Rush drummer Peart maintains legendary status
The Internet is teeming with tribute sites to the 54-year-old Canadian.
By BRIAN MCCOLLUM
DETROIT FREE PRESS
He’s known as the Professor.
But that’s not all they call Neil Peart. Stick the phrase “Neil Peart is ...” in Google, step back and watch the accolades fly. As far as the Web is concerned, the Rush drummer is unreal, the greatest, a legend, the man. He is, some breathlessly proclaim, a rock god.
At his concerts, they stare and study, their arms busy in the air, miming his every move across his colossal kit. He doesn’t stare back: Focused, intense, deeply invested, Peart is all business as he steers Rush through its marathon live show.
The enduring phenomenon of Neil Peart is one of rock music’s rarely highlighted realities. In a rock world where musical prowess is often discounted, where his peers are often stereotyped with an amiable joke (“What do you call a drummer without a girlfriend?” “Homeless”), Peart is a rare sort indeed: a drummer beloved foremost for his virtuoso chops — and a personal image directly opposed to rock flash.
On the Canadian band’s latest concert tour, the 54-year-old drummer, lyricist and author is in his familiar spot behind bassist Geddy Lee and guitarist Alex Lifeson, once again the magnetic focus for many in the Rush audience.
Nearly unanimous
If you want to start an argument, walk into a room full of rock fans and declare that so-and-so is the best whatever. But the conventional wisdom on Peart — that he is one of rock history’s very best — is about as close to consensus as it gets. It’s a reputation built on a lengthy, rarely flagging career, even as Rush has flown under the mainstream radar since Peart joined in 1974.
The stoic Peart is a drummer’s drummer, a player whose high-end work has made him a legend among fellow musicians. He dominated Modern Drummer magazine’s annual best-of polls so comprehensively during the 1980s that the publication eventually took him off the ballot and placed him on a special honor roll.
“He perhaps doesn’t loom as large in the overall music world, or even in rock,” says senior editor Rick Van Horn. “But within the drumming community, his stature is beyond iconic. No one has had this much impact for so long. He’s influenced so many people and remained at the pinnacle of popularity for 30 years.”
But even for casual listeners who wouldn’t know a paradiddle from a pedal, Peart’s skills are easy to discern. Muscular but fluid, geometric but colorful, his drumming can be akin to aural fireworks, and remains the perennial attraction even on such well-worn staples as the hit “Tom Sawyer.”
There are faster drummers. More intricate drummers. More powerful drummers.
But there is perhaps no other rock player who brings all three qualities to the kit in such abundance — and who has reaped such prestige for it.
Fan tributes galore
On the Internet, long a prime gathering spot for Rush’s self-professed geek audience, extensive fan tributes sit alongside heady discussions of Peart’s lyrics. The video site YouTube teems with homemade homages, amateur drummers filming themselves playing Peart’s challenging parts.
Still, you don’t hear a lot about Peart outside musicians’ circles and Rush audiences. Instrumental chops aren’t always the most valued asset in rock, where style and attitude are often the coin of the realm. It’s the reason Keith Richards, no virtuoso player, can be heralded as one of rock’s guitar greats. Indeed, technical skill can be a rock ’n’ roll liability, as evidenced by the long critical disdain for progressive rock. In a sense, the entire punk genre sprung up to scorn the concept of trying too hard.
Top it off with the fact that Rush just might be the biggest rock band that’s never been treated like a big rock band: no Rolling Stone covers, no Grammy Awards, no paparazzi chases. The group’s mainstream profile has been so low-key, in fact, that Peart’s name is commonly mispronounced, even by avid fans. (It’s peert, not purt.)
Peart has his critics, and their complaints are easy to spot amid the dizzying, knotty discussions that fill certain corners of the Web: His technique is showy, indulgent, too cleanly precise for rock ’n’ roll. Jazz-savvy listeners say he’s overrated at the expense of technically superior players. Much of the criticism is directed at the lyrics he writes for vocalist Geddy Lee, which some read more as highbrow prose than rock poetry.
During the late ’70s, Peart’s expressed affection for political philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand — culminating in the “Anthem”-inspired album “2112” — prompted sniping from rock’s left-leaning establishment.
Over time, though, the vitriol has tailed off, much as it has for Rush itself. If only through attrition, the kudos have crowded out the criticism, as new generations of rock fans and critics have grown up with the band. Today, the threesome’s status as elder rock statesmen has granted them a kind of collegial respect not always apparent in the past.