Track #40 - “Subdivisions” by Rush (1982)

From the album Signals

Music by Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson & Neil Peart; lyrics by Neil Peart

Performed by:

Geddy Lee – lead vocals, synthesizers, bass

Alex Lifeson – guitar

Neil Peart – drums

Sprawling on the fringes of the city

In geometric order

An insulated border

In-between the bright lights

And the far, unlit unknown

Growing up it all seems so one-sided

Opinions all provided

The future pre-decided

Detached and subdivided

In the mass production zone

Nowhere is the dreamer

Or the misfit so alone

About a week before my seventh birthday, Elvis Presley died, on August 16th, 1977. I was sitting on the shag carpet in the living room, probably playing with Matchbox cars, when my mother’s afternoon “stories” were interrupted by a “special news bulletin.” A very old, serious-looking gentleman appeared onscreen and told the audience that Elvis, the King of Rock & Roll, was dead. I knew who Elvis was, even though my parents hardly ever played his music in the house; in fact, I don’t think they ever played any Elvis. But I knew he was called the “King of Rock & Roll”, and I knew the songs “Hound Dog” and “Heartbreak Hotel”, but I was, and have never been, an Elvis fan. I know he was a huge musical influence and instrumental in early rock and roll, and broke barriers and scared the crap out of parents everywhere in the 1950s, and that his fans were (and still are) rabidly loyal, and that there’s an Elvis impersonator convention in Las Vegas every year, but I don’t get it. Sorry, Elvis fans, I mean no offense, but I don’t get the hype or understand what Elvis is all about. The point of all this, and despite me not ever being an Elvis fan is that I can tell you exactly where I was and what I was doing when the news broke that he had died. I mean, it was national news; Elvis was and is an American icon, so that news would have been hard to miss back then, even for an almost seven-year-old. But I can remember it like it was yesterday. I’ve talked about this before: I cannot explain why I remember things the way I do, but it’s somewhat freakish, I’ll admit. So, the news and recollections of Elvis’ death back in 1977 has stuck with me for over 40 years, and that was for a musical icon that I was not even a fan of. Now, what if I really loved someone’s music, and felt a tremendous connection with them? Well, we talked about Kurt Cobain, and how MTV News came on and Kurt Loder announced that Cobain had died by suicide, just as my family and I were about to sit down and have birthday cake for my brother, and how everything in the room sort of stopped. We talked about Eddie Van Halen, and how it was grey and raining the day news broke of his death, and how my wife and I were in a rented house in Maine during the height of Covid-19 that week; I remember how the house smelled that day, for God’s sake. Even John Lennon’s murder in 1980, when I was ten, has stuck with me in a way that I can’t explain (more on that down the road). There’s one musical idol I’ve had though whose loss hit me in a completely different way. Because of the way he opened up and wrote about his life, I felt like I knew him, yet he was uncomfortable being famous and extremely private. He wrote about how private he was, as a matter of fact. He gave the occasional interview, but didn’t go to the fan meet and greets when his band toured, and he would usually wave to the crowd when the show ended and run to the exit of the arena. He wasn’t being standoffish; he just had other things he wanted to get to. He never even bowed at the front of the stage with his bandmates after shows until their final live performance together, in 2015. Notoriously shy, he wrote about his newfound fame in 1981, in his band’s song “Limelight”: I can’t pretend the stranger is a long-awaited friend…he didn’t understand why fans would want to chat him up, pretending to know him like they were lifelong pals. Neil Peart played drums for the Canadian rock trio Rush, but that seemed almost incidental; Peart himself called that his “day job”, and his bandmates Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson, “the guys at work.” He traveled and read voraciously, wrote fiction and graphic novels, rode his BMW motorcycles hundreds of thousands of miles and documented his travels in several nonfiction volumes, and in between, experienced his own terrible losses and recovery and rebirth. And when I say he “played drums”, that’s almost insulting. Peart was a colossal drummer, an iconic drummer, a legendary drummer, technically perfect, an innovator of percussion instruments and drum solos, and an influence on every aspiring drummer who has ever picked up sticks. And he developed those complex drum parts while also writing every lyric for Rush after he joined in 1974. He was dedicated to learning more about his instrument, and when he felt like his playing was beginning to suffer and not improving anymore, he took drum lessons again at the age of forty-two. His band Rush became more popular than ever in the 2000s, winning a new generation of fans and finally entering the zeitgeist of pop culture with appearances on talk shows and in popular films. They continued to tour and play three hour shows with no opening act, and although the rigors of touring and playing those complex drum fills for three hours a night began to take a real toll on his body, Peart kept at it, because in his heart, he knew he had a job to do, and he didn’t want to disappoint his bandmates, or the fans. But he had a goal. Remarried in 2000, he and his wife had a daughter in 2010, and he longed for domestic bliss; to leave touring life behind and retire from the band and his drums. And he actually achieved that, at least for a time. When he took that bow at the front of the stage with Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson in August of 2015 at their final show, that was literally his final bow. He felt he had earned it; all those years recording, touring, and being a student of drumming so he could stay at the top of his game were now behind him. As Lee wrote in his 2023 memoir, My Effin’ Life, “In the end, though, it wasn’t that he didn’t want to play in Rush anymore; he didn’t want to play anymore at all.” So, Peart had done it his way, and had it all…and then, tragically, it was all taken away from him. When I think of Neil Peart’s story and the story of Rush for that matter, I feel like it’s the story of everyman. Three regular guys who came together and were great at what they did, but who worked hard to get to their level of success. I’m not saying other bands don’t work hard and aren’t dedicated, but a lot of these stories go bad, with band members, supposed grown-ups yelling at each other and not talking for years, and then reuniting, maybe to make a buck and Rush never did that to each other. And, as a lifelong fan, I loved that about them. Yes, they were famous rock stars who made some of the greatest rock music ever, and they are my favorite band of all time, but in the end, they were just regular guys to me. When Neil Peart died in January of 2020, after the shock wore off and I began to get my head around it, I started thinking about something he said, a quote I read years before; I thought about it often in the days and weeks that followed his death. It’s random, but as I thought about it in the weeks and months that followed, it began to make sense to me why I was going to miss watching Neil Peart play his drums:

“Playing a three-hour Rush show is like running a marathon while solving equations. My mind is as busy as it can be, and so is my body; full output all the time.”

What always amazed me about Peart’s drumming was how much he was able to fit in those drum parts and how complex those drum fills were in the space he was given; constant movement, even if he was just keeping time. His feet played complex kick parts during verses, he played double or triple cymbal hits where other drummers might hit them once; he added unexpected China cymbal hits, or electronic hits between fills on his Midi, a programmable electronic pad used to make sounds not possible with acoustic drums. Even the empty spaces he created on songs like “The Camera Eye”, “Animate” and the overture on their epic album 2112 are captivating; as Lifeson and Lee are playing their parts, or if there’s complete silence, you’re waiting and asking yourself, “What is he going to do next to fill this space?” The point is that he can fill that space with something simple (or not fill it at all), but he chose to fill that space with depth and urgency, with drum parts that had never been heard before, to challenge himself to be creative, and not be typical, and ultimately, challenge the listener. And if you were lucky enough to see Rush play live several times like I have, he plays those parts exactly like they’re heard on the record, because he knows that’s what the fans are expecting. But later in his career, when he allowed cameras into the sanctity of his drum riser, you were able to see him playing from every angle; but most importantly, you could see his eyes and his face as he was playing. Go ahead and cue up a video of Neil Peart on YouTube and you’ll see what I’m talking about, and you will understand what I miss most about Neil Peart. I miss watching him think as he is playing his drums. I miss watching him running those equations in his head, and thinking about what he has to do next, and how fast he must do it to not only make it sound beautiful and thunderous and compelling, but also how he needs to stay in time. Watch other drummers and you’ll see what I’m talking about. They usually just look happy and crazy up there, maybe their hair is flying around, and they’re pounding away, and that’s cool…I do love that! But when Neil Peart was playing, he was thinking, and you can see it, and I love THAT more. And when the news alert appeared on my phone on the day he died, I stared at it, and I stopped what I was doing, and I hoped it was a mistake.  

Neil Elwood Peart was born on September 12th, 1952, in Hamilton, Ontario, the oldest of four children. His siblings would arrive after he and his parents moved to St. Catharine’s, a suburb of Hamilton, when he was two years old. Peart had a stable and happy childhood, and took to music at an early age, taking piano lessons, but he was unimpressed with the instrument. When he was 13, he took an interest in drums, and his parents told him if he practiced and stuck with it for a year, they would get him his own drum kit. Already in high school (he skipped two grades and entered at the age of 12), he grew his hair long and began to immerse himself in science fiction and fantasy books, which would later provide the inspiration for much of the lyrics he penned for Rush. He practiced his drums obsessively and modeled his early playing after the Who’s chaotic and charismatic drummer, Keith Moon. Schoolwork and studying quickly fell by the wayside, and Peart dropped out of school at age 17, and he soon travelled to London to begin a music career. He spent eighteen months in the UK, grabbing session work when he could and selling jewelry to support himself, but the time there was mostly a failure. Peart came back to Canada in late 1973 and began to work at his father’s farm equipment business as a parts manager. In 1974 he got a call about an audition with a Toronto-based band called Rush that had just signed with a major label and needed a new drummer. Rush consisted of bassist/singer/keyboardist Geddy Lee, guitarist Alex Lifeson, and drummer John Rutsey. The band had just released their debut album, Rush, that March, and were poised to begin their first major tour that August. Rutsey, a diabetic, had played drums on the album and was beginning to become concerned about touring extensively and his health. A more straightforward player, his musical influences were also beginning to misalign with that of his bandmates Lee and Lifeson, who were writing musical pieces in odd time signatures that Rutsey had no interest in playing. Rutsey formally exited Rush on July 25th, 1974, just three weeks before they were to begin the tour. Lee and Lifeson set out to quickly find a new drummer, so they set up in a rehearsal hall on July 28th to hear potential candidates to sit behind the kit. They both agreed not to decide until they heard all of the drummers audition. After the second one finished, Lee looked out the window and saw a battered Ford Pinto pull up, and a tall lanky guy got out of the car and dragged his drums into the hall in garbage bags. Peart had his reservations about the audition; he had never heard of Rush and was reluctant to play music he didn’t believe in. Plus, he was unsure about leaving his father’s business in the lurch. But his father encouraged him, telling him that this is what he should be doing, not selling tractor parts. So, Peart carefully set up his kit, anchored by two 18-inch kick drums (small by rock standards), and according to Lee, began to play triplets like “machine gun fire.” Drum lesson: a triplet is three evenly spaced notes in succession in a space where there would normally be two. Peart played a perfect audition, and was able to play a lot of Lee and Lifeson’s new compositions in 7/4 time and basically play in all the other time signatures that former drummer Rutsey was otherwise uncomfortable in. Drum lesson: a time signature is the number of note values in each bar of music. 4/4 is the most common, four quarter note beats per measure; think AC/DC and pretty much all dance music. 7/4 means seven quarter note beats per measure, an “odd” time signature; think “Solsbury Hill” by Peter Gabriel and “Money” by Pink Floyd. Sorry I’m nerding out…OK, I’m back. All that means is that Peart was able to think about more complex rhythm parts, which was the direction Lee and Lifeson wanted to take the band in. After hearing Peart audition, Lee knew they had their guy, but he ultimately kept his promise to Lifeson and they heard the rest of the drummers. On July 29th, Neil Peart officially became a member of Rush. For Peart, this was a chance to play music that was uncompromising; he loved the material Lee and Lifeson had come up with and saw huge potential in the band. On August 14th, 1974, Rush opened for Uriah Heep and Manfred Mann in Pittsburgh, with Peart behind a brand new Slingerland drumkit (a kit he replicated for Rush’s R40 tour in 2015). As the trio continued to play and live together on the road, Lee and Lifeson began to notice the quirkiness of their new drummer, primarily his penchant for books and ability to literally read anywhere at any time. Lee recalls in his memoir a time when the band were partying, and when they returned to the hotel, Peart lay on his bed with a book, rose after 30 minutes to throw up, and returned to the same spot and picked up right where he left off. Peart was fond of fantasy and science fiction, most notably The Lord of the Rings trilogy and the writings of philosopher Ayn Rand. Lee and Lifeson thought it might be a good idea to have their new bandmate who always seemed to have a paperback jammed in his back pocket take a stab at writing lyrics, and beginning with 1974’s Fly by Night, Peart has written just about every Rush lyric. “The Professor”, as he came to be known, would write “Anthem”, based on Rand’s 1938 novella of the same name, and a song called “Rivendell”, named for the haven of the elves in Tolkien’s trilogy, for the new album. We’ll get more into the history of Rush itself when we delve into “Tom Sawyer” down the road (what, did you think this was the only Rush song on the playlist? Haha), so let’s just say it took them awhile, but by the time an awkward 12-year-old on Long Island heard Rush for the first time, they were bona fide rock stars. So, when I bought 1982’s Signals, the follow up to the album that truly made them famous, 1981’s Moving Pictures, I began to pay attention to the lyrics more, especially the opening track. This song wasn’t about dystopia, kings, philosophy or space battles; this one felt personal, and relatable. The scenes in the video sort of resembled my neighborhood, and the school I went to; even the kids in the video had a familiar look. Of course, Neil Peart played the complex rhythms he’s known for in the song. But that album, and that song, “Subdivisions”, floored me, because it was then that I realized, "Wait, the drummer is writing these lyrics?!?”  

Signals, released in early September of 1982, was the follow up to 1981’s Moving Pictures. Moving Pictures is the album that put Rush on the radio and cemented them as rock stars. We’re going to talk a lot more about Moving Pictures down the road, so I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but that is the album that made me a Rush fan; of course, there’s a story there, but we’ll save it. For now, we’ll stay in the fall of 1982. After the success of Moving Pictures, Lee, Lifeson and Peart worked on supervising the mixing of Exit…Stage Left, a live album captured during their 1981 tour; most of the early performance videos you see of Rush that were on MTV are from Exit…Stage Left. From there, the band set out to put together their next album. The last thing they wanted was a repeat of Moving Pictures, and an album that sounded the same just to capitalize on that record’s success. As the band’s use of synthesizers increased, they saw it as an opportunity to expand their sound, and Peart was beginning to explore other themes in his lyrics. As he began to pen the lyrics to the new album, he recalled the crowds on the previous tour, the look and the demographics, and it made him recall his own life growing up in the suburbs of Hamilton, Ontario. While a lot of Rush’s previous songs were inspired by science fiction, fantasy and philosophy, Peart wanted to write more about his own experiences, and perhaps tap into the experiences of Rush’s audiences. The resulting songs were more personal like “Digital Man”, “The Analog Kid”, and “New World Man”, and what I think is Peart’s most personal song, the album’s lead track, “Subdivisions”. After writing fantastical lyrics for several Rush albums at that point, Peart would later tell Rolling Stone after writing “Subdivisions”, “…from then on, I realized what I most wanted to put in a song was human experience.” Writing from his own, and what he interpreted as the experiences of most of Rush’s audience, he tells the story of simple-minded thinking and what it can do to someone if you don’t begin to form your own opinions, and the price of non-conforming, how you can be shunned for being your own person. He sets that stage in the suburbs, “In geometric order…An insulated border” where “….The future [is] pre-decided….Detached and subdivided….” Lee and Lifeson wrote musical parts to the lyrics, and the song unfolded with the keyboards as the melody and the guitar and drums in the rhythm section; Peart worked with guitarist Lifeson on the rhythm parts, changing the dynamic during recording for this song and the rest of the album. Rush would release “New World Man” as a single in August, before the September release of Signals. I was still obsessing on Moving Pictures, so I was not aware of Signals until I saw the video for “Subdivisions”. I have a vague memory of “Subdivisions” being branded as a “World Premiere Video” on MTV, and I found some confirmations of it in various Rush online forums, but I’m not 100% certain. Suffice it to say, I did see that video very early on, and I saw it a lot. I remember vividly the opening overhead shot of Geddy Lee playing the opening keyboard chords with his left hand, bass guitar around his neck, and as Neil Peart begins the hi-hat rolls and Alex Lifeson plays the rhythm parts on guitar, we’re shown more overhead views, this time of a city with tall buildings and cars moving along the city streets. Then the shot distorts somewhat, and it fades into the suburbs, with its neat rows of cookie-cutter houses and cars parked in the driveway, and mailboxes on the manicured lawns. Shots of the band lip-syncing through the song are sprinkled throughout, and then we see our protagonist, a boy with glasses and shaggy haircut, reading by himself at a cafeteria table. We see him in a school hallway, closing a locker, and walking by himself outside the school as a carful of kids drive away; obviously the implication is that this kid is an outcast, shunned by his classmates, even oppressed by his parents, who throw his schoolbooks at him while he’s watching TV, clearly a message that he should be studying. And as I watched this video, and began to see it more and more, it began to look more and more familiar to me. Remember, this was the very beginning of junior high, and switching classrooms, and a bigger school, and lockers, and new kids, and worrying about my clothes and sneakers, so those intimidating orange and yellow lockers in the “Subdivisions” video and all the kids in the hallway echoed my present situation. Now, I looked nothing like the kid in the video, and I had friends, but is this where I was headed? My other thought was this: I was only three years into our new suburban life, and when I rode my bicycle through the neighborhood, the houses looked as familiar as the ones in the “Subdivisions” video. There’s also a shot of people on an escalator, clearly commuting to work; I think my father did something similar every day, taking the Long Island Railroad to New York City, with millions of others. While I was grateful he had a job and could support us, is this what it was all about? Moving away from the city and into the safety of the suburbs was supposed to be an improvement in our lives, an upgrade if you will, but was it? I would see that video often, and finally later that fall, I made Signals one of my initial 12 tapes for a penny from the Columbia House Record Club (if you remember, this is when I also snagged a couple of Van Halen cassettes). And I listened to Signals and Moving Pictures a lot that fall, and Rush joined Van Halen, Judas Priest, and Def Leppard, and all that other great rock music that became a rite of passage and in some ways helped me grow up that first year in junior high. I would read along with the lyrics when I listened to Rush and had to look twice when I read the liner notes: “All music by Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson; all lyrics by Neil Peart.” Drummers don’t write songs, do they? Don’t they just show up, and bang away back there, and just look happy? Maybe Phil Collins writes songs, but I really didn’t think drummers had anything to do with songwriting. So, Neil Peart is the one writing all these words about growing up, and modern-day warriors and boys pulling down their baseball caps. And as the years went by and I kept listening to Rush, and going to shows, I not only marveled at Neil Peart and his drums, but I read all his lyrics and his books, and realized what an overflowing, curious and restless soul he was. And I returned to Signals and “Subdivisions” a lot since those days in 7th grade because the words in that song continue to affect me in ways I can’t understand. And when Neil Peart was gone, it was the first Rush song I listened to.

When I look back now at early 2020, I’m struck by how normal and routine things seemed before the pandemic blew the world up. At least that’s how it felt that January. The holidays had just ended, and the time to dispose of our Christmas tree was upon us. My older son Dan had decided to spend his last week of Christmas break with us in Connecticut, and then we’d drive him back to school in Albany, New York to finish out his sophomore year. I told Dan there was lunch in his future if he would help me get the tree out of the house and to the curb while he was visiting.  January 10th was a Friday; I was working from home that day, a usual practice for my team at the time as we were in office the rest of the week, so after a full morning of work, Dan and I headed to one of the pubs in the next town over and took a high-top table near the bar. Over rice bowls, we talked about his upcoming school year and his “bridge term”, where he could travel or take on a project in lieu of a semester on campus (an opportunity he would lose to the pandemic). The conversation turned to music, and what he was learning to play on his bass guitar, and we started talking about bands with great bass players: Primus, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Duran Duran, and then we started talking about Geddy Lee and Rush. Dan’s first concert experience was Rush’s R40 tour back in 2015, which turned out to be their farewell tour. So, we talked about that, and he asked me about the other Rush shows I had been to; I even told him that story of opening act Primus, and their bassist Les Claypool telling the crowd at my first Rush show in 1992 how he saw Rush when he was 15 years old and drank three beers and threw up in the parking lot. We wrapped up lunch and headed home, and after a lot of awkward maneuvering and literally needles everywhere (it was a HUGE tree), we wrestled the tree out of the house and down to the curb. As we began to sweep up the mountain of needles in the living room, I received a news alert on my phone. I don’t remember if it was CNN, or Rolling Stone or the Times, but it said something like, “Neil Peart, iconic rock drummer and lyricist for the band Rush, has died of brain cancer at 67.” What?!? I remember stopping whatever it was I was doing, and everything else around me stopping, and thinking it had to be a mistake. I opened the article, and it confirmed what I hoped could not be true; Neil Peart had passed away that Tuesday, January 7th in Santa Monica. He had been quietly battling a brain tumor for over three years. So, I said to Dan, “Neil Peart died.” “Holy shit, really?” was the response. We stood there in disbelief; we were just talking about Rush an hour before. And then the text messages started coming in from my brother, a big Rush fan, and from friends, some Rush fans, some not, but who all knew I was a fan and wanted to know if I had seen the news. As the days and weeks went on and I wrapped my head around it, the realization that the world would never see Rush play together again started to hit me. Sure, they had retired, more or less, but there was always the chance they could play a one-off show or make an appearance somewhere and play a few songs together; but now, that would never, ever happen. The music would always be there, of course, but aside from DVDs and videos, we wouldn’t see Rush play together, or Neil Peart play his drums again. And that’s when I remembered Peart’s quote about equations and marathons and that I would miss watching him running that marathon and doing those equations as he played his drums. I was going to miss watching him think back there on his drum riser. Those first few weeks I listened to a lot of Rush, obviously, but the very first song I played after I heard the news of Peart’s death was “Subdivisions”; in fact, it was the Signals album, and not Moving Pictures that I played most. Peart’s most personal song and the Rush song that has resonated and stayed with me most all these years became the epitaph, and the lyrics I think of when I think about Peart’s legacy as a songwriter. And critics and writers seemed to agree; “Subdivisions” ended up on many Rush best-of lists after Peart’s death. It’s hard to pick my favorite Rush song, but Peart’s story about “restless dreams of youth” still takes me back to those first few years when my family moved to the suburbs, and I was still trying to figure out this new place we were living in. How did Neil Peart know what me and every other teenager was going through and thinking? Because in the end, he and the guys in Rush were regular guys. And understanding all of us regular guys and girls made him much bigger than just a rock star.

Thanks again for stopping by! Sign up for email updates to get new posts delivered to your inbox and if you’re enjoying the posts, please feel free to share the link with your friends! And I’m sure you noticed that this is Track #40….only 10 more songs to go!

Here is the video for “Subdivisions”; if you grew up in the ‘burbs do any of those images ring a bell? Enjoy 😊

Next time…we’ll talk about cover songs, and the second artist who appears on the playlist twice in two different bands make his debut.

P.S.

Signals is certified platinum in the US for having sold 1 million copies and was a Top 10 album in the US as well. “New World Man”, the first single released from the album, remains Rush’s only Billboard Top 40 hit, reaching #21 in the fall of 1982. The album was a turning point as Rush progressively used more synthesizers as the 80s went on, and Peart experimented with electronic drums and other forms of percussion. I don’t want to say much more beyond that because we have more Rush to talk about.

About a week after Peart’s death, the podcast I’m In Love with That Song did an episode about “Subdivisions”, basically breaking down every verse, chorus and drum part. Take 24 minutes out of your day and listen to it.

Aside from his body of lyrics with Rush, Neil Peart has also authored seven non-fiction books about his travels and life on tour. These are highly personal works which document his life playing with Rush, his musical influences, and search for percussion innovations, while giving some insight into his family and personal life. The best one, but also the most tragic, is Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road, released in 2002. Peart suffers the loss of his daughter and wife in the same year, and then travels over 55,000 miles by motorcycle across Canada, to Alaska, through most of the US and finally to Mexico, on a journey to figure out how to reconnect with himself and to manage his grief, and ultimately find a way to repair and go on with his life. Despite the tragic undertones, it’s an uplifting and inspiring story; I highly recommend reading it, if only to make you realize that a broken heart and shattered soul can be fixed, whatever the circumstances. Peart also co-wrote, with science fiction author Kevin J. Anderson, a novelization of Rush’s 2012 album Clockwork Angels, and he also collaborated with Anderson on two graphic novels loosely based on the album as well.

In 2021, Brian Hiatt wrote a wonderful piece in Rolling Stone on the one-year anniversary of Neil Peart’s death which served as a career retrospective and also featured reflections from Peart’s bandmates, close friends and his widow, photographer Carrie Nuttall. I think it gives some closure on the final months of Peart’s life and what he was going through after his diagnosis, and mostly how he did not want it broadcast to the world and the fans. I think it’s a true testament to who he was that he had such amazing people around him who ultimately protected him and his privacy as he battled glioblastoma for over three years. The article also drives home that Peart’s life was about learning, reading, writing and continually evolving as a person; yes, he was one of the world’s greatest drummers, but he was much more than that.

Neil Peart is usually mentioned when discussing the greatest all-time rock drummers, mostly for his innovation, stamina, and creativity. Like Eddie Van Halen, he revolutionized his instrument and has influenced generations of drummers; he’s also challenged other drummers to elevate their playing. And, like Eddie Van Halen, we can debate who the best drummer is all day, but listening to Rush for over 40 years has obviously biased me in a way. Their body of work, and subsequently Peart’s, is so deep that I’ve been able to hear the progression of their sound, and how despite what some critics might say, they never sound the same to me from album to album. Sure, there are other drummers I admire a great deal; John Bonham, Stewart Copeland, Keith Moon, Steven Adler, Phil Collins, Dave Grohl, Taylor Hawkins, Scott Rockenfield, Mick Fleetwood, Matt Cameron, Carter Beauford, Liberty Devitto, Meg White; to name just a few. But it’s only with Neil Peart do I hear a real journey of creativity and re-invention in the playing through the years. The drummer Peart is most often pitted against in discussions about the greatest ever is John Bonham, Led Zeppelin’s bombastic drummer, who died in 1980. Innovative in his own right, no one at the time sounded like Bonham; no one played with his sense of feel or groove, and he revolutionized the way the kick, or bass drum was played. Bonham also knew how to tune his drums in such a way that his drums just sounded the best. Stylistically, Bonham and Peart were different, but obviously both were brilliant and revolutionary in the way they approached the drums. So, it probably comes down to preference: the power and groove of John Bonham, or the precision and showmanship of Neil Peart. You can argue all day. But what sets Peart apart goes beyond his drumming; he injected his own ideas and creativity into Rush’s music by contributing his thoughts and experiences through his lyrics. I miss watching him play his drums, but I also miss listening to his words.

See you next time…

JS

11/2/2024