The 2012 Rush song that reminds Geddy Lee of Neil Peart: “Really struck a chord with me”
The death of Neil Peart in 2020 is a loss that is still being felt incredibly strongly today in the Rush community, with everything that the band continues to do being in his memory.
When Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee, after countless afternoons noodling around on their instruments together in garages, decided to get the band back together, they knew that Peart could not be replaced. After seeking approval from Peart’s family, they began quietly looking for a successor, and finally landed on Anika Nilles, who is on a different end of the drumming spectrum.
They needed to go for somebody with a distinct style from their former member, who was the heartbeat of the band, rather than simply a poor imitator.
Their current tour is a way for Rush to travel the world and celebrate Peart on a nightly basis from city to city with their army of fans. Even though he’s not there to see it, chances are that he’s looking down with a giant smile.
Sadly, they never got to bow out as Lee had envisaged, retiring in 2015 at Peart’s wishes. Due to his health struggles that ensued shortly after the tour, Peart was proven right to prioritise his family over Rush, and had those final years surrounded by those that meant the most to him.
As much as they didn’t get the chance to have a grand farewell with Peart in tow, the songs that he wrote live on for the band live on as a reminder of his giant talent.
For Lee, their final album, 2012’s Clockwork Angels, remains poignant for a litany of reasons, namely because it was the last time he worked with Peart in the studio. The LP, which was recorded over the course of two years, also includes ‘The Garden’, a personal favourite of Lee’s that always makes him think about his old friend.
The track, which closes the album, has grown in importance to Lee following Peart’s passing. Clockwork Angels was a passion project for the drummer, who used the album to create a fictional world, one that sees the protagonist set out to conquer his dreams, concluding on ‘The Garden’, where he realises what truly matters in life.
Although the song isn’t one of Rush’s most well-known tracks, it’s the track that reminds Lee most of Peart.
He explained to Vulture: “‘The Garden’ from Clockwork Angels. It’s because of the nature and almost foreboding atmosphere of that song in terms of what eventually happened with my friend and bandmate. The statement of that song talked so much about where he had found himself in life. Many times I’ve thought about … well, it’s hard for me to listen to ‘The Garden’ without thinking about him unknowingly at the end of his life.”
Lee continued: “I remember Alex and I had been throwing some ideas around in my home studio here in Toronto. He had gone for the day, and I came into the studio the next morning, listened back to some of these little ideas, and started playing on my bass. ‘The Garden’ just came out. I put together the intro with a little bit of a synthesiser part, and it moved so beautifully into the verses. Alex came in the next day, and it also made perfect sense to him.”
The bassist concluded: “The whole experience of making ‘The Garden’ from the beginning through the end was a real joy for us.”
When they kicked off their reunion tour at the Inglewood Forum in California on June 7th, they ensured to play ‘The Garden’ for the first time since 2013, and without Peart by their side.
While introducing the song, the waves of emotion trickled over Lee, as he told the crowd, “Neil wrote a lot of different songs about a lot of different things; this one in particular really struck a chord with me, and I know for many people, this is ‘The Garden’.”
For anybody attending the Rush tour, Peart is unlikely to be too far out of their minds at any point during the show, but do ensure to think of him, just like Lee will be doing, when they play ‘The Garden’.
