“The way I play is, honestly, a reflection of myself. I like to creatively challenge myself to invent different parts for songs and make them challenging to play.” That’s how Neil Peart described his drumming style in a 2005 interview, published for the first time now, after his death, by Loudwire .
Peart died on January 7, 2020, in Santa Monica, California, at the age of 67, after an exhausting battle with cancer. Peart had been battling brain cancer for the past three years, according to family spokesman Elliott Mintz.
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Thinking of Peart's musical style as a reflection of his personality, with diverse and distinct parts within a song, gives a certain insight into what his life was like overall. Considered a member of the trio of greatest drummers in history, alongside John Bonham and Keith Moon , Peart stood out by composing a life with specific and distinct parts.
Neil Peart and Rush
The drummer joined Rush in 1974, after the band had already released their first album. At the time, their sound was a hard rock heavily inspired by Led Zeppelin , lacking much personality. Apparently, it was Peart's arrival that led the band in a different direction.
The chemistry with bassist and vocalist Geddy Lee and guitarist Alex Lifeson evolved Rush's music into progressive rock. And, indeed, with a lot of personality. Neil Peart basically built a new concept of playing drums, mixing rock and the aggressiveness of Buddy Rich , classical music, and meticulously calculated compositions.
Unusual time signatures, frequent changes in tempo, and mechanical precision are just a few ways to describe Neil Peart's drumming. Without him, Rush would have remained a Canadian underground band.
Neil Peart, Rush composer
Another distinctive feature, or rather, another aspect of his life, was the fact that the musician was the band's main songwriter. Not by choice, but because his bandmates genuinely had no desire or interest in writing the lyrics. His philosophical side began to emerge, with philosophical discussions, lyrics about the randomness of life, science fiction, or inspiration from a 19th-century book by Mark Twain .
As Peart himself described, after overcoming his obsession with drumming and technical studies, the musician wanted to explore what drummer Bill Bruford called "life beyond the hi-hat." He began reading a lot of fiction and non-fiction, learning new things, and educating himself. All of this is very much reflected in the lyrics he wrote.
This intellectual aura has earned the band, nerds by nature, extremely passionate fans. Some of them include names like Mike Portnoy , Dave Grohl , Trent Reznor , and many others.
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Neil Peart's personal life
In 1997, however, Peart lost his daughter in a car accident and his wife to cancer the following year. This marked the beginning of a crisis, which he recounted in his book Ghost Rider: The Road to Healing . During a motorcycle trip across America, the drummer rediscovered himself. He married photographer Carrie Nuttall and, in 2001, returned to Rush to record the album Vapor Trails . In 2002, he recorded a concert for 40,000 people at the Maracanã stadium, Rush In Rio .
Neil Peart's influence on music
Influencing bands like Tool and Coheed and Cambria , Rush became one of those beloved and legendary bands. Their last studio album, Clockwork Angels , still showed a group that was tuned in and willing to take risks at every moment. This was largely thanks to Neil Peart's style and lifestyle, who knew how to live beyond music and, at the same time, reflect his experiences in the drumming he did.
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