I’m pretty late to this one because I don’t often check my RSS feed for Blabbermouth.net. But I checked it this morning – and felt like I’d been gut-punched.
Neil Peart, perhaps the most influential drummer of modern times, is dead.
He died at the age of 67 after 3.5 years of fighting brain cancer in the form of a glioblastoma. I don’t know much of anything about cancer, but I do know that brain cancer is basically a death sentence.
And he hid that fact, and all of the suffering associated with it, from all of us and chose instead to stoically endure his fate.
It’s also worth remembering that Neil Peart quit touring after the band’s hugely successful R40 tour because of the extreme wear and tear on his body that came from those EPIC three-hour shows. (I would know. I’ve been to 7 of them.) That was about 4 years ago. He was first diagnosed with brain cancer just six months after that – which means that he was likely exhibiting symptoms of deterioration for a period leading up to the diagnosis.
I don’t even know what to say about this news.
RUSH’s music has been such a big part of my life from the time I was about 21 and bought my very first RUSH albums. I’ve read a couple of Neil’s books and taken considerable inspiration from the raw emotion and pain that he talked about so movingly in Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road.
About 5.5 years ago I retold an old “drummer joke” which I’ve always found pretty amusing. But even as I posted it, all those years back, I knew intellectually that there would come a time when it would no longer be funny, but very real instead.
This is the day that the joke stopped being funny.
I suppose the best way to honour the memory of an artistic and musical titan is to remember his greatest works for what they were – masterpieces of technical, percussive, precise, explosive drumming. RUSH’s music always seemed to surf this kind of tidal wave of sound and barely contained yet amazingly precise energy, due entirely to Neil Peart’s drumming style.
And now we’ll never hear any more of that music ever again. We’ll never see RUSH play live again. We’ll never get to see one of Neil’s incredible ten-minute drum solos again.
Rest in peace, sir.
6 Comments
They were a yuuuge part of my youth as well.
"…conform or be cast out….be cool or be cast out.."
Their music is timeless. He pretty much wrote their lyrics, nearly every one of which resonated with me.
"The fawn eyed girl with sun browned legs dances on the edge of his dream
And her voice rings in his ears like the music of the spheres
The boy lies in the grass, unmoving staring at the sky
His mother starts to call him as a hawk goes soaring by
And the boy pulls down his baseball cap and covers up his eyes" (analog kid)
Tell me who in today's music industry can craft a phrase like that?
My saddest Rush story doesn't really include the band or music, really. For my son's 21st birthday, I bought us 3 tickets to the R40 tour, one for me, two for him. As fate had it, I was travelling and would barely make it back in time to meet him at the venue, so I told him to just find another friend. Turns out my flight was cancelled and I'd have missed it altogether.
Here's the sad part; he had trouble getting his friends to go. At one point he told me one of his friends (a guitarist, playing in a band) wasn't sure. WASN'T SURE!?
These were center stage, 3rd row above the floor, level with the stage tickets. These were tickets for pussy, and I told him that. "Dude, you have tickets to a concert. There's no better way to get a girl to go with you than have plans. 'Do you like RUSH?. I got tickets, want to go?' " sweet jesus. As dysfunctional I was in my day, I knew that if I scored tickets, I could get nearly any girl I wanted to go. Dude was in college at the time. Unreal.
His friends ended up going with him, and it was a stunning concert.
Yeah. I'm still absorbing the twin shocks – first that Neil Peart is gone, and second that he suffered with that kind of pain and misery for so long, so quietly and so stoically. It's incredible that he could do that, after everything that he went through with the death of his daughter, his wife, his dog, and so on.
He was – is – an absolute legend. I still kick myself that I didn't get a chance to see them play the R40 tour.
His skills as a lyricist were quite something indeed. I was listening to "Beneath, Between, Behind" earlier today, and I still can't believe that he was able to make those lyrics stick together. In just about anyone else's hands, they would have turned into pure word salad.
That story is pretty funny as well as kind of sad. The yoof these days, man… Especially chicks. They just don't know or appreciate good music anymore.
I'm going to nit pick.
5. should be "virtuoso".
From an old musician.
Picky, picky, picky… ))
Though I agree.
Cancer is certainly misery. I had my own bout 5 years ago, and am still dealing with collateral damage. I actually blogged about it at the time.
I had two friends die from brain cancer. I and my other brothers at Church would go visit them, babysitting (so to speak) so their wives could get a break and get things done. One of them had wasted down to about 100 lbs. They had a machine that looked like an engine hoist to move him around. When it was time to move him to bed, none of us could figure out how to work it without causing him pain. I was mighty at the time, into weights like a lot of you guys. So fuggit, I picked him up like a child, carried him to his room and placed him in his bed.
Once settled, he told me he was praying for us, that we wouldn't have to go through what he was going through. Can you imagine that? He's dying, praying for his brothers that they might not suffer.
I was holding his hand, talking to him when his wife came in to shoo us out. He started crying. He didn't want us to leave. Got awful dusty in there suddenly.
That image is seared into my head.
Yeah. That, right there, is a good friend and a good man – one who is suffering and yet prays that his brothers be spared the same pain.
To paraphrase old Bill Shakespeare, we lose the good men far too young, and the bad men long overstay their welcomes.