The genre Neil Peart actively avoided: “I don’t understand”
Rush fans, much like many other fans of progressive rock, are an obsessive bunch, and while hearing them talk about their favourite band may feel exhausting to some, it’s actually fascinating to listen to someone who can wax lyrical about a topic in such vivid detail.
It’s not as though they’re an unusual band to start following and finding yourself becoming obsessed with, as they were wildly successful and popular for a significant period of time in the 1970s and ‘80s, accruing many fans around the world, far from their native Toronto. For a progressive rock band, a genre that rarely ever received regular radio coverage due to the inaccessibility of the music and lengthy song structures, their fame is rather incredible.
But Rush fans seem to take things to another level, going as far as travelling to different countries in order to ensure that they’re able to snag a chance to see them live in concert, and believe me, I know those who have done this. Demand for Rush to reform in 2026 with a new lineup, replacing drummer Neil Peart, was coming from the most far-flung locations across the globe, and their decision to honour this has done down a treat with new generations of fans that they’ve continued to rack up over the years.
However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that their fanbase are exclusive, and while fans of theirs may well choose to gravitate towards other prog bands, there’s a case to be made for the fact that they could slip into hard rock and heavy metal from time to time, managing to win over an audience from these respective camps as well.
The fact that Alex Lifeson played a handful of crunching riffs probably helped that, and the intensity of the way Geddy Lee plays bass and sings in a dramatic style is also a major turn on, but it was arguably the bombastic drumming style of Peart that would have the most crossover potential.
However, Peart himself wasn’t as invested in what these scenes had to offer, and made that expressly clear during an interview with UK-based zine Feedback in 1983, when the band were touring across Europe in support of their Signals album from the year before.
When the interviewer acknowledged that many attendees of their show at Wembley Stadium in London could reasonably have been mistaken for ‘headbangers’, noting how they would have looked more the part at an AC/DC, Scorpions or Iron Maiden concert, Peart was quick to assert that he felt there was little commonality between the two parties.
“I don’t understand the association because,” he argued. “That kind of music is just as much contrived as any pop song on BBC Radio 1. It’s exactly as carefully contrived to appeal to those kind of ‘denim and leather’ people. So if they think that they’re getting something that’s counter-culture, and something that’s sincere and rebellious, they’re being fooled, you know, and that doesn’t make me happy.”
It’s perhaps a little dismissive of a perspective for Peart to have, but if he was bothered about the integrity of their fanbase and gatekeeping it so all of the true Rush anoraks were the only ones who could get in, it’s not like they’d be losing a significant portion of their audience.
