RIP Neil Peart

Only Rush song I like is this, a lot, and he's featured heavily in the video.

 

Very sad to hear. I liked Rush over the years, though I wasn't a fanatic about it. However, I would just marvel at the drum playing in their songs when I would listen, and I'm not even a musician.
Not surprised that few people knew he was fighting cancer. He was always an extremely private person.
I saw the band's bio "Beyond the Lighted Stage," and I think I've posted on here before my favorite story from that film. They said that before joining Rush, Peart was content to leave his music dreams behind and start working with his Dad at a farm-equipment parts dealership. When he had the chance to join Rush, his dad sat him down and told him he needed to see his musical aspirations through and that he should take this opportunity, and the rest is history. So, RIP Neil and a salute to Glen Peart for letting us enjoy his son's talent.

 

Farm ... equipment ... parts ... dealership ...

The difference between that and musical adoration in perpetuity is a father who fathered his son.

I'm 48. My dad is 78. Not once in our life together has he given me fatherly advice.

Farm equipment parts dealership.

 

Damn. I saw them twice, on the Power Windows and Hold Your Fire tours.

When I was in sixth grade, some of my latchkey friends rode their bikes from St. Charles to St. Louis to see Rush on the Moving Pictures tour. I was not so bold.

In their peak, Rush put out Permanent Waves, Moving Pictures and Signals in a two-year period. And in addition to being the gold standard for drumming, Peart also wrote most of the band's lyrics.

 

I was an awkward, somewhat lonely teenager in the 80s. I was shuttling between divorced parents' homes in two different parts of the country not feeling like I really fit in either place. I had interests that either classmates didn't share or if they did, they weren't interested the same way I was. And I didn't have a whole hell of a lot of social confidence. Pretty much the caricature of a Rush fan (hell the song "Subdivisions," which came out when I was 12, could have been about me). Needless to say Rush's music and Neil Peart's lyrics in particular really spoke to me and gave me a sense of escape and empowerment and provided an empathy that helped me through some challenging years. By the end of senior year I'd grown into myself and was in a much better place, but I've remained a huge Rush fan and I appreciate everything Neil gave us. Saw them at least a half-dozen times but I wish I could have seen them just once more.

 

So sad. I saw Rush twice and he was the best drummer I’ve ever seen. Thinking of 2112 right now.

 

Honestly, he was so great, the songs can never really be played again live. No one can match him.

It’s like Bruce trying to perform Jungleland without the Big Man, it will never be the same.

 

Great drummer, great lyricist, and intensely private person who seemed embarrassed to be considered a "rock star."

I've enjoyed Rush music on records/tapes/CDs for 35 years, and was fortunate enough to see them live five times. Neil's lyrics, which always went way beyond the standard boy-girl topics and basic rhyming structure, added so much to Alex and Geddy's music.

RIP to one of the greatest drummers in rock.

 

WOW.

Neil would find a way to keep this under the radar ... and obviously did to the end. And beyond.

Saw Rush numerous times live. And he came all the way back from an ugly turnaround where his teenage daughter died in a car crash and his wife succumbed to cancer.

This hurts. One of the best drummers ever. One of the most thoughtful lyricists. One of the quietest to try to get all that done. That Geddy and Alex understood that and accommodated it and did what they did for 40-plus years ... just incredible. A gift.

RIP, good sir and Thank You.