Introduction
A Voice for an Entire Generation
Fittingly and with no small sense of justice, the novel Clockwork Angels—based on the Rush album of the same name—became a New York Times bestseller on September 12, 2012, Neil Ellwood Peart’s sixtieth birthday. His close friend and co-author, science-fiction writer Kevin J. Anderson, had the pleasure of informing the Canadian drummer and man of letters of their achievement in his annual birthday greetings.
The success of Clockwork Angels is not limited merely to the sales of the novel. The story originated in Peart’s mind over a considerable period of time, with parts of it appearing in song form in 2010 as two singles, each performed on the 2011 Time Machine Tour. The full-length Rush album Clockwork Angels was released in the first half of June 2012. It was the nineteenth studio album of original material made by the progressive rock trio. The band toured extensively throughout North America and Europe to support the album, and a live version of the tour, simply entitled Clockwork Angels: Tour came out on November 19, 2013. On that tour, the band played the entire album, complete with an elaborate stage, lighting, and set pieces, all serving to tell a better story. Rush had even hired a string ensemble to play with them. On Rush’s most recent tour, R40 (summer 2015), the band continued to support the album, beginning the first set with three songs from Clockwork Angels.
That a novel appeared in the wake of a rock album is relatively exceptional. Most albums remain albums, though a few, such as Pink Floyd’s The Wall, have become movies. Bands such as Coheed and Cambria have released novels as well as comics to accompany their immense multi-album space opera, but they remain a cult band, at best. Through Peart’s co-author and close friend Anderson, the progressive metal band Roswell Six has released albums based on two of Anderson’s novels in his Terra Incognita series.2
Clockwork Angels, though, has now appeared in the public eye as an album, a novel, an audiobook, a series of comic books, and a graphic novel. Even more impressively, one can purchase the audiobook in a variety of formats, including one that comes in a box designed to look like a clock tower (of which the clock actually functions). Peart and Anderson have already penned a sequel, Clockwork Lives3. The authors are understandably quite proud of the new book and are eagerly waiting to see the reaction of the public. They have released one part of it, The Bookseller’s Tale4.
Working on the novel was fantastic for me. We just finished the graphic novel of it with the comic book publisher called BOOM! Kevin and I didn’t want to leave the universe and he suggested we carry on with a lot of the lesser characters from the novel and flesh out their stories. The next one will be called Clockwork Lives. I’m not done with that project. I think it could be an opera in the classic sense; that would be fantastic.5
While no plans for a movie version yet exist, the story would certainly make an epic theater release or a long and involved series for television. The Clockwork universe is rich and diverse, full of possibilities, full of creativity, and full of potential.
Just like Peart himself.
Indeed, the Clockwork universe might very well be the best allegory possible for the life, intellect, and soul of Neil Ellwood Peart. He possesses immense talent. He is also a moving target, never satisfied with second best. His art—whether in lyrics, drumming, or prose—consistently builds upon the past, always improving. He is in the fullest sense an individual, but he also almost always works in small communities—whether with Lee and Lifeson or with Anderson or with his motorcycling companions.
And, while Peart has no problem acknowledging his successes of the past, he would never be content living there.
The past definitely has its place: behind me! But seriously, the only “stance” I have ever taken against the past is to say that now is better than then, and just as I dislike all delusions, I dislike nostalgia, which is just dressing up the past in sentimentality. (A quality, as Paul Theroux pointed out in The Happy Isles of Oceania, which is too often displayed by bullies and boors.) Anybody whose life actually used to be good and now is bad, and they only expect it to get worse, well, they have my sympathy, for there’s obviously something seriously wrong.6
When asked what tunes Rush might play on their 1996—1997 Test for Echo tour, he admitted that many of the band’s older songs made him squirm. “Do you want to see your kindergarten paintings hanging on the refrigerator?” he asked, only slightly in jest. “That’s tough, to know that things you did 23, 24 years ago are still out there in front of people. Of course, it’s embarrassing.”7
Conversely, he feels great about Clockwork Angels. “It also seems natural that we always feel strongest about our newest music—like the soon-to-be released Clockwork Angels album. Yet people will keep asking me, ‘What is your favorite Rush album?’ How terrible it would be if you had to answer with anything but your most recent work.”8 And, perhaps to confirm just how highly Peart thinks of Rush’s nineteenth studio album, he has recently (as of this writing) claimed he would soon be retiring from being a full-time member of the band, hoping to spend more time with wife and daughter. He also suffers from chronic tendonitis, which will probably only worsen as Peart continues into his 60s.9
As with anyone, one hopes, Peart continues to progress in terms of interests, knowledge, wisdom, and skill. In late 2014, he told the Huffington Post in late 2014.
I’m learning all the time. I’m evolving all the time as a human being. I’m getting better, I hope, in all of the important ways. So if I were less in the past it would be sad. It’s like when people ask me my favorite record, my favorite Rush album. How horrible it would be if I had to say something from thirty years ago. How embarrassing, right? Well I did something good thirty years ago but it’s been pretty much downhill since. No, no! I couldn’t live with that!10
This is not a new attitude for Peart. In a 1992 conversation hosted by the online site The National Midnight Star, he responded to a question about the source of inspiration for the “Fountain of Lamneth” on Caress of Steel: “Oh get off here. It’s 1975, it’s meaningless.”11 While Peart probably responded somewhat tongue-in-cheek, there’s certainly a powerful element of truth in what he said.
Most men in the United States and Canada—especially those between the ages of 35 and 70 (as of 2015)—know something about Peart. This is not to suggest that women do not like Rush, but it has been a running joke since the first concerts in the 1970s, that Rush primarily attracts men, though this has changed considerably over the past decade or so. In his book, Far and Away, Peart commented:
In a somewhat lighter vein, here’s a bit of advice that Alex, Geddy, and I were joking about during an intermission one night, and agreed ought to be passed along: Guys, if your girlfriend hates Rush, don’t bring her to the show. And if you absolutely have to bring her, buy her earplugs. At two of those British venues we looked out all night at a scowling female, front-row center, each with her fingers in her ears for the whole show. Hardly inspiring, for them or us!12
Regardless, Peart is known first and foremost as the drummer and lyricist for Rush, having been a part of the band continuously since the second half of 1974. Depending on his age and from what part of the US or Canada he hails, a man will remember and feel nostalgia for “Fly by Night,” “Closer to the Heart,” “The Spirit of Radio,” “Tom Sawyer,” and “Subdivisions.” These songs played in constant rotation throughout the late 1970s and 1980s on rock and AOR [Album Oriented Rock] stations across North America, especially in the area defined as the “Midwest.” From Cleveland to Detroit, to Chicago, to Minneapolis/St. Paul, to Omaha and Lincoln, to Kansas City and Wichita, to Tulsa and Oklahoma City, and to every major city in Texas, Rush provided the soundtrack for high schoolers from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s. And perhaps even more importantly, as Rush grew, their fan base grew with them.
From the lowest common denominator of knowledge among American and Canadian middle-aged men, the understanding of Peart, his abilities, and his ideas only rises, often to exponential proportions. Those who love Peart do so with a fervor generally reserved only for professionals in major league sports.
Descriptive terms arise readily when one thinks of Peart: authentic, professional, determined, tenacious, talented, intelligent, ingenious, adventurous, precise, perfectionistic, athletic, mischievous. He is a father, husband, drummer, writer, motorcyclist, hiker, explorer, dreamer, misfit, bibliophile, philosopher, ethicist, wordsmith, bicyclist, sailor, traveler, teacher, friend, and cultural critic. Ultimately, he is both an individual and an individualist. He may well be one of the most interesting and influential people of the last half century.
That he cherishes his privacy and disdains the spotlight only makes his admirers respect him more. He doesn’t do what he does for any of us, necessarily, and he would certainly never want a single member of his fandom to believe he or she has a claim on any aspect of him. Truly, he is not for rent to any god, government, group, or individual. He does what he does because it’s the right thing to do and because he wants those who follow his work to see that “care has been taken.”
I don’t believe any figure of the last half-century has understood my generation any better than has Peart. It is, of course, nearly impossible to measure or quantify the influence that Peart has wielded over so many over the past four decades. As a member of Rush, Neil Peart has served as the drummer and lyricist since 1974. We could measure album sales, book sales, concert appearances, etc. But in the end, the influence of one person on another is nearly incomprehensible. Unless someone states rather directly that this or that person has shaped him or her, we can only guess, sometimes well and sometimes poorly. We also cannot determine to what extent a person’s words have affected another. What a listener hears, absorbs, and makes his own might not—in any, way, shape, or form—be what the originator intended. It might also not be obvious at any level. This is not a problem unique to Peart. It’s as true for Socrates, Cicero, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Willa Cather as it is for Peart.
When I saw Rush in concert in Auburn Hills, Michigan, in the fall of 2012, the huge crowd did not surprise me. Probably 80—90% male in composition, most of the audience ranged from ages 35 to 65. Many, however, had their sons and even grandsons with them as well. As is typical for a post-1980 Rush crowd, every concert goer was exceedingly polite, friendly, and intensely interested. Though for only four or so hours (arrival until departure), we formed a community of like-minded people, all there to celebrate what Rush had so graciously bequeathed to and upon us for decades. That Rush can still draw thousands upon thousands of fans to their individual concerts after four decades of playing is also astounding. Rush has lasted far longer than most businesses, some corporations, several countries, and even some religions. They’re not playing in some small club in Nevada to a few die-hard fans. They possess a fan base as large and as devotedly loyal as almost any in music history. Critics—especially from establishment magazines in the US and the UK, such as Rolling Stone and New Music Express—have jeered them for years, but Rush as a band has outlasted almost all of the critics. Though Rolling Stone has trashed Rush time and again, the magazine finally seems to have relented in its abuse, making the band its cover story in June 2015.
Over the last forty years, at least as many reviewers, if not more, have praised them as have condemned them. What makes the negative critics so powerful is how much hatred and bitterness they spew at the band, and especially at Peart. First, critics dislike that Peart is his own man and does not pander to them. He never has, and he never will. Second, they hate that Peart comes out of the European tradition of music and writing, thus seemingly antagonistic to the blues and the blues basis of American rock. And third, they believe Peart’s view of the world to be destructive, as it is individualist and libertarian, thus associated with selfishness and social isolation.
Critically, Peart does not speak to the critics, at least not normally. He speaks to his own integrity, to those he respects, and to his fans. Peart never seeks conformity but rather hopes to leaven the best in his listeners and readers. That is, Peart’s excellence speaks to our excellence. He speaks to us.
I first encountered Rush in the detention section of the Liberty Junior High library in Hutchinson, Kansas, in the edge of spring, 1981. John Hinckley was days from shooting the fortieth president of the United States, the North American economy reeked, and my oldest brother was two months from earning his undergraduate degree from the University of Notre Dame. I was thirteen, and I’d done something (I don’t remember what) to earn seventh-grade detention. While there, two fellow detainees introduced me to Moving Pictures. Neil Peart and Rush have been a constant in my life ever since. As I write this, I have just returned from the second show of the R40 tour. My two oldest children and I made the pilgrimage to Lincoln, Nebraska, to see the three play their hearts out. And they did.
Through, across, near, above, and below, I can trace and identify several collections of those words with certainty: the good, the bad, and the in-between. Moving Pictures, Signals, Grace Under Pressure, Hold Your Fire, Presto, Vapor Trails, Snakes and Arrows, Ghost Rider, and Clockwork Angels. Each of these has shaped me, profoundly.
In this book, I examine the words and mind of Neil Peart. While Peart’s words have affected me uniquely, I am certainly not unique in being affected. Indeed, by writing this book, I believe I speak for at least one generation of North American males and, more likely, for several.
—Brad Birzer, Longmont, Colorado
June 1, 2015
In this book, I reference Rush albums according to genre and intent, but always chronologically. I believe that one can trace a continuity and a true progression from 1974 to 2015. In particular, I consider the Rush that emerged after Peart’s twin tragedies of 1997 and 1998 to be a fulfillment of the band’s potential, not a break from it.
I explain the following groupings throughout the course of the book.
Rush 1.0
Rush 2.0
Rush 2.1
Rush 2.2
Rush 2.3
Rush 3.0
2 Kevin J. Anderson, The Edge of the World (New York: Orbit, 2010); and Kevin J. Anderson, The Map of All Things (New York: Orbit, 2010). The corresponding Roswell Six albums are Beyond the Horizon and A Line in the Sand. Each also featured Anderson and his wife, Rebecca Moesta, as co-lyricists. Anderson dedicated The Edge of the World to Peart: “A friend for nearly twenty years, and his music has given me tremendous inspiration for much longer than that. Without those lyrics triggering a cascade of ideas, many of my stories would never have been conceived.”
3 Kevin J. Anderson and Neil Peart, Clockwork Lives (forthcoming, ECW, 2015).
4 Kevin J. Anderson and Neil Peart, “The Bookseller’s Tale,” Kindle Edition (ECW: WordFire and Neil Peart, 2015).
5 Peart quoted in Matt Scannell, “New World Man,” Prog 52 (March 1, 2015), 37.
6 Steve Streeter, “Life on Paper!” A Show of Fans 17 (Summer 1997).
7 Brian McCollum, “Look Back?” Philadelphia Inquirer (November 6, 1996), pg. E4.
8 Peart, Far and Near, 92.
9Martin Kielty, “Peart Pain is Part of Rush Road Retirement,” Classic Rock (April 29, 2015), http://classicrock.teamrock.com/news/2015-04-29/rush-neil-peart-tendonitis-tour-retirement.
10“Far and Near: An Interview with Neil Peart,” Huffington Post (huffingtonpost.com), October, 9, 2014.
11Frank Lancaster, “An Interview with Neil Peart,” National Midnight Star (April 23, 1992).
12Peart, Far and Away, 32.