The Rush song Neil Peart wrote about “love in a different way”
From 1974’s self-titled debut album to their final effort, 2012’s Clockwork Angels, Rush covered many thematic bases in their time, which included drugs, fantasy and, controversially, the work of Ayn Rand. With most of the lyrics written by drummer Neil Peart, who entered the fold in 1974, he proved integral to the band carving out such a distinctive area for themselves.
Just like Rush’s music, Peart’s lyrics aren’t for everybody, but even music fans dismissive of their work could not argue that the words weren’t a vital element of their sound, given that they add a more tangible feel to the music and were perfect to its often rather out-there nature.
The range of themes that Peart covered in his time is impressive. Whether it be referencing the fictional Mark Twain character Tom Sawyer, the change of the radio format on ‘The Spirit of the Radio’, or getting more philosophical and imploring everyone to take a chance in life on ‘Roll the Bones’, it’s arguably that the drummer has the most extensive collection of lyrical subjects in rock music.
From time to time, Peart was also unafraid to address love. At first, this might seem a little strange for a band so inextricable from the prog genre, an environment more concerned with high fantasy than anything else. However, this was Rush, and they were always masters of their own destiny. It is for this reason that lyrically and musically, they covered extensive ground in their time.
According to Peart on the Roll the Bones Radio Special for the hit 1991 album Roll the Bones, one of the album tracks ‘Ghost of a Chance’ was actually a love song. Yet, according to the drummer, it was a chance for him to write about “love in a different way”, as he was generally reluctant to explore romance and its haphazard nature.
He explained: “I’ve always shied away from love songs and even mentioning the word in songs because it’s so much cliché, and until I thought that I’d found a new way to approach it, or a new nuance of it to express, I was not going to write one of those kind of songs”.
Continuing, he added: “‘Ghost of a Chance’ fit right in with my overall theme of randomness and contingency and so on, but at the same time it was a chance for me to write about love in a different way; of saying, ‘Here are all these things that we go through in life and the people we meet, it’s all by chance. And the corners we turn and the places we go and the people we meet there.'”
Listen to ‘Ghost of a Chance’ below.
