Neil Ellwood Peart, 1952–2020: A remarkable treasure of a life
What does it mean to ‘lose’ a mentor?
I’ve been asking myself that question since hearing that Neil Peart died on Jan. 7, 2020. He had been suffering from cancer but fans didn’t know it and news of his death wasn’t made public until three days later so that it stopped us in our tracks and hit us like a turbine freight:
“Suddenly, you were gone / from all of the lives you left your mark upon” — Afterimage, 1984
Peart was my teacher, my guide, my mentor since I was 12 years old. I first discovered the Rush drummer’s virtuoso playing and intelligent and inspiring lyrics when I spun a copy of my brother’s 2112 album. From the initial synthesizer intro notes, the music transported me to another plane and I’ve pretty much stayed there for the next 44 years.
I was hooked on Rush and Peart.
I saw Rush for the first time in 1979 following their Hemispheres album where they performed two classics-to-come: “The Spirit of Radio” and “Freewill.” They played across the border from my hometown Windsor, Ontario in Michigan at what was then Pine Knob, an outdoor amphitheatre. (I won’t say what it’s called today out of respect to Peart who deplored corporate naming rights on the arenas whose stages Rush graced over the years.) I remember a bunch of us in the back of the station wagon driven by my friend David Middleton’s mom who made the 45-minute drive and waited patiently in the parking lot till the concert was over. Bless her heart.
It was a mesmerizing experience for a 15-year-old and I’ve seen Peart and Rush on every tour since then — 17 shows in all. Most of them have been at various arenas in Detroit, two were in Vancouver in the early 1990s, one at an outdoor festival in Sarnia, Ontario and the final concert on June 19, 2015 in Toronto, Rush’s hometown. It was one of two shows at the then-Air Canada Centre (sorry Neil!) which the band recorded and released on DVD and CD to mark their 40th anniversary.
Way back when Rush and I were young and still “immortal for a limited time,” I took up the drums and tried to play some of their songs and other music with some friends and fellow Rush fans. We called ourselves Freewill. I played on a kit made by Stewart with chrome skins, just like my mentor’s first set of drums with the band.
I’ve seen Rush with friends, fellow musicians, co-workers and, most importantly, my family. My wife, son and daughter had been listening to the band (alas, they had no choice!) and grew to like Rush and even love them.
I’ve seen various shows with my family through the years, including that last one with my wife and daughter. My whole family was with me for an especially memorable show, Rush’s Time Machine show at The Palace of Auburn Hills, Michigan on April 17, 2011. I was in a dark place at the time but the comfort and surroundings of my family in the presence of Peart and Rush helped lift me up and out of that hole.
“Turn around and walk the razor’s edge” — The Pass, 1989
So Rush have been a formative influence in my youth and their words and music continued to mold me as an adult. Peart, in particular, walked alongside me through all those years and always seemed to guide me to higher places: intellectually, creatively and as a moral human being. He inspired me to take up drumming and was there by my side after my family bought me an electronic kit for Christmas last year in my mid-50s and I started to play again after 30 drum-less years. He helps me write and edit the written word, always inspiring me to craft the perfect sentence. In every other creative endeavour, intellectual pursuit and interaction with people, I have been inspired and motivated by a man who would begin the day with the thought, “What is the most excellent thing I can do today?”
And yet, despite all of that, I have been a complete stranger to Peart and he to me.
“I can’t pretend a stranger is a long-awaited friend” — Limelight, 1981
I’ve never interviewed him during my career as a journalist. I’ve never met Peart, who suffered from glioblastoma, the same cancer that stilled the songbird (that’s another reference to a beautiful Peart lyric on “Vapor Trail”) Gord Downie of The Tragically Hip and robbed me of a good friend and former co-worker Bill Higgins.
So I’ve never known Peart in the way that I’ve known so many friends and family over the years who have died, including Bill who saw Rush with me at the venue formerly known as Pine Knob. The list of people I’ve loved and lost includes recent names added to that grim ledger: my good friend Vince Lombardo (also taken suddenly on Aug. 20, 2018) and my father on May 6, 2016.
All people I’ve known, spent time with and whose losses I mourned.
The closest I got to Peart was about 10 rows back from one stage at Vancouver’s Coliseum on a night that the Red Hot Chili Peppers, whose drummer Chad Smith was also a big Rush fan, were playing. That’s okay, because like most fans I wanted to respect the space around the intensely private Peart. Also, I wouldn’t want just a few minutes of his time as a ‘fanboy’ and, frankly, he would have probably intimidated the hell out of me. (Others who have had the good luck to talk to Peart, however, have always said how gracious and modest he was, which helped put them at ease.)
So I was okay with all of that. Although I never met my mentor, I can accept that. Peart never got a chance to meet his idol Buddy Rich either.
What’s hard is knowing how to grieve for someone you’ve known and not known your whole life. This is why his death has been so hard to process.
There have been other well-known musicians, people I’ve admired, who have died — some too soon. Their deaths saddened me and reminded me of my own mortality, knowing that like all those wonderful youthful memories I had of their music they can never come back.
But none of these musicians was Neil Ellwood Peart — affectionally abbreviated as NEP by fans — and none of their deaths hit me the way his did because of his uniqueness and talent and oversize influence on me.
“I wish I had that instinct / I wish I had that drive” Mission, 1987
What do I do with all this grief? I can’t visit surviving friends and family of Peart’s. I can’t ask for bereavement leave from work, as tempting as that sounds. I feel childishly foolish when my eyes well up listening to Rush now or reading or hearing a tribute to Peart. I also feel unworthy and a bit awkward accepting condolences from friends and family who know of Rush’s influence on me.
The pain is real, but the conventions and the rites of this particular passage feel like they haven’t been invented yet. Have they? Are there any grief counselors who deal with mourning the death of an idol? It’s something that singer-songwriter Sebastian Bach struggled with and asked on Twitter.
Do the five stages of grief apply when your idol dies? I think I skipped denial and went straight to anger when I first heard that Peart died, childishly spewing out profanity, like Bach, in sharing the news on social media and when my wife called me to ask how I was doing.
“Why is it always the fuckin’ drummer who dies first?” I said.
Eventually, I suppose, I will reach the level of acceptance even if I can never share the same sense of closure as those who actually knew Peart in a tangible way.
I also smile and feel a quiet kind of satisfaction when someone tells me that they were turned onto Rush by me and knowing that their lives have been rewarded in some small way because of that.
“There’s something here as strong as life / I know that it will reach you” — 2112, iv. Presentation
Like sharing a book (my daughter asked for my copy of Peart’s Ghost Rider, which my son also once borrrowed and read) and something from your garden (Bill once told me the “best plants are the ones you get from a friend”), these are timeless treasures. Like passing an evening with a drink and a friend, as the man once wrote in “Time Stand Still.”
Peart’s excellence behind his kit was the very picture of something that the Italians call sprezzatura — the art of effortless mastery. He made his art look easy.
He was also many people: dogged, curious, intellectual, humanitarian, erudite, creative, strong, dexterous, motivational, naturalist, birder, environmentalist, traveler, compassionate, teacher, poet, cyclist, motorcyclist, hiker, reader, writer, drummer and more. But if I had to pick one word to summarize him, it would be this: integrity.
Peart was a man of integrity and he projected that in his words and music. In his life and in his death (the privacy around illness and his publicly quiet exit was typically Peartian) he exuded strong moral and aesthetic principles and honesty.
“His reserve a quiet defense / Riding out the day’s events” — Tom Sawyer, 1981
Integrity was a major theme that weaved its way through songs from Rush’s 1980 album Permanent Waves. In my youth, I did once dream of sitting down with Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson and Neil Peart one day and writing a book about the band and their legacy. I would use “integrity” in the title somehow.
That never happened and there have been many other dreams that never happened. But that’s okay because, like the song “Far Cry” says, “I can get back on again.” And like Peart wrote in “Bravado,” I am willing to pay the price but not count the cost of pursuing my dreams.
It was indeed a measure of love and respect that I and so many fans felt for Peart. We are his garden and he nurtured and protected us right up to that most beautiful of Rush songs, their last:
“The future disappears into memory
With only a moment between
Forever dwells in that moment
Hope is what remains to be seen” — The Garden, 2012
Claudio D’Andrea has been writing and editing for newspapers, magazines and online publications for more than 30 years. You can read his stuff on LinkedIn and Medium.com and follow him on Twitter.
