In Appreciation of Neil Peart (remembering the late Rush drummer and songwriter) by David Dierksen

I’ve been a Rush fan since probably 7th or 8th grade (approximately 30 years), but I’ve never been a RUSH GUY. Like I didn’t have every record, obsess over the lyrics, or nerd out with other musician types about how insanely, technically talented those three dudes were. My brother-in-law, he was a RUSH GUY. And bless him for it. When I was in middle school, before he married my sister, he did what all responsible big brother types should do – try to introduce little brother types to good music since little brother types always seem to be listening to lame music (we’ll ignore the irony that LOTS of people thought Rush was super lame back then too). But so yeah, he made me a Rush mix tape. 100+ minutes. Touched on every major studio record up until that point. Contained mostly the usual suspects – he didn’t take up valuable cassette space with 10-minute instrumentals. It was what I would consider a “Best Of.”

To this day, that mix tape is the standard to which I hold up all mix tapes I make for others (and I’m not sure I’ve ever succeeded in hitting that mark). Just classic after classic, opening up my ears to a band that I only knew vaguely at the time as that “Tom Sawyer” group with the shrill singer. Honestly, I don’t know if listening to one of their albums front to back would have had the same impact. By getting the comprehensive best of the best, I got the big hooks and big riffs, and that’s what I was (and am still) all about.

I think it’s funny that for all the nerd talk about the technical wizardry of Rush, they were never exclusively inscrutable. If you wanted to work for your aural pleasure, Rush could definitely hook you up, but for the most part, they just wanted everyone to rock out.

And that principle applies if you break it down to just Neil Peart and his audience of aspiring drummers. As for this one-time aspiring drummer, well, I was never all that great. I wasn’t blessed with innate talent (or a sense of tempo), and I never had the ambition or patience to put in the work to get better as a player (sorry Neil). But I loved to play, and what I lacked in chops or technical proficiency I made up for in enthusiastic arm-flailing and drumhead bludgeoning. One might think I wouldn’t be interested in someone more respectful of the craft, but you’d be wrong!

As an aspiring songwriter, I’d say my ambitions were a little loftier than my goals as a drummer. I genuinely wanted to make music that was interesting. My style of playing may not have had much in the way of nuance, but I did find playing basic 4/4 rock beats boring after a while. And then Neil and Rush were introduced into my life. They wrote a lot of 4/4 rock songs to please the casual radio listener, but if you peeled the onion back, Neil was adding a ton of cool, weird flourishes, whether they be tiny but intricate fills in unconventional spaces or just making seemingly arbitrary decisions (like say, switching from snare to rack tom for a bridge).

You wouldn’t notice these flourishes because they were seamless, and they served the song. Not to rag on Danny Carey from Tool, who I genuinely love as a drummer, but that newest Tool album should have been released under the name “DANNY CAREY! (and 3 other dudes).” It’s amazing but Holy Moses is it exhausting! And look, Neil could certainly go off too. For sure.

Without question. I mean, we’re talking percussive fireworks here. But I was far more impressed by his sleight of hand. Take the relatively simple fill that kicks off the drums in “Limelight.” I’ve heard that song literally over a thousand times, and I still can’t wrap my brain around where the 1, 2, 3, and 4 are; I STILL get tripped up air drumming to it.

A lot of this stuff – it wasn’t reliant on chops! Just imagination and groove! And I thought, yeah, I think I can do some of THAT! I’ve been listening to a lot of my old band’s music lately. We weren’t a great band, but there were flashes of promise there. My proudest moments are the few times we got weird. Where we just threw something at the wall, oftentimes because we found it amusing. And sometimes we just lucked into one of those off-time grooves that still FELT like a 4/4 time signature but really wasn’t, so when I played a 4/4 beat on top of it, just for a couple of phrases, it would really give the song flavor.

That was all Neil, man. It was never about his technicality. It was his creativity that was so inspiring to me.

I haven’t played drums in any consistent fashion in probably 15 years or so, and while I miss playing sometimes, what I’ve replaced it with is far more rewarding. I think what I’ve been missing more lately, for various reasons, is the high I used to get from writing songs. With Neil passing, he who was such a huge inspiration on my songwriting, at a time when I’ve been lamenting the absence of that creative outlet – well, I guess I could look for some great symbolic meaning in that, but mostly I just find it to be a gigantic pisser.

Here you have a man who probably was a genius, known as The Professor, and brain cancer takes him out. It feels like a cruel assassination, an undeserved ending for a man who provided so many with joy, while he himself endured many personal tragedies along the way. It’s not right — doubly not right in this world where dunderheads rule the world. But to paraphrase Neil himself, you can only be immortal for a limited time.

So with that I offer up a hopeful note. That itch in my brain that’s been nagging at me to get off my ass and start writing again – with the passing of Neil Peart, that itch has not been extinguished along with him. Quite the opposite.

May other similar silver linings emerge as folks across the world are reminded of Neil’s greatness. May good things come from this. Wherever you are sir, I hope it’s a happy place because you deserve it a thousand times over.

R.I.P. Neil Peart 1952-2020