Saturday 11 January 2020

RIP Neil Peart


4 comments:

  1. This is such a terrible loss. So many people loved Rush and Neil Peart, drawing inspiration not just from their music, but from the way they approached it too. Listen to "Headlong Flight" from their final album ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcFGrWjOX0E ), marvel at the skill, pace, confidence, excitement and pure energy of the piece, then remind yourself that they were 60 when they made that record. Quite incredible. I saw them play many times over 35 years, and they just got better every time.
    In August 1979, during the very early days of my attempts to teach myself guitar, I walked into Spillers Records in Cardiff and bought 2112, having never heard a note by Rush. Five minutes into Side 1 my life was changed forever. Rush's music has been a touchstone of my musical life and there are elements of it in every note I play, simply because learning to play their songs by ear was a key element of my development as a guitarist. Over the years my playing improved a lot, and I still do a lot of work as a pit musician. I took my son to see them in 2012, and he is now on his way to being a professional percussionist, studying in Boston. I have so many reasons to be grateful for Rush's body of work.
    I find it desperately sad that, after the crushing heartbreak he endured in the 1990s, this final, cruel illness has deprived Peart of the chance to spend a long, peaceful retirement with his new family. RIP Neil Peart, great human being, peerless drummer...

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  2. Quite a loss. I remember my first time listening to "Tom Sawyer" in high school; it made an immediate and indelible impression. I was (and remain) in awe of the drama of it all - the way it unfolds - unpredictable, but still somehow hypnotic.

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  3. Nice posts, both. The Best of Rush has been on my running mix for most of the last year or so and I've really developed an appreciation and affection for the group.

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  4. Even beyond the music and drumming, his books and writing were just as much of an inspiration for me.

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