![]() ![]() He’s survived by Carrie Peart and their 10-year-old daughter. They’d been married for more than 20 years. In a new interview, Rush members Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson opened up about the death of drummer Neil Peart and the circumstances surrounding the band prior to his passing in January 2020. Neil’s first his first partner, Jacqueline Peart, with whom he had a common-law marriage, died from cancer in 1998. Rush was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013. Geddy and Alex say if fans want to honor their “soul brother and bandmate” in some way … please donate to a cancer charity in his name. The following year they announced the band was done touring … not only because of Neil’s health, but Alex was also battling arthritis. Sadly, he announced his retirement from the band in 2015 - he’d been battling chronic pain related to tendinitis. If you, or your parents, were a drummer growing up in the 70s or 80s… you know about the endless hours amateurs spent trying to play like Neil. All 3 men were known as virtuoso musicians and Neil’s solo’s are legendary … in particular his drumming on iconic songs like “Tom Sawyer.” His influence on today’s rock musicians can’t be overstated. The Canadian rock trio of Rush formed in 1968, but Neil didn’t join his bandmates - bassist Geddy Lee and guitarist Alex Lifeson - until 1974. The family says he’d been diagnosed with brain cancer 3 years ago, but hadn’t announced it to Rush’s legion of fans around the world. (For all of his efforts and mastery, there were some areas even Neil Peart couldn’t conquer: “To be honest, I am not sure that Neil ever fully ‘got’ the jazz high-hat thing,” Peter Erskine, who took over as Peart’s teacher in the 2000s, wrote affectionately.Neil Peart from the band Rush - one of the greatest drummers in rock history - died Tuesday after battling cancer … according to his family. He was convinced that years of playing along with sequencers for the more synth-y songs in Rush’s Eighties catalog had stiffened his drumming, and he wanted to loosen back up. “What is a master but a master student?” Peart told Rolling Stone in 2012. In the year of his 42nd birthday, while he was already widely considered to be the greatest rock drummer alive, Peart sought out Gruber and started taking drum lessons. Peart noticed one of the players, Steve Smith, had improved strikingly since the last time he had seen him, and learned that he studied with the jazz guru Freddie Gruber. In May 1994, at the Power Station recording studio in New York, Peart gathered together great rock and jazz drummers, from Steve Gadd to Matt Sorum to Max Roach, for a tribute album he was producing for the great swing drummer Buddy Rich. Despite ending his formal education at age 17, he never stopped working toward a lifelong goal of reading “every great book ever written.” He tended to use friends’ birthdays as an excuse to send “a whole fucking story about his own life,” as Rush singer-bassist Geddy Lee puts it, with a laugh. Peart took constant notes, kept journals, sent emails that were more like Victorian-era correspondence, wrote pieces for drum magazines, and posted essays and book reviews on his website. But he was also the self-educated intellect behind Rush’s singularly cerebral and philosophical lyrics, and the author of numerous books, specializing in memoir intertwined with motorcycle travelogues, all of it rendered in luminous detail. His forearms bulged with muscle his huge hands were calloused. While Peart was a prolific reader who used his tour downtime to “fill the gaps in his education,” what struck me most was the student mindset he brought to the drums, despite being widely recognized as a virtuoso.īefore band rehearsals for Rush tours, he’d practice on his own for weeks to ensure he could replicate his parts. A year ago, Peart died from glioblastoma, the same form of brain cancer that took another important Canadian musician, Gord Downie. ![]() (Please don’t me.) In reading Brian Hiatt‘s moving Rolling Stone retrospective in which family, friends, and bandmates remember the late Neil Peart, Rush’s drummer, I learned a lot that deepened my respect for the band, and for Peart in particular. The band Rush has a huge fan base at home in Canada and around the world, but despite having a big appreciation for their musicianship, I’ve never counted myself among them. Jones was soon replaced by Geddy Lee, and, in 1974, after the release of the groups debut album, Rutsey left and was replaced by Neil Peart (pronounced /prt.
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