The 1996 tour that almost killed Rush for years: “Everything ended”
By the start of the 1990s, Rush seemed to be the one band that could outlast virtually every single trend that came their way.
They were never cool to begin with, and even if they stuck to making the music that they wanted for the rest of time, there was always going to be that firm base of fans that clung onto every record that they ever made in the same way that Deadheads reacted to Grateful Dead bootlegs. But even if they lived to tour around the world for as long as they could, there was one tour that almost became the last notes that the band ever played in a live setting.
Then again, it’s not like any member of the band wanted the dream to be over by any stretch. The whole point of their job was about playing their music to the people whenever they could, and even if they didn’t have that much room to cut corners, Neil Peart always felt that it was a thrill playing tunes like ‘Tom Sawyer’ because of how much endurance and stamina it takes for him to play the whole thing straight through.
But when they got off tour for Test For Echo, the goal was for everyone to recuperate for a little bit. They had been on tour for the better part of a year at that point, and since Peart’s daughter was about to go to college, he could finally get some downtime to be a father. Or at least, that’s what was supposed to happen. Instead, Peart was dealt with some of the worst months of his life right after the tour ended.
When talking about that time, Alex Lifeson remembered getting the call about Peart’s daughter passing away out of the blue, saying, “One of the girls in our office told me what had happened. Neil’s daughter was in a terrible car accident and lost her life. Everything about the band ended in that moment. It wasn’t something that you even thought about thinking about.” That was already a body blow, but when Neil’s wife got cancer a few months later, Peart felt that he could hardly go on living in his old neighbourhood.
So for the next few years, Peart spent his time travelling around North America and driving wherever the road took him. Even though Geddy Lee understood that he needed to work out his problems, there was still the thought of him losing his best friend in the back of his mind, saying, “After [his wife] passed away he was lost. So he just got on his motorcycle and drove. Fuck, we were so worried about him, but he was always at arm’s length.” Once he finally stopped riding through the countryside, though, it was going to be a slow journey before Peart was ready to play the drums again.
There was a lot of practice that he needed to go through all over again to get everything sounding right, and while Vapor Trails did suffer from being a little too loud, it felt like he was reborn in a sense. ‘One Little Victory’ was practically a rallying cry for the entire band, and during those first few shows back together, once again, even Peart felt that the moment wasn’t lost on any of them.
It was going to take a miracle for him to be ready to play drums again, but he felt that if he could have pulled that off, they could do anything, saying, “We knew what we were doing and I say to [our manager] Ray afterwards [that] it would have been a shame if that never happened again.” And while Peart is no longer with Rush to play any of those iconic songs, the fact that he stuck around for as long as he did was out of pure determination to make the best possible music that he could.
Because no matter what tragedies came their way, all of them were put on this Earth to make music, and while it seemed impossible to find any joy during those rough times, the music is what helped put them back together. They were still one of the greatest trios of all time, and it was up to them to prove to everyone why they were considered one of the greatest.
