The 1979 album Neil Peart called the soundtrack of his life
It’s almost impossible to narrow down the kind of person Neil Peart was whenever he got off the stage with Rush.
Most rock stars would revel in the idea of having millions of fans, but the fact that Peart was always out the door right after the last note of the concert ended was a clear indication that he didn’t want to do any meet-and-greets with fans or anything. It was nothing personal against his fanbase, but his record collection may have done a better job at articulating how he felt.
Then again, it’s hard to really find insights into Peart’s head when looking at his collection of Who records. He wasn’t looking to be the next lunatic behind the drum kit like Keith Moon was, but the least he could do was make music that was capable of standing alongside some of the greatest rock and roll songs of all time, whether that meant making that one lyric work perfectly or the drum fill to end all drum fills.
If anything, the one lyric in ‘Limelight’ really says it all for Peart’s mentality: ‘I can’t pretend a stranger is a long-awaited friend’. Some celebrities might be comfortable in the spotlight and engaging with fans, but for someone who was already a bit of a loner before he had even become famous, the fact that thousands of cameras would be on him during his lifetime wasn’t exactly a practice he was comfortable with.
And while Peart was dealing with that kind of fame one record at a time, Roger Waters finally managed to put words to what he had done. Pink Floyd had already faced a similar problem when working on their masterpieces after Syd Barrett left, and when Waters decided to make The Wall as a commentary on their own fame, it was like Peart had an album that seemed to be written just for him.
Chances are he probably could have done without some of the fascist imagery and making the main character out to be a ruthless dictator that goes out committing crimes, but the idea of separation from everyone else really hit home with him, saying, “I wrote to him years ago when I heard about the Wall performance in Berlin and just expressed the fact that it had been my autobiography as well. But you can’t survive with those kinds of feelings. He had to change his feelings; I had to change my environment over the years. So between bicycling and motorcycling, it keeps me out of that bubble and keeps me engaged with real life.”
And he’s not exaggerating about motorcycling, either. He needed to see the world up close whenever he travelled, and while other people would have gladly left the travelling to their handlers, the fact that Peart managed to drive all across North America as a way to decompress after his wife and daughter passed away was a testament to how much the open road brought him a sense of calm.
That kind of escapism is also half the reason why some celebrities need to end up taking a break from the hustle and bustle of everything. Not everyone is cut out to be themselves every time they get in front of a camera, and while some people are more open about their struggles, it’s no secret why some people need to find time to go into other pursuits instead of being in the spotlight every single day.
So while Peart could have been looked at as a loner who didn’t want anything to do with his audience, it’s a bit more layered than that. He was more than happy to have made the best material that he could for Rush, but he wasn’t going to sacrifice his own mental well-being by trying to please everybody. He was still a human being at the end of the day, and every Rush fan came to respect that up until his passing.
