“For his health”: John Rutsey, the drummer that drank himself out of Rush
Everyone expects their rock stars to live on the edge whenever they see them in concert. No one pictures the most badass musicians of all time to spend their nights kicking back on the couch, and the more that artists lean into a life of sex, drugs and rock and roll, the more people want to hear about their lavish lifestyles. Although most Rush fans could have really cared less about what they were doing in their spare time off the stage, they were far from clean-living when they first reached the big time.
Before they even had their final lineup, they had already had big dreams of becoming rock stars after listening to bands like Led Zeppelin, so it wasn’t like they weren’t familiar with a life of excess. Compared to their later prog masterpieces, their debut could easily be considered “dumb”, but for a band trying to follow in their idol’s footsteps, ‘Working Man’ captured the feeling that far too many people go through to this day.
But the entire premise for the record was almost entirely discarded if drummer John Rutsey had had his way. He had all of the lyrics for the record finished by the time they hit the studio, but after ripping them up because they weren’t up to his standards, Geddy Lee ended up writing many of the lyrics on the spot as they were recording. And considering the esoteric concepts that Neil Peart would bring to the table, tracks like ‘Need Some Love’ are more than a little bit meatheaded.
Although Rutsey was responsible for the band a lot of their gigs in their early days, he was also slowly starting to fall out of step with his bandmates. He was more into bands like Bad Company and traditional rock and rollers, so whenever Lee or Alex Lifeson came to rehearsal with a strange riff in a different time signature, it wouldn’t be welcomed with open arms like their bluesy licks.
The signs for him leaving were already there, but the real deciding factor came when he started not taking care of himself out on the road. Every member of the band were known to drink more than a little bit to take the edge off, but since Rutsey was secretly battling diabetes, the life of a rockstar was going to put him in jeopardy of becoming a major casualty if he had kept going.
Even in Beyond the Lighted Stage, Rush’s manager Vic Wilson said that Rutsey’s drinking on the road was the main reason why he was let go, saying, “John was not a healthy boy. He had juvenile diabetes. Like any teenager, he liked to drink and whatever else. He was not taking care of himself, so I took Geddy and Alex aside and said, ‘We have to replace John for his health. We can’t put him on that tour or we’ll be bringing him home in a box.’”
While Peart did give the band the benefit of having one of the greatest drummers on Earth in their corner, it’s not like there wasn’t some regret in letting Rutsey go. These guys had been playing together since they weren’t even old enough to drink, so to see one of them walk away would have been like seeing one of your friends from high school slowly walk out of your life.
It may have been a hard decision for everyone to get onboard with, but it did end up being one of the greatest blessings in disguise the band could have asked for. Because if the band continued on and never got Peart behind the drum kit, that would have been a real tragedy for drummers everywhere.
