the guys about an idea for a fictional world that had interested me lately, thinking it would make a great setting, maybe for a suite of songs that told a story. A genre of science fiction pioneered by certain authors (including my friend Kevin J. Anderson) had come to be called “steampunk,” seen as a reaction against the “cyberpunk” futurists, with their scenarios of dehumanized, alienated, dystopian societies.… But I was thinking of steampunk’s definition as “The future as it ought to have been,” or “The future as seen from the past”—as imagined by Jules Verne, for example in 1866, when he was writing 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
There are echoes of 2112 here, where the powers that be seem to be benevolent but ultimately try to regulate normality…and one individual resists. Craving more than the simple, predictable life that he’s been assigned in the small village of Barrel Arbor, our protagonist hops aboard one of the steamliners that roll past (“Caravan”). His destination: the capital of Crown City and Chronos Square, where the revered Clockwork Angels reside, four mechanical colossi.
Clockwork angels, spread their arms and sing
Synchronized and graceful, they move like living things
Goddesses of Light, of Sea and Sky and Land
Clockwork angels, the people raise their hands –
As if to fly
He throws in with some traveling performers (“Carnies”), falls foolishly in love (“Halo Effect”), runs afoul of a perilous agent of chaos (“The Anarchist”), and adventures beyond the sea and sky (“The Wreckers,” etc.). Based on the album’s lyrics, Kevin J. Anderson wrote a novel of the same name (the audiobook is even read by Peart!). The story he tells is an enjoyable one, though ultimately it feels like an alternate adaptation (just as Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy is great, but it’s not quite the same story as in the book). BOOM! Studios even went and made a tie-in comic book series, while others cruelly teased us about a movie adaptation.
There is so much to appreciate about Rush, who changed musical styles multiple times without ever selling out, without ever compromising. There are those who like only one or two eras of the band, but I’m one of the lucky ones who loves them all and can’t even rightly pick a favorite. And oh yes, there are, of course, those who would like the band but can’t quite get past Geddy Lee’s voice. (My dad came to refer to the band as “squirrels on parade” from the many years of Rush blasting out of my room.) Say what you will, he’s got the most unique voice in rock, and it’s not always squirrely.
Some hardcore fans call them rock gods, the Holy Trinity. But that’s too much, especially for Neil Peart. Moreover, Rush has always been humble, with eyes wide open, even as they rose in accomplishment and fame beneath the mainstream. “The measure of a life is the measure of love and respect,” is one memorable line from “The Garden,” the final track of their final album, and it suits him well.
Neail Peart has left us by an ill-fated roll of the bones. Well, men are mortal. Or more succinctly, “only immortal for a limited time.” But art and expression are not, and the music of Rush is some of the best on this Earth.
But I’d like to close by emphasizing one of the things Peart excelled at: proffering hope and open-minded advice, and doing so humbly. Lately, in this political era where there seems to be a wellspring of willful ignorance and a fear of the Other, I find myself going back again and again to the song “Hand Over Fist” from Presto. It’s about resisting the impulse to fight what we don’t understand. It invites us to us to “take a walk outside” ourselves.
How can we ever agree?
Like the rest of the world
We grow farther apart
I swear you don’t listen to me
Holding my hand to my heart
Holding my fist to my racing heartTake a walk outside myself
In some exotic land
Greet a passing stranger
Feel the strength in his hand
Feel the world expandI feel my spirit resist
But I open up my fist
Lay hand over hand over
Hand over fist
It seems almost too simple. Greet a passing stranger… Neil Peart wasn’t a man who found the world and all of his insights in the pages of a book. He was a chronic traveler, and he walked the walk—or, I guess, cycled. Among his many adventures abroad, there was the time he rode a bike through West Africa, and he wrote about it in his first book, The Masked Rider. He was already rich and famous, but he was still an everyman with boots on the ground, happy to remain anonymous on a dusty, adventurous road. He went through physically rigorous travels, slept on dirty floors, and even passed through war-torn regions (how many rock stars would do that?). He experienced the world his talent and good fortune allowed him to.
Here are two short and relevant excerpts from The Masked Rider.
Cycling is a good way to travel anywhere, but especially in Africa; you are independent and mobile, and yet travel at “people speed”—fast enough to move on to another town in the cooler morning hours, but slow enough to meet the people: the old farmer at the roadside who raises his hand and says “You are welcome,” the tireless woman who offers a shy smile to a passing cyclist, the children whose laughter transcends the humblest home. The unconditional welcome to tired travelers is part of the charm, but it is also what is simply African: the villages and markets, the way people live and work, their cheerful (or at least stoic) acceptance of adversity, and their rich culture: the music, the magic, the carvings—the masks of Africa.
And…
It used to be said that electronic media would bring the world closer together, but too often the focus on the sensational only distorts the reality—drives us farther apart. That is why in Ghana the children followed me down the street chanting “Rambo! Rambo!” and that is why Canadians look at me as if I were a lunatic when I tell them I’ve been cycling in Africa—they can only picture it from wildlife documentaries, TV images of starvation camps, and old Tarzan movies.
Wise words from a nerdy white guy from Canadian has left an awfully deep, informative impression in the world for those who wish to look and listen.
Oh, and also: the man was amazing at percussion. Like, really good. You might have heard that. As Geddy often said, “Ladies and gentlemen: the Professor on the drum kit.”
By the way, it’s PEERt. Not Pert. Just sayin’.
Jeff LaSala married a female Rush fan (they absolutely do exist) and even incorporated some lyrics from Counterparts into his vows. He can’t be convinced that the fifth track from 2112 (“Tears”) isn’t somehow a magical portent of the mage Raistlin Majere (from Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman’s Dragonlance Chronicles), who didn’t show up until nine years later. When not talking about Rush, he is usually talking about Tolkien.
Um, people still release albums you know and in fact even vinyl LPs have made a comeback in the last decade or so.
Rush was one of my first musical loves when I was a young teen (I even had all their albums from the debut to Hemispheres on 8-track tape!). They were my first live concert, at the Pougheepsie Civic Center in New York during the Hemispheres tour in 1979. I saw them on their Permanent Waves tour in 1980 as well but I lost interest in them and moved on to other things after that. Still I was sad to hear the Neil Peart had died. I’m at the age now when many of the artists I grew up with have started passing away. So sad to see the passing of a wonderful musical era.
I’m willing to bet this was the first (and last!) rock song to ever use the word ‘ermine.’
You would lose that bet, as the Velvet Underground beat them to it in “Venus in Furs.” Even if Lou Reed pronounced it to rhyme with “landmine.”
I LOVE that I’m wrong about that. Good on them!
I bought 2112 in 1976 and owned it for all of three weeks before my mother stormed my room, cracked it in half, and handed me a ten with the ORDER to replace it with a book. Mentioning the Temple of Syrinx was sufficient to make her glower and swear the rest of her life.
Thank you for this article, it’s a great overview of the stories and songs that made so many of us fall in love with Rush, and with Peart’s works. They’re an inter-generational band and like many younger fans I grew up listening to them because my father loved them. Those songs hold true across generations and resonated with me much as they had for my father, which I think speaks to their humanity. It is something I will always miss, going to the shows and seeing people of all ages and backgrounds mingling so easily. The Rush fan-crowd was honestly something unique, there was always a sense of camaraderie, in no small part due to Peart’s lyrics. His lyrics, music and books helped shape my world views in my most formative years and continue to inspire me to this day. You captured precisely what I think so many of us are mourning and I’m grateful for your sharing this article. Also, you ended it on exactly the perfect note, got a good chuckle from that =)
Thank you, thank you, thank you for not writing this from the perspective that the band ended in 1981. Rush was an amazing band, and Neil was an incredible man, for nearly fifty years. They’re not a classic rock band, and though millions of us packed arenas until 2015, they never got the recognition they deserved through the 80’s, 90’s, and 00’s
Thanks, guys.
@6 I’m with you all the way. Funny how many different ways you can classify Rush. My brother used to have a book of Heavy Metal sheet music (various bands) and “Tom Sawyer” was in it. I don’t generally think of Rush as heavy metal, but yeah, they were for a period of time before the perimeters of the genres shifted.
Oh, and @@.-@: my mom (unlike my dad) NEVER warmed to Rush. And she had the best timing; she would walk into my room precisely during the screechiest part of a Rush opus, or when the guitars were at their loudest. Absolutely. But dang, not quite as severe a reaction as you got. Yikes. How very….
@7 – the funniest thing to me is when people call them a prog band. They’re not. They were, back in the late 70s, but they haven’t had much to do with prog since Permanent Waves. After that, they were just… Rush. They had their own ever-changing style, they experimented with new things, but they folded in aspects of many genres. Kinda like calling Led Zeppelin heavy metal. It’s like, go listen to In Through the Out Door and tell me that’s metal ;)
My favorite quote from last week, he’s your favorite drummers favorite drummer.
And he was so much more than that as well.
I’m not much of a drinker but last Friday night saw me sitting in bed with a bottle of good scotch and 2112 on repeat.
Other tributes I’ve read so far have unfortunately glossed over the two aspects that made Neil Peart so notable: his jazz-inspired drummership and his very distinct artistic/philosophical vision. Thanks, Jeff, for writing one that focused upon one of these (and alluded to the other!).
The focus on the SFF influences in Peart’s writing reminds me of my thoughts when I realized that the film adaptation of Ready Player One completely removed the Rush-based elements. On the one hand it was slightly disappointing not to see/hear them, but on the other it really felt like the absolutely correct choice artistically. The allusions in the novel’s text could convey some of the band’s influences on the characters effectively, but on screen they quite probably would have seemed like mere props; at some level I was happy that even the involvement of Steven frickin Spielberg was not enough to overcome the band’s longstanding reluctance to license the music the always intended their fans to experience directly.
Nobody but Neil Peart would have written a song about a fast car, one of the staples of rock&roll, which includes a dystopian regime and hovercraft.
I’m still puzzling over why the aircars couldn’t have crossed the river without using the bridge… I mean, they are AIR cars.
I binge listened to Rush on the night I heard the news. They had such a peculiar brand of genius, and I realized that they took themselves a lot less seriously than I used to think they did.
I have listened to Rush for 40 years. Permanent Waves was the first record i bought. When a new album would be released on its first day I would hop on my bike after school and ride a 7 mile trip to the music store to pick it up. I was hooked then and still to this day my most listened to band. I read his last book from the R40 tour and really feel sorry for his daughter. You could feel the love Neil had for her. What a great man he was.
Thank you for writing this now write a more in-depth book please!!!!!!
I’ll never forget being 12 years old and getting a compilation album from the European music magazine Kerrang! that included “The Spirit of Radio.” My mind was blown. Years later somebody told me that the guys from Rush used to play tabletop games like D&D backstage while on tour, instead of the usual rock n roll debauchery, and I’ve always felt that story encapsulates what Rush was. Maybe it’s not true, but if it’s not, it should be.
Thank you for writing this article. Too often, people listen to the songs but ignore the meaning behind the lyrics. “Red Barchetta” stands as one of the finest, most complete sci-fi short stories in music. “Rivendell,” as you mentioned, captured the feel of Tolkien better than any other rock song about Middle Earth. I love “The Wreckers,” which had that old, radio ready vibe. As a group, Neil, Alex, and Geddy could do it all.
Thehe man was difficult to know, being so private. But through his lyrics, we felt his passion, his compassion, and his drive for musical perfection. The world is a dimmer place.
For one of my first year classes in college I did an illustration of “The Body Electric”. Nice to see an actually good version of the concept!
@@.-@ hmmm . . . I’m thinking you weren’t playing “Tears” much before your mom came in.
Anyway, thank you for this excellent reminiscence of Rush and Neil Peart’s contributions. I’ve been a fan of their music and his lyrics for 40 years and have also enjoyed all his books, blog posts etc. He has truly been an inspiration. The news of his illness being a secret all this time, I had just recently gotten over the fantasy that perhaps they might get back together for one more studio album (even if with no touring). I was still holding on to the fantasy of a “Lee & Lifeson, with lyrics by Peart” album. Or at least another book. Been a pretty sad week.
@JLaSala Thank you again, and thank you for your writings on Tolkien and your recommendation of the Prancing Pony Podcast-those guys are also great and obviously big Rush fans.
The first rock concert I went to was Rush. On the Signals tour. I remember they showed film of the launch of Columbia while they were playing Countdown.
My first Rush show was on their Roll the Bones. My wife’s was Presto.
I’m very jealous of those of you who caught much earlier concerts. Dang.
I was rifling through the last few tour books that I have (I couldn’t afford to buy them on my first couple of shows), and came across this wonderful image, which really goes to show how deadly serious Rush took themselves:
@8 A lady of firm opinions, was Mama.
@18 Heh.
And confidential to @14’s point…I’d buy a cultural history of Rush as bellwethers of SF’s artistic development….
This is the best tribute I’ve read for Peart, perhaps only because it’s a different angle from all the others. I don’t shed tears over celebrity deaths (though I don’t begrudge others that do); that being said, his loss is undeniably sad and profound to me as both a drummer, (wannabe) lyricist and science fiction fan.
I’d like to think that Peart’s humility arose out of the understanding that he wouldn’t have achieved his success without Geddy and Alex. “Nothing can survive in a vacuum; no one can exist all alone.”
Peart may not get my tears, but he certainly gets my respect and admiration. Very few people get either from me.
Thank you for sharing.
A great article and tribute to a wonderful artist and thinker. I’ve been listening to Rush all week like everyone else. And thanks to Audible offering Peart’s books for free through the end of the month, I started listening to Ghost Rider at work yesterday and am feeling very close to Neil, despite having never met the man or even making it to a Rush concert. I haven’t been a 40 year fan… I was born in ‘84, and only started listening to Rush when Clockwork Angels was released. I haven’t even heard all of their albums, but 2112 was enough to make Rush one of my favorites. Not much else to say… just wanted to express my admiration for Neil and his life. Thanks.
Fantastic article. Not only did you perform the epic feat of synopsizing The Silmarillion using modern-day language and…memes? But now you turn out to be a serious Rush fan as well. My hat is off to you, sir.
As one of those female Rush fans, I am here to prove we do exist! I will say that I was first introduced to Rush in 1975, around the release of the first album Neil appeared on, “Fly By Night.” I purchased it as a used 8-TRACK from a friend of mine who needed gas money.
Immediately I was excited by the opening cut, “Anthem.” With continued listening to it, I became enthralled with the lyrics. Any band who wrote and recorded a song called “Rivendell” entrigued me. It was 1975 and the LOTR books were all the rage in the stoner community (we affectionately referred to ourselves as “freaks”). I was hooked on Rush!
When I heard of Neil’s passing, like millions of others, I was shocked and horrified. I cried for 2 days, even though I never met the man. His words touched me through my 45-year love affair with Rush. I’m also not ashamed to say that Rush SAGES MY LIFE many, many times.
I would be depressed and despondent, and all I has to do was play any Rush album, and I no longer felt suicidal. I was fortunate enough to see them 8 times, beginning in 1981. As a woman many of life’s experiences prevented me from seeing them more often. As a Navy veteran, a wife, a mother and a career woman, life tended to do that.
RIP, Neil. To me, you will always be “The Professor.”
Lovely tribute, thank you. I for one am going to miss enormously that wonderful moment when you get to buy a new RUSH album, as I have done since ‘Moving Pictures’. Then sit down to listen to it, thinking how uncertain you are about ‘the new stuff’, and not quite realising how ‘the new stuff’ is shortly to become the best thing ever! Farewell Neil.
Great look at the literary side of my favorite band! I am a female Rush fan, in fact I used to only date guys who liked Rush, and married the one who was even more into the band than I. My first car was a red Mustang… as you can guess “Red Barchetta” was a significant track on the tape deck. Thanks for this essay, it was a delight to read.
RUSH Sci Fi & Fantasy playlist
A terrific interview with Peart on Canadian TV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_mKr28G7og
Thank you for this.You’ve captured why we (as conrunners) listed Neil on our In Memorium page. His ability to tell a story accompanied by the music of Alex and Geddy and his own drumming, will always serve as inspiration for me. Thanks from one of those female Rush fans.
Oh, and @Kaz…mine was a red Camaro…licence plate COLDFIRE.
Every article or tweet adds the obvious lyric that Neil can’t pretend a stranger is a long awaited friend to demonstrate his shyness and reluctance to be around people. To me it’s quoting the obvious about the man. He also said in the same song that living on a lighted stage approaches the unreal for those who think and feel and clearly loved playing in front of thousands for decades. The beauty of Neil was his recognition that everyone had two sides to themselves and was complex, just like his music and lyrics.
I didn’t catch on to the whole Rush thing until reading ‘Ready Player One’ but I’ve found them intriguing since then. Good on Cline for promoting them. And that movie did use “Tom Sawyer” in one of its trailers, as I recall.
Thanks for a trip through the years. Great recap of a lot of what we knew but revealing even more.
For me, all of the Rush albums are worthy of a regular listening to. The professor and his pen reafirmed my questioning of a religion bent on demonizing rock music.(2112: of course) This lead to my brother’s and my departure from the confines of this”religion” in 1980 and most of my family by 1983.
I connected to 2112, and Rush’s music, it has allowed me to express what I what believe in, Freewill and hard work equal enjoyment and happiness.
Thanks to Mr. Peart and Rush for an enjoyable ride, it has been awesome! Thanks to your families for letting us use your men, a true trifecta for the betterment of our rock world.
Rush Forever,
M.
Suddenly, he was gone
From all the lives he left his mark upon
I fell in love with Rush upon hearing 2112 when I was 16 years old in 1976. Worked my way back to the 1st album after “All The World’s A Stage” came out. Bought every record afterward up till Grace Under Pressure and liked Presto. Couldn’t get too much into them after that. But there was a time when Rush was my favorite band. I’m glad I got to see them live nant times over those early years and even a couple of times afterward. I will always love Rush as there music fills my teen memories. And for the record, for me personally, I have never compared them to Led Zeppelin in any way, shape or form. Rush Ruled.
This is a fantastic tribute to one of rock’s greatest artists and humans. As a professional musician and songwriter myself, I have only recently come to realize how much I have been influenced by Neil Peart’s body of work, both lyrically and in terms of his devotion to excellence on his instrument. Thank you so much for this outstanding distillation of his oeuvre.
The dogs were called Biter (By-Tor) and Snow…
Thank you so much for this. It took me over a week to read it because I was so heartbroken, but it brings back so much!!
Fun memory: when I was in undergrad, I had an excellent discussion about black hole theory with an astronomy professor, which I started by saying, “I hear that X-rays are indicative of the presence of a black hole. Why is that?” (“The X-ray is her siren song/My ship cannot resist her long/Nearer to my deadly goal/Until the black hole/Gains control…..”) I didn’t tell her I’d gotten that from a Rush lyric. :)
Another memory: about the invisible female Rush fans, a good friend of mine and I (we’re both female) went to the Time Machine tour in 2010. We were standing in line for beer and some guy behind us struck up a conversation, then said, “So, are you guys drivers?” “Pardon me, what?” “Drivers. You know, did you drive your boyfriends here?” *facepalm* Is this really still a thing? Do people really still believe this? I’ve been a fan since 1982.
I’m going to miss Neil and his inspiring lyrics and incredible percussion skills. May his memory be eternal.
One of the Best Evidence-based Commentaries ever made on the man, his mind and his role in his band after his death.
I grew up in Puerto Rico, pre-teen in the late 1970s, on a street where there were a few Americans of either Civilian and/or Military (retired) background. One of their kids listened to Hendrix with his windows opened and other rock musicians, smoked a lot of pot when his parents were not at home.
Pop and Rock Music Stations, both in AM and in FM, were highly popular (as well as Salsa and Romantic Spanish Ballads). I listened to a lot of American Music, from Disco, R&B, Pop and a lot of Rock as a pre-teen. In the AM dial was Radio Rock and in FM was Alpha Rock 106. My favorite Rock band at the time was a Canadian Band called Saga, They were the first Progressive Rock outfit I’ve ever got to like…..(Later in Life I grew up to appreciate Pink Floyd, Genesis and Yes, which were playing at the time but were not really my cup of tea)
Then one day, something magical happened, Alpha Rock 106 played the Spirit of the Radio….At the time (and aged 13 or 14) I didn’t know who Rush was….I was instantly hooked. The second time I heard it I recorded it on tape and took it to my BF who lived down the street from me. Apparently he was even more hooked on it than me. We were fortunate enough to both being on our way of having and acquiring some decent Hi-Fi equipment (Technics, Onkyo) and we played that tape loud and clear. We went to a local record store and the kid working there did not know who Rush was either. He thought it was the Knack (LOL!). Well, after some time, he did identify it as Rush and we both bought the LP, took it home and BOOM….Nothing else left to explain….except maybe that the coolest thing I’ve ever did was, along with my childhood friend, see Neil Peart on a bike and an accompanying rider coming in to the San Juan concert site (Coliseo de Puerto RIco), mid-afternoon on Friday, April 11, 2008, right before the show, seeing them play there and then flying out back home to South Florida on Saturday and seeing them AGAIN on Sunday, April 13, 2008 at the Bank Atlantic Center in Sunrise, FL.
My friend did come many times to South Florida to see them in concert over the years. He also saw them in many other locations in the USA, he lived in NYC for some time.