The Rush song Neil Peart struggled to write: “A difficult technical challenge”
Creativity breeds innovation, as the saying goes, and there haven’t been too many rock outfits as creative as Rush.
Stalwarts of the progressive rock era, Rush were often noted for their unique compositions and seemingly endless musical innovations. In fact, it was only their creativity and penchant for reinvention that meant the Toronto band were able to outlast virtually every other group within the progressive rock scene – both in terms of tenure and influence. However, that is not to say that the band arrived at these creative exploits with ease.
Although the Canadian rock outfit first got together in 1968, in the wake of the counterculture age, it was not until the mid-1970s, after recruiting drummer Neil Peart, that Rush really came together. Throughout their tenure together, Peart was a consistent driving force for musical innovation within the band, and his arrival also signalled the group’s move towards the divisive sound of progressive rock. As opposed to the electronic-led sounds of many contemporary prog-rock outfits, however, Rush were always motivated by out-and-out rock.
Of course, as progressive rock gradually fell out of favour with music audiences, and the distinctive sounds of Rush were at risk of growing stale, the band were faced with the inevitable challenge of diversifying their sound. Embracing new influences of electronica and keyboards, which produced some admirable – if controversial – works throughout the 1980s. Ultimately, though, the band were always going to return to hard rock-inspired prog, as was evidenced by their 1993 record Counterparts.
Although the 1990s era of Rush saw the group revert back to their initial hard rock sound, Counterparts was not without its difficulties. Peart, in particular, struggled with the composition of lyrics for the record, even during the band’s intensive writing sessions at Chalet Studios in Ontario. Seemingly, it was the album’s penultimate track, ‘Cold Fire’ that caused the drummer the most issues.
Speaking to Network Magazine around the time of the album’s initial release, Peart reflected on the writing of the song, sharing, “In ‘Cold Fire’ I have the woman speaking to the man, and she’s smarter than he is. It was a difficult technical challenge lyrically, but those are the kind of things that now, after all these years, you start to feel you have the craft to take on.”
Peart is widely noted as the group’s technical wizard. Called ‘The Professor’ by fellow percussionists, Peart’s reputation as one of the most precise rock drummers of all time has rarely been in contention. Hitting complex rhythms like inhaling and exhaling, Peart made difficult timings and patterns seem like child’s play. But what did seem to distract him was the complexity of love. The drummer also added, “I don’t mind writing about love now, where I would have avoided that in the previous years just because of the inability to get beyond clichés.”
In contrast to Peart’s description of the song, ‘Cold Fire’ is among Rush’s least complex compositions. A fairly standard hard rock track, the kind which audiences had come to expect from Rush, you would be forgiven for thinking that the Toronto band had previously taken on much more challenging tasks. It seems bizarre that the words ‘technical challenge’ even have a place in the vocabulary of Neil Peart, particularly given his awe-inspiring skill behind a drum kit.
To be fair to Peart, playing the drums is very different from composing lyrics, particularly if those lyrics are awash with a kind of romanticism that does not necessarily fit within Rush’s discography. Peart’s place as the band’s lyricist means he has had to attack such subjects with veractiy, and usually does so with grace and elegance, but it would seem that this track stumed him, at least for a little while.
Nevertheless, ‘Cold Fire’, along with the rest of the Counterparts album, was an incredible success upon its initial release, helping to reestablish Rush as leading figures within the abrasive world of hard rock.
