The one Rush song Neil Peart never got tired of playing: “It’s always difficult to play right”
It’s impossible to nail down what Rush pulled together whenever they approached one of their songs.
Although it might be a headache trying to parse Alex Lifeson’s approach to the guitar or Geddy Lee’s manic bass playing, reaching the level of Neil Peart on the drums takes superhuman endurance behind the drumkit. Though Peart may have reinvented how drums are perceived in the public eye, he still thinks a handful of his drum performances stand out more than others.
Before he had even joined Rush, Peart was known for playing in various bar bands across Canada before getting the call that the band needed a new drummer. While Lee was hesitant about getting him in the band at first, what turned his head was Peart’s ability behind the bass drums, recalling in Beyond the Lighted Stage, “He went behind this small kit, and because he’s quite a tall guy, he just looked huge. Then he started playing these drum rolls with his feet, and it just blew me away.”
He blew most people away. The truth is, across five decades of incredible performances, Peart would quickly assert himself as one of the most technically gifted drummers on the rock circuit. You don’t get the nickname ‘The Professor’ for being a mawkish tom-smasher. No, Peart was accurate and precise during live shows, and it gave Rush an edge.
Playing like he had everything to prove, Peart’s debut with the band Fly By Night brought a layer of sophistication to the group’s sound. Doubling as the group’s new lyricist, Peart also tackled intense topics in his tunes, including how everyone relates to their fellow man and various trips into the world of science fiction.
As the band expanded their horizons, though, Peart started to look beyond the traditional means of progressive music. In the wake of their massive undertaking, Hemispheres, the band had suggested that they move away from the longer pieces, introducing various keyboards on albums like Permanent Waves. Although ‘The Spirit of Radio’ captured the audience’s attention, it wasn’t until Moving Pictures that the band got their first major hits.
Off the strength of songs like ‘Limelight’, the Canadian power trio created a perfect blend of progressive music and pop, which slid in perfectly between the emerging sounds of acts like Genesis and Yes. Although Peart had written far more complicated pieces before and after Pictures, he considered their signature hit a highlight of his career.
Written with lyricist Pye Dubois, ‘Tom Sawyer’ was Peart’s substitute for the classic rock and roll rebel, working outside the norm and refusing to let any god or government warp his mind. While a little bit heavy to take in at once, Peart delivered a clinic on how to play rock drums on the song, culminating in a furious drum break in the middle of the song.
When reflecting on the band’s time in the studio, Peart still had the same affinity for ‘Sawyer’ as the day he first recorded it, saying, “When I look back on those times, I can still say to people that I will never get tired of playing ‘Tom Sawyer’. Because it’s always difficult to play right, and every time I do play it right, I feel good.”
The drummer told CBC of the song’s composition, “That song finds us at a time of such confidence that we were learning to make a song that was only six minutes instead of 12, 15, and use the same standards of arrangement.”
Adding: “The drum is so detailed, but when we go into the middle to the odd time part, it was improvised. I got lost and I punched my way out of it and somehow came back to the one. And that improvisation became a new part…. It’s one of those key parts that I love and it was absolutely a mistake that I just got lucky and got out of.”
Even after the long stretches of prog grandeur, Peart had a lot to learn, eventually working alongside percussionist Freddy Gruber to give fluidity to his signature drumming style. Rush had been a working band for over a decade at that point, but Peart still knew that he could improve his skill every time he got behind the drumkit.
