‘Roll the Bones’: the Rush album Neil Peart struggled to write
Everyone knows that Neil Peart was one of the best drummers rock has ever seen. Donning the traditional Cameroonian Kufi and surrounding himself with one of the most extensive kits known to man, he delivered an array of dexterous moments revered by musicians of all genres, who are united in their respect for the Canadian’s sheer talent and force.
Peart is a fascinating player because he carried on the lineage of players that Ginger Baker and John Bonham instituted in the 1960s. Fusing unrivalled technical nouse and musicality with hard rock fire, just like the two pioneers that opened the gates for him, he instilled genuine character into an instrument that had seldom seen great players outside the jazz and big band realms.
Much has been written about Peart’s impact as a drummer, and because of his significance in this area, another critical aspect of his work is often overlooked by those who aren’t his ardent acolytes. A lifelong bookworm, Peart was not only the most conceptually aware musician of his time but also an accomplished wordsmith. His insatiable appetite for books in all their forms helped him become Rush’s primary lyricist.
He might have earned a degree of notoriety when drawing upon the work of the controversial Ayn Rand’s Anthem for the sprawling epic ‘2112’, but most of the time, Peart’s words were more fantastical. Many of his most esteemed lyrical palettes reinforced the group’s out-there music and allowed their legions of neckbearded fans in Dungeons and Dragons T-shirts to delve into their mind’s eye and escape the trappings of the world dominated by Ronald Reagan, Mrs Thatcher, and the gross-out Alphaness of hair metal acts.
It’s safe to say that without Peart’s words, Rush wouldn’t have carved out such a niche for themselves. Yet, despite his many triumphs, there were times when he was really tested in bringing his expansive visions to life. Perhaps most surprisingly, is that 1991’s masterpiece, Roll the Bones, confirmed that the trio had fully returned from their strange experiments with synthesiser-heavy sounds and that 1989’s Presto was not just a fleeting step back in the right direction.
Such a success was not achieved without great struggle for Peart, though. Despite the recording sessions being incredibly enjoyable, finishing the words was a different matter. He explained this when talking to Marc Allan in 1994 (via The Tapes Archives), not long after the ensuing record, Counterparts arrived. It was a matter of making what he deemed a bleak philosophical statement – that chance dictates all our lives – into a humanly resonant stance. He had to turn abstraction into reality.
He said: “I had a real problem in Roll the Bones, our previous record, cause I was dealing with the idea of chance, and I was saying, and putting forth the idea that chance has an enormous impact on our lives just in the sense of contingency, but it’s a repellent idea. It’s cold, so I had to work really hard to warm it up with imagery, and specific human examples and so on. And to make it not seem hopeless to make it, yes, there are these odds, but we couldn’t manipulate the odds, and we can roll the dice over again.”
Of course, Peart succeeded, and nowhere better is this typified than the title track. “Why are we here? / Because we’re here / Roll the bones,” frontman Geddy Lee sings. With such a line, Peart implores us to take a chance on life and not waste a moment, as we don’t know when it will end. It might have taken him a while to figure it out, but surrounding such a decree with very human aspects qualifies the song and album as one of his best efforts.
