Chapter 1
A Man of His Words
1974—1979
Born into a middle class family in Ontario, Canada, Neil Peart found his love of the drums at age thirteen. At that point, “Everything disappeared,” he remembers. “I’d done well in school up until that time. I was fairly adjusted socially up until that time.” Once he started drum lessons, however, “I became completely monomania-obsessed all through my teens. Nothing else existed anymore.”13
When Neil Peart joined Rush in 1974, the band had already released one album, the successful self-titled album with its best and most recognizable debut single, “Working Man.” Not wanting to imitate Led Zeppelin too much, Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson had already begun moving toward a much more progressive position musically while touring to support the first album. They still loved Zeppelin, The Who, Cream, Buffalo Springfield, and the Yardbirds, but they were also quite taken with what Yes, Genesis, and King Crimson were accomplishing, especially in the United Kingdom.
It’s worth remembering that though the first two Rush albums appeared only eleven months apart, the first album had been in the works for almost five years by the time it came on the market. In those five years, Lee and Lifeson reached the age of 21—no longer teenagers, but men. It stands to reason that those five years not only shaped them, on a day-to-day level as they matured, but also exposed them to a radically different sound in rock as the music scene rapidly changed during that time.
The band’s second album, Fly by Night—the first written with Peart—reveals a serious maturation of sound and confidence over the first album. While the debut album, Rush, had decent production and good hard, acid-rock-like riffs, it was, lyrically speaking, rather pedestrian. That is, it provided a great sound to accompany drinking beer with friends, driving around the countryside without too many worries, and pumping fists in the air.
The words, though, were far from heady and certainly less than extraordinary. Rush was little more than blues-acid-party-rock music for Midwestern teenagers to enjoy while drinking, smoking, and making out. This represents, as I have decided to label the pre-Peart Rush era, Rush 1.0. The contrast between this album and what Peart would contribute over the next forty years is startling.
Hey, baby, it’s a quarter to eight
I feel I’m in the mood
Hey baby, the hour is late
I feel I’ve got to move
—“In the Mood” 1974
The lyrics of the first album prove as ephemeral as almost anything Foghat or Headeast wrote in that decade. They mean next to nothing, but they can call up wells of nostalgia for those who might have danced, drunk, smoked, or made out to such music as it first appeared on the pop scene. When Rush finished their R40 concert in Lincoln on May 10, 2015, with “Working Man,” the crowd—a mostly middle-aged white male audience—went absolutely wild. While it’s a great song, it simply cannot compare to the complexity of a “Tom Sawyer” or a “Headlong Flight.” Still, “Working Man” captures the imaginations of its listeners, even after forty-one years.
When Peart joined the band in the summer of 1974, Rush 2.0 began and would last until 1997. When Rush re-emerged after the horrific tragedies in Peart’s life with Vapor Trails in 2002, they became the ultimate Rush, Rush 3.0.
While many would agree that Peart is one of the greatest drummers of all time, he might also justly be considered one of the best living essayists in the English language. Peart cherishes the word, in whatever form. This proves equally true in his book and essay writing, his lyrics, and even in his interviews. A writer for the Toronto Star enthused: “Peart’s verbal skills would be the envy of any politician. Grammatically structured sentences tumble from his mouth at a breathless rate without pauses, ums, or hesitations, as if his mouth is in perfect synch with a brain firing on all cylinders.”14 It’s not, however, only his skills at communication. He cherishes the opportunity to make those words incarnate, to give them tangible and physical form.
It occurred to me that there are few activities more enjoyable than making things. When I was young, it was car models, go-karts, then later pop-art mobiles and laughably inept carpentry. A couple of years ago, I ran across a wall-mount “drumstick holder” I had dreamed up in my teens. It had been inspired by my dad’s cue rack by his pool table, but it was a crudely shaped assemblage of gray-painted plywood, with holes drilled by an old brace-and-bit—it looked like it had been crafted by a troglodyte. But still—I had made something. It is stimulating and satisfying to write stories, or play the drums, but most gratifying of all to me is creating a physical object: a book, a CD, a DVD. Of course it remains the content that gives the mere object its value, but many would agree, I hope, that owning such a carefully crafted object is more pleasing than just acquiring the content by whatever means. That urge may sustain the existence of things apart from their content, and that would be good, methinks.15
Peart, however, also longs to communicate with his audience, even if he usually prefers to maintain some distance from its individual members.
Communication is what music is, certainly. And the lyrics, and writing the bio, and basically every aspect of what we do, is essential communication. That it can’t really be two-way, in the sense of communication, but it can be a successful. It takes certainly two people to make it successful. If you’re transmitting an idea, you need a receiver, and for that receiver, you need good media in between. So that’s where the craft comes into it too, of carefully refining that idea, or that thought, or that feeling, so that it communicates to a listener.16
Certainly, Peart and his two bandmates hope to connect with the best and the most intelligent of their audience.
Words can carry different freight for different people, of course, but for those who do have the sensitivity to pay the kind of attention to lyrics I put into them, it’s wonderful to connect that way. To feel that you’re not playing down to anyone. We’ve always had the impression that people are just as smart as we are. If we can figure this stuff out, they can too. … This is really what turned us on this year. Lyrically, it’s always been a reflection of my times and the times I observe.17
He also has no problem directly talking to those he considers equals or betters, whatever their own fields of expertise. That is, Peart maintains a number of sustained, deep friendships. He is not, as some have claimed, anti-social. He distrusts those who admire him because of their own illusions and delusions, those who would project their own hopes and desires upon him. For those who listen to his music, however, Peart presents his case(s) in Socratic fashion.
But it’s certainly true that we think about what we do. Our music is a reflection of our interest. It is made by thinking people for thinking people. We never talk down to our audiences. I presume they are as smart as we are. Anyone who knows us should have the perception that we work hard and enjoy it. We pay attention to the real details. We take care to imprint our set of values on it. The same values that apply to our music extend through our organization.18
Peart adamantly denies the label of preacher, however. Rather, he claims that every thought he presents, he does so as a question, an invitation to enter a long-term conversation. It is, he continues, nothing but a love and honesty of spirit. His own music heroes—such as Roger Waters, Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, Ian Anderson, and Pete Townshend—always “cared about what they do.” At some level, Peart continues, “I sensed what was honest, and I sensed when care had been taken, when someone really meant what they sang.”20
Peart’s lyrics on Fly by Night, though, took Rush to a whole new level of exploration and intellectual respectability. The opening moments reveal a new Rush. In open defiance to the aquarian norms of ’60s rock, Peart offers an “Anthem,” a statement of individualist pride in one’s creation and integrity, accompanied by pounding acidic bass and drums, driving the rhythm to levels and depths well beyond the pop norm of 4/4 time signatures.
Anthem of the heart and anthem of the mind
A funeral dirge for eyes gone blind
We marvel after those who sought
The wonders of the world, wonders of the world
Wonders of the world they wrought
Live for yourself … there’s no one else
More worth living for
Begging hands and bleeding hearts will only cry out for more.
While one might understandably define these lyrics as Social Darwinist, they are an attempt to define the individual—often lost as a part of a community in ’60s lyrics—in a positive, proactive manner. And, while not at the level of a Henry David Thoreau, they show significant depth relative to other lyrics of the day and especially considering this was 22-year old Peart’s first attempt at writing. He would continue the same theme of perseverance in “Something for Nothing” and “Marathon.”
Most of the songs on Fly by Night follow the traditional rock format in terms of length, ranging from just under three minutes to just under seven minutes. One track, though, stands out in terms of structure, lyrics, and length, revealing the future direction of Rush, the bizarrely named “By-Tor and the Snow Dog.” If the opening song revealed Peart’s love of the individualism of nineteenth-century America, this song equally demonstrated his appreciation for the fantastical world of J.R.R. Tolkien. At 8½ minutes and broken into four parts, “By-Tor” tells the story of a demon from hell who attempts to open a portal to the Overworld. The champion of the latter, Snow Dog, defeats By-Tor in open combat, thus saving the world of the living from the twilight realm of the dead.
Fly by Night reveals Peart’s uncanny ability to combine Enlightenment philosophy—admittedly, a century or two after its time and glory—with the fantastic and mythic as understood in the twentieth century. While the opening track expresses a rugged individualism, By-Tor demonstrates that individual bravery can save an entire world as well as bring glory and honor upon the rescuer. These seemingly incompatible themes predominate in many of Peart’s early lyrics.
A mere six months later, Rush released their third LP—the second with Peart—Caress of Steel. In almost every way, Caress serves as a sequel to Fly by Night. But, if Fly by Night was the black sheep of the rock world, Caress was its estranged stoner cousin who only attended family events when someone had unexpectedly passed away. “I think we were pretty high when we made that record,” Lee laments with a snicker, “and it sounds like it to me.”21 Looking back on the time, Lee admits that they had smoked too much hash oil, something the band would soon regret.22 Just as “Anthem” begins with bass and drums in a blistering assault on the ears and an appeal to the ego, “Bastille Day” begins with guitar and bass, drums coming in only seconds behind, the guitar and bass playing an almost acid version of Wagnerian strings. If Anthem celebrated the dignity and integrity of the creative person, “Bastille Day” warned that those who assault the integrity of the individual would find themselves in a violent, untenable situation.
For the young Peart, the individual is natural and innovative, while the collective and its leader corrupt and perverse. With the exception of the novelty rock song, “I Think I’m Going Bald,” Caress is musically far superior to Fly by Night, despite the close ties between the two albums. For better or worse, Rush seems to have progressed so much with this third album that even the progressive rock world was unsure what do with it. Filled with a million ideas, each idea is pregnant, awaiting birth, light, and formation. “Lakeside Park” evokes nostalgia, and the final two tracks, each epic, return Rush firmly to the Tolkienian world of fantasy. Once again, Caress is an American Thoreau walking through Tolkien’s Shire.
At 12½ minutes in length, the final track of side one, “The Necromancer,” finishes the tale of By-Tor. In this incarnation of the story, Prince By-Tor serves the forces of good and light. As Lee recounts it, the band took the story with a grain of salt, believing it rather humorous.23 Still, the band took the music very seriously. According to Lifeson,
We wanted to work in a longer format, with more dynamics, quiet parts, loud parts. We were feeling the progressive movement of the time with Yes, Genesis, King Crimson, bands like that. We were becoming more sophisticated and complex in our arrangements, or at least trying to. We were still really young.24
Narrated in spoken word by Neil Peart, the story sees By-Tor challenge the Necromancer and his wraiths. Interestingly enough, By-Tor emerges in Middle Earth, perhaps to aid in the attack on Sauron. Why By-Tor has embraced the good is unclear, but it probably matters little. Rush expertly tell the story through bass, drums, and guitars. And Peart dedicates the song to TV fabulist, Rod Serling, and it ends with the Latin inscription, Terminat hora diem; terminat auctor opus. As the day ends, so ends the work of the author. The line comes from the grand Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe, in his play “The Jew of Malta,” itself most likely influencing Shakespeare’s Macbeth and certainly influenced by Machiavelli’s The Prince. For Peart, the Latin served as a fitting tribute to Serling and his works of imagination and dark drama.25
The final song, “The Fountain of Lamneth,” another epic at twenty minutes and with six parts, was the most “progressive” song Rush had yet written. Lush, it builds slowly and gently, but always with a steady determination. Rush successfully mixed the staccato of their best rhythms—as in “Anthem” and “Bastille Day”—with their more gentle ballads such as Rivendell from Fly By Night. As a whole, “Fountain” swings from delicate to punctuated, and it is probably the best song Rush had recorded to that point. Three things made it excellent. First, and most importantly, Peart was at his best in terms of lyric writing. As noted several times in this book, Peart loves the story of journeys, whether of his physical being or of his imagination. In this, Peart followed the western tradition of Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Tolkien. Lamneth’s journey is: awakening and imagination, realization that authority adulterates creativity, departure from parents and teachers, ecstasy of freedom, the routine of freedom without creativity, and finally, a reawakening of imagination and spirit as a new journey begins. The second thing that made this song strong was that the music fit the story at every level and helped to tell it, augmenting the words with time signature changes and chord progressions. Third—something even Rush fans often miss—was the ability of Lee to pitch his voice perfectly to the story that Peart wrote. His voice, while perhaps not beautiful, is uniquely full of purpose and truth, especially in “Lamneth.”
In 1975, Lee, Lifeson, and Peart believed they had created a masterpiece with this album, and in fact, they truly had. But their fans, present and future, were not yet ready for such a thing. Rush had advanced and developed too quickly for the genre, and the album failed commercially. In his famous 1942 lectures in Scotland, T.S. Eliot, a man whom Peart admires greatly, explained that the poet always runs the risk of developing more quickly than his audience, something that proved good neither for poet nor listener.
But there is one law of nature more powerful than any of these varying currents, or influences from abroad or from the past: the law that poetry must not stray too far from the ordinary everyday language which we use and hear. Whether poetry is accentual or syllabic, rhymed or rhyme-less, formal or free, it cannot afford to lose its contact with the changing language of common intercourse.26
Without doing violence to Eliot’s meaning, one might even substitute his “varying currents” with “permanent waves.”
Actually, Caress of Steel sold well, but it did so at the same level that the previous album, Fly by Night, had. Their record company, Mercury, had expected much more from the band.
Most critics either ignored Caress or mocked it. Their most important British advocate, Geoff Barton, lamented
I played the latest (and admittedly rather derivative) Rush album “Caress of Steel” in the office the other day, and unfortunately it received howls of derision. Young lead singer/bassist Geddy Lee sounds like Robert Plant and Burke Shelley combined and guitarist Alex Lifeson has his various rip-off offerings to a tee. But they make a pleasing sound and the band’s Tolkien-orientated lyrics are well constructed.27
Unfortunately, Barton failed to elaborate. In what way was Caress derivative, one must ask? It does resemble some of Steve Hackett’s work with Gabriel-era Genesis, but it remains very Lifeson-esque.28 The only part of the entire album that fit into the music scene of 1975 was part five, “Bacchus Plateau.” Tellingly, it is the part of the story that mocks conformity to trends, intentionally sounding like every rock song of that year. Obviously, this not so subtle subtlety was lost on the reviewers. Interestingly, the protagonist wakes up from his conformity by drinking “another goblet from the cask of ’43.” While Peart did not specify, he certainly was referring to Ayn Rand’s best novel, The Fountainhead, published that year. Rand (1905—1982), a Russian-American immigrant, novelist, and philosopher, plays an important role in the life of Peart and Rush, and she will be discussed in more detail momentarily in this book.
David Brown of Record Mirror understood the album best, but failed to review it until a year and a half after its initial release. In February 1977, he wrote:
While it is true they are not the only heavy rock storytellers, they manage to carry it off with a higher degree of conviction than most. In Alex Lifeson they have a guitarist capable of expressing every mood from calm to terror, and while there are, as with his companions, a few clichés (as in the song “I Think I’m Going Bald” with its “Now we’re so involved, so involved with life”), the overall feel is what really counts.29
The band began to feel the weight of its critics on the tour supporting the album, and they began to refer to it as the “Down the Tubes” tour, traveling with Ted Nugent and performing for smaller and smaller audiences. Whatever their own personal feelings, they played their hearts out. As a Canadian program described them:
And yet the critics hate them. Too loud. Too noisy. Not settled. And Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson and Neil Peart keep on moving, keep on turning audiences on, keep on laughing—at the critics, and at themselves. The trio takes music seriously, but they enjoy their life, and it shows on stage, when the music begins. Yes, it is loud, much of it—although, increasingly, Rush is finding that its audience can and does get into the quieter, serious stuff. Yes, Geddy Lee does have a voice like his throat is full of razor blades. Yes, Alex Lifeson’s guitar playing is loud and could remind you of a jackhammer, but it’s also fast and clean and smooth. And, yes, Neil Peart—towel draped around his neck—has to be one of the most powerful drummers rock has turned up yet.30
Granted, the above was a work of promotion and public relations, but it rings true to the history of the band and the integrity of its members.
Musician and artist Hugh Syme created the cover for Caress of Steel. While the production of this cover was his first introduction to Rush, Syme quickly became a vital part of the band, being, for all intents and purposes, the band’s visual spokesman. His packaging, fonts, layouts, and sets were the means by which Rush presented themselves to the public in any medium beyond sound. Syme remains the main graphic artist and designer for the band to this day. He has designed every album, every DVD/Blu-Ray, every tour book, and every book the band has released since 1975. He has also played keyboards on three Rush songs. For forty years, he has been responsible for the Rush image as much as anyone outside of the three actual members of the band.
As noted in the appendix to this book, Roger Dean is probably a “prettier” artist than Syme. Syme is, however, far more interesting and diverse. If Dean offers sameness, Syme satisfies curiosity and has taken innumerable chances in all of his endeavors. He’s bold and audacious in every aspect of his art. He’s quirky, as well. Whether it’s a “natural” font on Signals or a precise graphic for Clockwork Angels, Syme delivers. In other words, he’s perfect for Rush and for Peart. “From the first time Hugh and I met we shared a level of communication that would sustain us through all the years of discussing art by long distance,” Peart recalls. “We had the same value and tastes in images and design, and simply spoke the same language.”31 Whatever went wrong with Caress of Steel, the alliance between Peart and Syme for the art and design of that album made up for all other ills.
One only has to look at the cover of Grace Under Pressure (1984) to see every aspect of Syme’s talent. True to the lyrical and musical content, the cover presents a deceptively calm scene. An android looks across an ocean toward mountains. Nothing is what it seems though. The water, calm upon first inspection is drifting in chaotic fashion off of the page, and the mountains in the distance reluctantly reveal the eye of a predator. Where the water meets the mountains, a mathematical equation is stamped: p/g. Grace Under Pressure. There should be no small amount of wonder when one considers that the art, the music, and the lyrics of this album inspired the first novel by Kevin J. Anderson, Resurrection, Inc.
Peart remembered what a difficult and yet critical time it was for the band. They had to make a number of decisions, few of them pleasant.
The band’s first, self-titled album had been recorded just before I joined, and when it sold 125,000 copies in the United States, the record company pronounced it “a promising debut.” When the next one, Fly by Night, sold 125,000 copies, it was “a solid followup.” But when the third album, Caress of Steel, sold 125,000 copies, they called it “a dog.” We were urged to be “more commercial,” write some “singles.” So, in our contrarian fashion, we recorded an ambitious and impassioned sidelong piece about a futuristic dystopia, along with a few other weird songs, and released our fourth album, 2112, early in 1976. It was considered by the bean counters to be our last chance, and without any promotion from them, it was something of a snowball’s chance.32
Caress ended on an organic, open and free-spirited note, but 2112 began with discordant and spacey computer noises and swatches of sound. The contrast in mood and sound could not have been greater. 2112 even inverted the structure of Caress, placing the epic side-long track on side one of the album, with the shorter songs on side two.
Again, it’s worth remembering that if they were going to end, they were going to do so on their own terms. If Rush was going “down the tubes,” they were going to go down with a serious statement and a very, very loud thud. No whimper. Only a bang. “We talked about how we would rather go down fighting rather than try to make the kind of record they wanted us to make,” Lee remembers. “We made 2112 figuring everyone would hate it, but we were going to go out in a blaze of glory.”33 Alex feels the same. “2112 is all about fighting the man,” he states. “Fortunately for us, that became a marker. That was also the first time that we really started to sound like ourselves.”34 It is hard to judge whether or not this anti-authoritarian streak in Rush came from the group as a whole or from each of the three individuals who made up the band. Perhaps the distinction is irrelevant.
While one might readily and honestly label Lee, Lifeson, and Peart as individualists, it is because of Peart’s words that he might also be one of the greatest living exponents—in word and deed—of individualism itself. Yet, his individualism is far from selfish, as he would like every person in the world to be such. “I call myself an individualist because no-one knows what that means either—except me. So if anyone asks me to put an ‘ism’ after my name I’ll say I’m an individualist because to me an individual life is the ultimate, supreme-value in the world.”35 Peart dislikes “authority of all kinds,” but especially the righteous authority wielded by governments, churches, and “moral majorities.”36 As a whole, Rush has remained “implicitly and explicitly rebellious,” the drummer believes. “We demand to do it our way, even if we are wrong. We resist the machine and we refuse to be mercenary.”37 Sounding very much like fabulist J.R.R. Tolkien and a number of other humanists and artists of the twentieth century, the drummer for Rush states, with great enthusiasm and relish, that he loves the individual because “each person is a story.”38
As the strange science-fiction swirls fade, the opening to 2112, an anthem begins. Not an anthem in the sense of Fly by Night’s Anthem, but an anthem of battle and victory, a struggle of the individual against the tyrant. The 2112 overture drives relentless toward victory. Harkening back to the 1812 overture, the 2112 overture would have captivated most listeners—especially considering that many Rush fans at the time were in their teens and twenties and almost always male—and they would’ve gleefully banged their heads and raised their fists. Rock music does not come more martial and victorious than this. The story of 2112, based loosely on Ayn Rand’s 1938 science fiction novella Anthem and Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We, presents a dystopian short story. Through a series of catastrophes and apocalypses, Earth exists no more, and humans have migrated into the universe. The protagonist of 2112 lives more or less without the ability or will to question in a totalitarian-collectivist society ruled by Philosopher-priests who proclaim their own power and control in very loud dramatic fashion. In their powers, they resemble the most stringent rulers of Plato’s Republic and, in their voices, they sound akin to the Pharisees of Jesus Christ Superstar. The protagonist discovers an “ancient miracle,” a guitar. Gifted musically, he learns to play it, discovering a way to bring real beauty into a closed society. Naïvely, the protagonist assumes the Philosopher-priests simply did not know about the instrument. Otherwise, in their supposed wisdom, he presumes, still naïve, they would have already adopted it and promoted it within the larger society. Seeing no utility in the guitar, the Philosopher-priests forbid its usage, presuming it a toy. Additionally, they claim that it helped destroy the pre—interstellar-migration elder race of man. Distraught, the protagonist takes the Stoic route, killing himself rather than accepting continued life in a world devoid of such glories as music. “I don’t think I can carry on, carry on this cold and empty life.” 2112 ends with the suicide, a return to the overture theme, and the Philosopher-priests announcing—with loudness and confidence—that they have “resumed control.” At the time Peart, who developed the entire concept and story, viewed the ending as “a real Hitchcock killer.”39
To this day, roughly four decades after the release of 2112, Neil Peart has never fully shaken the “Ayn Rand” label. For those who love Rand, Peart stands as a hero for upholding her ideals, in spirit and in word. For those who despise Rand, Peart’s reference to her remains a black mark on the history of the Canadian power trio, forever condemning Rush to the status or “right-wing rock” at best and “fascist” at worst.
Economist and man of letters Steven Horwitz has done the best job of analyzing the influence of Rand on Peart, while Rob Freedman showed how this led to horrendous accusations being thrown at the drummer, such as a supposed proclivity toward fascism (an idea so ridiculous as to be completely offensive).
Whatever Rand was, she was quite the opposite of a fascist in her ideas and ideals, though she did possess a rather strong Nietzschean streak in her writings, as does Peart. Famous mostly for her perennially bestselling novels Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, Rand also authored numerous nonfiction essays and books, including a number that upheld the idea of selfishness as a virtue. She took the right to self-ownership and personal property to the nth degree, believing that selflessness denied nature as well as the dignity of the creative and free individual. Charity, she feared, if forced, diminished the very being of the individual. Rand even took this to the level of love and sexual relationships, seeing the two lovers as writing (for lack of a better term) a type of mutually self-interested contract with one another. Her sex scenes, which many critics have described as barely concealed rape, embrace a sort of domination of the superior partner over the less superior partner. Though few critics have offered even a semblance of balance when discussing Rand—either loving or hating her—her students and followers, such as Doug DenUyl, Aeon Skoble, Yaron Brook, Bradley Thompson, and David Mayer offer some of the most interesting scholarship available. They are honest, interesting, and logical to a rigorous degree.
Peart’s sin, if it can be considered as such, is that he openly thanked Rand, dedicating 2112 to her “genius.” Though Peart offered the dedication through his direct writing, he spoke for the band as a whole, as each of the three members had read and enjoyed Rand’s science fiction novella Anthem.40 A year later, he admitted that his two great literary heroes were Rand’s two major protagonists: Howard Roark of The Fountainhead and John Galt of Atlas Shrugged.41 What is unfortunate, at least in terms of Peart’s long-term reputation, is that for roughly four decades now, allies and enemies of Rush have latched onto this obvious and blatant dedication and his brief support of Rand. Not atypically, Rolling Stone seized on Peart’s Randianism with a vengeance, using it as yet one more thing to hate about the band. In a review of Exit … Stage Left, Jon Pareles screeched:
Just about everything Rush do can be found, more compactly, in Yes’ “Roundabout,” with the remainder in Genesis’ “Watcher of the Skies.” Everything except the philosophy—and stage left is, of course, to the audience’s far right.42
Why an audience far to the left of Rush remained so loyal to the band, made absolutely no sense, but few read the mainstream music magazine for logic. Certainly, Rand shaped the young Peart dramatically, as she has shaped so many others of the same age for well over half a century now. In 1971, while living in London, Peart found a discarded copy of Rand’s The Fountainhead in the tube station.43
To a 20-year-old struggling musician, The Fountainhead was a revelation, an affirmation, an inspiration. Although I would eventually grow into and, largely, out of Ayn Rand’s orbit, her writing was still a significant stepping-stone, or way-station, for me, a black-and-white starting point along the journey to a more nuanced philosophy and politics. Most of all, it was the notion of individualism that I needed—the idea that what I felt, believed, liked, and wanted was important and valid.44
Peart had said something similar to MacLeans (the Canadian equivalent of Time or Newsweek):
For me it was a confirmation of all the things I’d felt as a teenager. I had thought I was a socialist like everyone else seemed to—you know, why should anyone have more than anyone else?—but now I think socialism is entirely wrong by virtue of man himself. It cannot work. It is simply impossible to say all men are brothers or that all men are created equal—they are not. Your basic responsibility is to yourself.45
Of course, Peart was not the first or last North American twenty-something to find the ideas of Ayn Rand a justification for creativity, rebellion, and individualism. That Rand’s novels have sold millions and millions of copies over the course of more than five decades, demonstrates the lasting and singular appeal of her works.
Yet by 1977, Lee’s “Cinderella Man” negated much of the most extreme aspects of Rand’s philosophy of selfishness. When asked about the author’s influence on the band in 1997, Lee responded: “only as [her views] pertained to the idea of artistic freedom. I’d have to say we were never very interested in the more extreme libertarianism of her politics.”46
In the 1988 “Backstage Newsletter,” Peart answered a fan question about the continuing influence of Rand on his own writing and understanding of the world. Peart answered:
Well, lately I’m never inspired by any one thing, and usually try to pour a bucketful of ideas and images into every song, so the actual inspirations can be pretty oblique and hard to track down. They come from conversations sometimes, or something in the newspaper or on TV, or more often just from watching the way people behave, and thinking about why!47
In a 1992 interview, Lee again reflected on Rand’s influence on the band, noting that while they had had an obsession with her, that obsession was long gone. “I think she had a great influence, her writing had a great influence on our work and it had a great influence on our lives, but more in a sense of her artistic manifesto and her belief in the ability of the individual to succeed. Art is a personal expression,” Geddy said. “Art is something done to satisfy oneself as opposed to art for the people, which is kind of an unexplainable phrase in itself. Art—you set the terms for your life. You set the terms for your art. I think those kind of things in her work have affected us and probably the residue of that has lingered through the years.”48
When the question came up again from a fan in 1994, Peart offered a fairly detailed response.
For a start—the extent of my influence by the writings of Ayn Rand should not be overestimated—I am no one’s disciple. Yes, I believe the individual is paramount in matters of justice and liberty, but in philosophy, as Aristotle said long ago, the paramount good is happiness. My self-determination as an individual is part of the pursuit of happiness, of course, but there’s more to it than that.49
In a National Midnight Star interview in the first half of the 1990s, Peart labeled himself a “left-wing libertarian,” thus negating any possibility of being a straightforward Rand-Objectivist. By 2007, Peart openly rejected Rand as a continuing influence in the Rush song, “Good News First,” which openly mocked one of that Russian-American authoress’s most important concepts, the notion of a “benevolent universe” as explored toward the end of this book. Most recently, Peart has described himself as a “Bleeding-Heart Libertarian.”
For me, it was an affirmation that it’s all right to totally believe in something and live for it and not compromise. It was a simple as that. On that 2112 album, again, I was in my early twenties. I was a kid. Now I call myself a bleeding heart Libertarian. Because I do believe in the principles of Libertarianism as an ideal—because I’m an idealist. Paul Theroux’s definition of a cynic is a disappointed idealist. So as you go through past your twenties, your idealism is going to be disappointed many many times. And so, I’ve brought my view and also—I’ve just realized this—Libertarianism as I understood it was very good and pure and we’re all going to be successful and generous to the less fortunate and it was, to me, not dark or cynical. But then I soon saw, of course, the way that it gets twisted by the flaws of humanity. And that’s when I evolve now into … a bleeding heart Libertarian. That’ll do.50
In his penetrating reflections on life, Far and Away (2011), he went into some detail about his beliefs, noting that one could easily call him a “quasi-libertarian (left-wing conservative, right-wing liberal, what have you).” In a catechesis, he writes:
Such reflections have led me to define myself in recent years as a “bleeding-heart libertarian.”
Do I believe in the sanctity of the individual and all freedoms and rights?
Certainly.
Do I believe that humans should generously help others in need, and voluntarily contribute to public works of mutual benefit?
Why, yes, of course.
Do I believe that the general run of humanity can ascend to those noble heights of … humanity?
Alas, I do not.
So … lead left.51
In his excellent follow-up book, Far and Near, Peart explains this a bit further, in terms of freedom of immigration and gun ownership.
They were, I realized, memorials for people who had died trying to cross the desert to a new life in the United States. Sometimes groups of them were betrayed and stranded by their supposed guides, the “coyotes,” to die in horrible ways. Sure, they were illegal aliens, or would-be undocumented workers, as you prefer, but—what to do? The great Western writer Edward Abbey’s suggestion was to catch them, give them guns and ammunition, and send them back to fix the things that made them leave. But Edward Abbey was a conservative pragmatist, and I am a bleeding-heart libertarian—who also happens to be fond of Latin-Americans. The “libertarian” in me thinks people should be able to go where they want to go, and the “bleeding heart” doesn’t want them to suffer needlessly.52
The term “bleeding-heart libertarian” has existed for only a decade or so. Most likely first coined by libertarian philosopher Roderick Long, Bleeding-Heart Libertarianism has found a large following among academics who oppose the stronger right-wing, conspiratorial elements present in more populist and political libertarianism. Among their number are very prominent American thinkers such as economist Steve Horwitz, literary critic Sarah Skwire, and political philosopher Matt Zwolinksi. All of them, interestingly enough, are also fans of Rush. Their motto is “Free Markets and Social Justice,” believing that the real libertarian alliance should be with the civil libertarians of the so-called Left rather than with the anti-government elements of the so-called Right. Their counterpart within conservatism is the Front Porch Republicans who see a natural alliance between communitarians of all political backgrounds.53
Again, in his 2014 book, Far and Near, Peart explains his own understanding of politics: “Generally, while believing in individual rights and responsibilities, we favor the classic liberal values of generosity and tolerance, and fear the religious oppression that has wormed its way into modern Republican platforms. (And that is a good metaphor.)”54
Not surprisingly, given his own natural intelligence, his diligent scholarship, and his lifelong love of all things Rush, the person who best understands Peart’s political views is Horwitz. In his definitive essay “Rush’s Libertarianism Never Fit the Plan,” Horwitz convincingly argues that whatever label Peart might give himself or others might give him, he remains impossible to categorize neatly. Peart, simply put, is too much of an individualist, always exploring, always growing in his own ideas. And not just Peart. “What we might call Rush’s ‘individualism’ (and I do think this is a description that applies to all three band members),” Horwitz suggests, “provides the overarching philosophical theme of their career, from their own choices as a band to their lyrical content.”55
Indeed, to consider Peart a Randian and to stop there is beyond unconscionable. It is, in the words of Peart, “lazy.”56 Peart certainly liked Rand, but he also read everything he could find and get his hands on as well. Truth to tell, Peart never stops reading, and while Rand was an immense influence upon him when he was 24, so were a vast number of other literary figures. Indeed, if Peart seems to have found satisfaction with western philosophical teaching as culminating in the late eighteenth century, his literary tastes—which have evolved over the past half century—remain mostly rooted in the period from Mark Twain to John Barth. Peart especially returns to the modernist writers of the post—World War I era. This is such a vital point to understanding Peart that it is worth quoting him at length:
I was always a great reader, and I was voracious through that time (ca. 1980). But I was reading as widely to John Dos Passos and John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway. A lot of American writers at the time, because I’d been through a lot of Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy. Reading became not only my school room on the road but my sanity. People often ask me: when did you get tired of touring? The first month! It was like schlepping around like this when maybe you play 26 minutes that night but the rest of that time is just aimless—not only aimless but empty, unproductive time. You can’t do anything except, I found, reading. And it was a way to fill those hours of waiting in a way that felt good. If nothing else you’ve got a book you’ve read at the end of that day. So I kind’ve poured myself into that in those days and read a ton of the English greats and then worked into the American greats, starting by that time. But, I can’t say they were a huge influence on lyric writing per se. Because it’s such a different craft. I always say the typical song has 200 words, you know, where a novel might have 40,000—50,000. So, you’re dealing on a whole other canvas. Yes, I was learning from all of those writers about life and about the power of words, but I was kind’ve feeling my own way, craftwise. You know? Later on, I did start to explore more into poetics, especially when I was writing lyrics. I would be reading T.S. Eliot, or I would be reading Robert Frost as a kind of exemplar of the highest that verse writing could be. And, of course, I was a lifelong music fan, so lyrics in general … I already had certain preferences. I liked lyric words that made sense. I didn’t like when they were too repetitive … and I didn’t like confessional sort of songs about people’s hearts being broken by perfidious lovers and stuff.57
To catalog the number of authors Peart admires would be a book in and of itself. In addition to the ones explicitly mentioned above, one could readily add Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Henry James, Wilkie Collins, Oscar Wilde, Virginia Woolf, Sinclair Lewis, Theodore Dreiser, Edward Abbey, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Fritz Lieber, C.S. Lewis, Robert Pirsig, Wallace Stegner, Thomas Pynchon, John Barth, Tom Robbins, and Kevin J. Anderson58 to the list. It is, yet again, worth quoting Peart at length:
Well, a lot of people don’t pay attention to lyrics. As a listener, I don’t. The only reason I put so much into writing is because I’m the one who’s doing it. It’s the old Anglo-Saxon ethic: if it’s worth doing …
Development? During Rush’s early days my reading preferences—and they influence the way you write—were Victorian-era English literature: Thomas Hardy, Dickens; fantasies and science fiction—all of it written in a timeless, old-fashioned, ornate style. So my lyrics were all very ornamental. I’d take the germ of what I wanted to express and then dress it up, decorate it the way a Victorian house might be decorated, with all the gingerbread and fancy shutters.
Over the last couple of years my reading habits have followed the historical path of prose writing, and I’ve finally discovered the 20th century, the New World writers like Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner, Barth—vigorous, economical writers who don’t use adjectives for their own sake, but who succeed in saying in a single phrase what Hardy would have spent a couple of paragraphs on. Now, more and more, I’m trying to find some fundamental thing that can be expressed simply, where the choice of words is ultimately precise.… I’ve come to reflect on the exact meanings of words and word choices.
The rhythm, of course, reflects that simplicity. It’s somewhat deceptive, because I spend a lot of time on it, but in the final analysis, it’s some very simple thing. Hemingway wrote only 500 words a day, a very low output, but he agonized over his choice of words; his sentence construction was often illiterately simple—he’d eliminate so much, what was left would be almost unintelligible. I found that approach very useful in lyric writing.59
Rather humorously, Peart’s mother confirms the same in the documentary film, Beyond the Lighted Stage. “He was … in those days, I used to say ‘weird.’ … He just read everything there was to read.”60 While many rock stars saw the touring life as one that would allow for decadence, hedonism, and self-absorption, Peart viewed it as a way toward true liberal education. “What more perfect portable education than having a lot of free time on your hands and bookstores everywhere,” Peart said. “So, for the next few years, I started filling those years with reading.”61 In an interview in 1991, Peart put it succinctly: “There are so many books, so little time.”63 During tours, Peart voraciously read three to four books a week. He had no idea what might have happened to him with so much free time, all of it unproductive, had he not found books and other diversions.
I can divide my touring life into two phases, because I realized on the very first tour in 1974 that this was no kind of life, and there was so much hanging out time and it was potentially so self-destructive. And I started reading then, I filled all the empty hours with the education that I missed, delving into all the genres. There was the book period, and then in my thirties I got into bicycling and then into motorcycling, and they became the escape from touring and the injection of life, freedom, engagement with the world, and it’s still something that I love.64
Not surprisingly, 2112 (released April 1, 1976) especially captivated the spirit of middle-American males in their teens and twenties. Suffering through defeat in Vietnam (and elsewhere), cowering to the Soviets, surviving Watergate with nothing more than intense cynicism toward all politics, and limping along economically, middle Americans decided to recapture the “Spirit of ’76” and celebrate the two hundred years since the passage of the Declaration of Independence. In that spirit of patriotic defiance, the citizen became greater than the politician, the local community more vital than the behemoth on the Potomac.
Though the protagonist of 2112 ends his own life, in classical and Stoic fashion, he also won by denying the collectivist society from wielding any further control over his destiny. One of the most cherished myths of the American founding era was the true story of Cato the Younger who fought against Julius Caesar’s takeover of the republic. When the great Stoic Cato realized Caesar would defeat his forces, he took his own life, placing his trust in a Platonic dialog dealing with the immortality of the soul. No story held greater sway over George Washington, who had memorized the eighteenth-century play Cato: A Tragedy by Joseph Addison. He also had it performed upwards of seven times during the fateful winter at Valley Forge as a way to inspire his troops. The story of Cato is as American as it is western. Hatred of communism and conformism as well as a patriotic (not nationalist) love of America would cause young American males to sympathize with the protagonist of 2112. He rebelled in the name of goodness, and like Cato the Younger, he chose his own end, despite overwhelming odds.
Peart considered the story of 2112 as nothing more than a warning—not a prediction of what was to come but of what might come.
Well, things aren’t all that bad now, but it’s a logical progression from some of the things that are going on. All of the best science fiction is a warning. We want to let people know what’s going on so they at least have a chance to change it.65
In a world of Pol Pots and the Khmer Rouge, Peart’s vision was indeed happening at the time of the release of 2112, just not yet in the so-called free world.
The shorter songs of side two—“A Passage to Bangkok,” “The Twilight Zone,” “Lessons,” “Tears,” and “Something for Nothing”—continue to reveal the excellence of Rush, but they could not, understandably, live up to their older and more developed brother on side one. “A Passage” deals, somewhat controversially, with the drug trade in much of the third world, especially in South America and Asia. A journey, it embraces mysticism and some former hippie elements, and it does so in a musically compelling way, with oriental guitar riffs and rich hooks. Though more fluid, “A Passage” does somewhat resemble Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir.”
“The Twilight Zone” provides an homage to Rod Serling. Interestingly enough, their producer through 1982’s Signals, Terry Brown, believes this to be Rush’s best song.
“The Twilight Zone” is a little gem with a very strong lead guitar motif from Alex, Ged’s verse vocals up in the stratosphere and then the chorus slipping into an eerie flanged vocal that is in the ‘zone.’ This is all held together by Neil’s very concise, driving percussion closing with the airy guitar solo which makes this one of my favourite Rush tunes.66
“Lessons” is the most folk-oriented of the songs, a sort of hard progressive singer-songwriter tune discussing authority and one’s acceptance of responsibilities. “Tears” sees Rush flirt with a pop ballad, and “Something for Nothing” returns to the classic Peart themes of persistence, duty, and integrity as first explored in “Anthem.”
You don’t get something for nothing
You can’t have freedom for free
You won’t get wise with the sleep still in your eyes
No matter what your dreams might be
No lyrics could have better ended the album 2112. They summed up every real lesson to be learned from Rush in 1976. If the protagonist of side one took his own life, Peart calls for his listeners to embrace their own lives, take charge, and pursue the best within each of them. As Geddy Lee stated at the time, “The solution is more or less that we would like to present the germ of an idea to stimulate someone into thinking of a solution. However,” he continued, “‘Something for Nothing,’ on the second side, is sort of a wrap-up of how we feel. It’s not specifically part of the concept, but many songs on side two relate to the general theme. As for 2112 (side one), we say only what could happen but hopefully will not happen, and leave it up to the intelligence of the listener.”67
Certainly, for Rush, the album 2112 made their career. In their desire to go down with a bang, they changed the entire trajectory of their history and, in fact, given Rush’s importance and longevity, the history of rock itself. With the success of 2112, Rush attained the independence necessary—not worrying about money and corporate control—to pursue their own artistic dreams from 1976 through today. Though 2112 might have ended the band as effectively as the song’s protagonist ended, the band instead became the protagonists of “Something for Nothing.”68 No sleep remained in their eyes.
None of this should suggest acceptance by the media elite. Once again, they savaged Rush. As the Washington Post claimed,
There were occasional echoes of Led Zeppelin, both in bassist Geddy Lee’s vocals and Alex Lifeson’s guitar riffs, but it’s impossible to cite other influences simply because Rush’s music, amplified beyond the threshold of pain, is essentially characterless.
On September 29, 1976, Rush released “All the World’s a Stage,” an immense live album, a monument to their triumph as a band. They considered it the close of the first chapter of their story. In Great Britain, Geoff Barton especially continued to praise the band. “Direct, hard-hitting and powerful to the Nth degree. Rush are probably the best undiscovered band in Britain at the moment,” he enthused. “I strongly recommend you to check them out, now!”69
What followed, 1977’s A Farewell to Kings, though, had far more in common with 1976’s 2112 than it would with 1980’s Permanent Waves. Not appearing on the market until September 1, 1977, A Farewell to Kings ended the new-album-every-six-months schedule Rush had followed thus far. A brilliant album in and of itself, A Farewell to Kings still belongs to Rush 2.1 as I have defined it. So does the follow-up album, Hemispheres. Certainly, Rush tried more new things—in terms of album structure, lyrical depth and storytelling, and musical complexity—than it had on the first several albums.
“We had written material that was a little beyond us, considering our level of musicianship at the time,” Lee later admitted.70 But the progress was in continuity, a major reform rather than a revolution.
“Our progress has always been sincere—not in an arrogant way, but for our own pleasure,” Peart stated in 1982. “We’ve always incorporated music from people we liked, so it has made us stylistically schizoid.”71
While there are no side-length tracks on A Farewell to Kings, the album revolves around its two major songs, “Xanadu” at 11 minutes in length and “Cygnus X-1” at almost 10½ minutes. Thematically, Peart continues to embrace both the fantastic—“Xanadu” based on the iconic romantic English poem, “Kubla Kahn,” by Samuel Coleridge—and science-fiction, “Cygnus X-1.” At the time, Peart lauded fantasy writing in lyrics. “It’s a way to put a message across without being oppressive.”72
It would be impossible to describe how much of an influence the moody, mysterious “Xanadu” had on the rock world. Its ability to combine high, poetic art with rock influenced many rockers and listeners alike. One of the greatest living American guitarists, John Wesley, who had released a number of solo albums as well as having worked with prominent bands such as Porcupine Tree, admitted that after hearing A Farewell to Kings for the first time, he was “blown away,” but “the track that captured me was ‘Xanadu.’ It was the first Rush track I tried to learn from beginning to end.” Though he struggled for years to get the piece right, in hindsight, he notes that the song proved a “turning point for me as a player.”73 One can also hear the album’s immense influence on the more progressive tracks written by the prog metal band, Dream Theater.
The opening track, “A Farewell to Kings,” harkens back to “Bastille Day” as well as 2112 in its challenge to authority. Here, though, authority has lost. The king, a jester at best and a puppet at worst, sits on his throne, dangling limp as the world around him has been destroyed. He governs nothing but Eliot’s The Waste Land. In the vision of Peart and album designer Hugh Syme, free men and women have simply said enough, thus anticipating the Velvet Revolution of 1989. Another ballad, “Closer to the Heart,” offers an idyllic view of the world, embracing the gentle classical liberalism of a Thomas Jefferson.
Based on the Frank Capra movie of the same name, “Cinderella Man” asks why the best cannot be considered charitable rather than manipulative or crazy. Ironically, though many critics have labeled Rush Objectivist because of Peart’s interest in Rand, placing Capra’s film as heroic and noble goes against the very heart of Rand’s philosophy. In the song, Lee (who wrote the lyrics) still embraces individualism, but he does so in a way that would not be recognized as a good in Galt’s Gulch, the individualist utopian Rocky Mountain hideout in Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. The lyricist-bassist (very rare for Rush) sounds much more like a Catholic social activist and social justice warrior Dorothy Day than the Nietzschean heroine of Atlas Shrugged, Dagny Taggart. Continuing in the medieval and bardic vein of the opening song, “Madrigal” has a Yes-like quality in its ethereality.
1978’s Hemispheres is a sequel to and completion of A Farewell to Kings from the previous year. Rush produces yet again a side-long epic, thus completing the story begun at the very end of Farewell, the story of “Cygnus X-1.” Taken all together, the story of Cygnus X-1 takes nearly 29 minutes to tell, making it the longest story Rush had yet told or would tell until 2012’s Clockwork Angels. The one competitor, at least in terms of time needed to tell the tale, would be the Fear cycle told over four songs. Still, each of the four Fear songs deals with a different state of mind and does not construct a coherent story in the way that the stories of Cygnus X-1 or Clockwork Angels’ Owen Hardy have. Just as 2112 blatantly revealed Peart’s anti-authoritarian side, “Cygnus X-1” and Clockwork Angels equally reveal his love of the journey and the necessity of forging one’s own path in life. Of course, the anti-authoritarian side and the free will side are two sides of the same coin. One rages, while the other considers.
All of these strands of Peart’s thought come together whenever he enters upon the subject of God, Christianity, and religion.
To put it mildly, Peart has had a difficult time with religion and religious matters—especially formalized religion—ever since a child. Indeed, he never had any faith in a higher power, even as a little boy.74 While he jokes about the subject and his obsession with it frequently, his disgust with religion comes through his lyrics and, especially, his books. Here’s as typical example, this taken from his book, Far and Away:
Fun Fact: The theological default called Pascal’s Wager is a pusillanimous theorem stating that it’s “safer” to believe in God than not, because you have nothing to lose if you’re right, and everything to lose if you’re wrong. All I can say to that is “Man up, Pascal!”75
Not surprisingly, Nietzsche wrote something quite similar about Pascal, calling him the most representative “worm” of Christianity, the worst of Catholicism in Beyond Good and Evil. Pascal possessed, the German philosopher decried, a wounded and monstrous “intellectual consciousness.”76 As will be seen later in this work, Nietzsche exerts a serious influence on Peart. As a child, Peart even spray-painted “God is Dead” on his bedroom wall.77
In Far and Near, Peart asks if he’s a “faith-basher,” somewhat appalled at the notion that he might be.78 Certainly, though, Peart sees a significant difference between his toleration of religion and his (dis)respect for those same religions (and their deluded followers):
Those who attribute spiritual power to geological formations, a humorless deity, or articles of clothing (think Catholic, Hasidic, Mormon, or Buddhist) are difficult to respect—not so much for their “magic,” but for their vanity. As for tolerance and respect, we agree that tolerance is necessary—people can believe the crazy fecal matter of their choice—but we’re not sure about respect. Fundamentalists of every stripe, and likewise conspiracy theorists, are pretty much impossible to respect, especially if they preach violence—pain to others, the real first deadly sin. In terms of my simple moral compass … if the greatest evils to an individual are pain, fear, and worry, then it stands to reason that the worst things you can inflict on another human being are pain, fear, and worry.79
In his 2014 book, Far and Near, he counts and details how many religious billboards, bumper stickers, and signs he has encountered in the United States, clearly amused by the notion, even if repulsed by many of the ideas presented. He certainly mocks the idea of “putting your hand in the hand of the Judeo-Christian skygod,” placing the Holy Trinity on the level of Apollo and Zeus, simply nice superstitions of an immature race.80
Here is Peart at length on Paganism and Christianity and faith bashing, again from 2014:
It is ironic that a religion that has historically co-opted prehistoric festivals for their own purposes would insist that pagans are unable to celebrate Christmas. Of course, it was ours first. The idea of grafting Christian festivals onto existing celebrations dates back at least to the eighth century, when Charlemagne massacred thousands of pagan Saxons for resisting his … “missionary zeal.” It is also arrogant to suggest that without religion we have no reason to feel “goodwill toward men.” It isn’t fear of godly punishment or promise of heavenly reward that makes generosity feel good—it’s simple humanity. Any undamaged individual knows how good it can feel to help others. I would love to avoid the taint of “faith-basher,” as I have been called, but a further irony is that the most fanatical “Christians” today are the most vocal against the biblical example of, say, being good Samaritans. They would proudly (and loudly) deny even mercy to the less fortunate.81
However much one agrees or disagrees with Peart’s specific take on the relationship of paganism to Christianity, two things must be noted. First, Peart identifies here not as an atheist, but rather as a pagan. Second, factually and historically, he is correct. Since St. Paul first journeyed to Athens, the Catholic Church has attempted to coopt and baptize the pagan rather than destroy it. Peart views this historical move of the Catholic Church as regressive rather than progressive, though, an act of dishonesty, manipulation, and theft. Indeed, religion as a whole, Peart believes, stands against and retards real progress toward liberalism, properly understood, and toward human freedom. For some, though, faith has been a good, he reluctantly admits. For many, “it’s definitely a positive sort of reinforcement or a kind of solace and those are all good things.”82
Hemispheres came into the world on October 29, 1978. Its opening track, “Cygnus X-1, Book 2: Hemispheres,” the conclusion to the Cygnus story, reveals the tensions in Peart’s own mind between order and chaos, plan and anti-plan. Divided into six parts, it considers Apollo as wisdom, Dionysus as love, and Cygnus (Peart in fictional form) as the Aristotelian mean and balance. Only by embracing the two extremes, Peart argues through the voice of Cygnus, representing the voice of art and will, could one transcend this Manichean division.
We can walk our road together
If our goals are all the same
We can run alone and free
If we pursue a different aim
Let the truth of love be lighted
Let the love of truth shine clear
Sensibility
Armed with sense and liberty
With the heart and mind united
In a single
Perfect
Sphere
The conflict—which rages in every human heart—can resolve not just in a cease fire and a truce, but in an actual rebirth of a new creation.
The story itself comes directly from Friedrich Nietzsche’s book on music, The Birth of Tragedy, in which he complained that our ordered society had become too complacent in matters of art and creativity:83
We shall have gained much for the science of aesthetics when we have succeeded in perceiving directly, and not only through logical reasoning, that art derives its continuous development from the duality of the Apolline and Dionysiac; just as the reproduction of species depends on the duality of the sexes, with its constant conflicts and only periodically intervening reconciliations. These terms are borrowed from the Greeks, who revealed the profound mysteries of their artistic doctrines to the discerning mind, not in concepts but in the vividly clear forms of their deities. To the two gods of art, Apollo and Dionysus, we owe our recognition that in the Greek world there is a tremendous opposition, as regards both origins and aims, between the Apolline arts of the sculptor and the non-visual Dionysiac art of music. These two very different tendencies walk side by side, usually in violent opposition to one another, inciting one another to ever more powerful births, perpetuating the struggle of the opposition only apparently bridged by the word “art”; until, finally, by a metaphysical miracle of the Hellenic “will,” the two seem to be coupled.84
In our desire for stability, Nietzsche lamented, we lost the will to create, to innovate, and to steal fire from the gods. In his own later reflections on his treatise on aesthetics, the German philosopher chided himself for being too dualistic (too Hegelian) in his formulation of art. He attempted to round this out by claiming that Christianity represented a new way of thinking, neither Apolline nor Dionysiac. Instead, thinking even worse of it than he had in his previous work, Christianity actually negates all beauty. While the Greeks affirmed, the Christians offered nothing but nihilism in their oppression of the human spirit.85 Though Peart does not reference Nietzsche often, when he does, he does so with approval or at least intense interest.
Elevating the conversation a little, I wrote down the day’s church sign, saying it aloud to Michael, “Conquer Yourself, Rather Than the World.”86
Michael and I agreed that we would prefer a more Nietzschean interpretation: “Conquer yourself, then the world.”
In a short autobiography for a Canadian newspaper in 1994, Peart described his life through Nietzsche’s famous motto: “That which does not kill me makes me stronger.”87 Throughout his adult life, Peart has taken Nietzsche rather seriously. After an interview in 2010, one Toronto journalist explained: “He not only longs for diversity, he speeds himself head-long into whatever project he chooses, be it reading Nietzsche, writing books, organizing tributes to jazz legend Buddy Rich or cycling across Africa.”88 Even a 2008 Rolling Stone article conceded that Peart’s life is in and of itself a “Nietzschean creation story.”89 Rolling Stone had never been so correct in its judgment of Rush or of Peart.
Side one of Hemispheres, though musically very complex, had much more in common with previous Rush songs and albums than its second side did. Side two anticipated the next albums, Permanent Waves and Moving Pictures, serving, albeit only in hindsight, as a great transition. The first of the three songs on side two, “Circumstances,” is only a little over 3½ minutes in length. Concisely and cleverly, the song tells the story of a boy trapped in his room, burdened by the weight of reality, only to realize his imagination can take him anywhere. While the song is quite good, “The Analog Kid,” only a few albums away would offer a much more driving and sophisticated look at the same theme.
“The Trees,” track two on side two, has served as a divisive point for Rush fans since 1978. Those oriented toward libertarianism see the song as a rallying cry against the excesses and artificialities of imposed equality, while Rush’s more philosophically moderate and left-leaning fans see it as nothing more than a story based on the cartoon that inspired the song in the first place. When the maples believe the oaks—taller and sturdier—have taken all of the sunlight, they cry foul!
So the maples formed a union
And demanded equal rights
“The oaks are just too greedy
We will make them give us light”
Now there’s no more oak oppression
For they passed a noble law
And the trees are all kept equal
By hatchet, axe and saw
While the song, so beautifully written, might serve as an allegory for many things, Peart’s already professed and adamant individualism has shaped the interpretation fans and critics have placed on the song. Certainly, in an age of holocaust camps, gulags, and killing fields, the support of the new law by its own terrors might have justly allowed the libertarian fans to treat this as yet another Rush anthem against the ever-devouring Leviathan of the State. That Geddy scream-sighs the final line, “by hatchet, axe, and saw,” seems to suggest the KGB or the Gestapo might well be involved in forced pogroms and collectivization schemes.
The final track, “La Villa Strangiato (An Exercise in Self-Indulgence),” finds the band at its most humorous and brilliant best. At a little over 9½ minutes and absent any lyrics, this instrumental serves as the perfect ending to Rush 2.1. Even part 12 of the 12-part song is entitled, “A Farewell to Things.” Though probably nothing more than a coincidence, it does so as a very telling one. It and “The Trees” have remained live fan favorites through the present day. One of the greatest living drummers, Mike Portnoy, described rather gloriously why this song has meant so much to so many.
If I had to pick the quintessential Rush song, it would have to be “La Villa Strangiato.” When I was a teenager in the early ’80s and in the heat of my deepest Rush influence, that was the benchmark for instrumental prowess. Not only for us drummers, but also for fellow bass players—that quick bass and drum breakdown—and guitarists—perhaps still Alex Lifeson’s greatest recorded solo. As I also stated in the Beyond the Lighted Stage film, to us blossoming musicians at the time, [it] was the ultimate musical challenge to learn, as no other instrumental song in rock history had that level of technical precision.90
Whatever Mike Portnoy thinks of the album now, at the time, critics had a field day attacking it. Longtime Rush stalwart, Geoff Barton, remained divided on the album (nothing to do with the album’s main theme!):
Those are the basic essentials, anyway. But like I say, I’m really unable to decide whether Hemispheres is a masterwork or a mistake. Sometimes the album sounds totally convincing; on other occasions it appears messy and disjointed, and yet I suppose the very fact that I’m uncertain about the merits of this LP makes it a failure. After all, in the past just about every Rush review I’ve written has brimmed over with superlatives … and this time around you’d be hard pressed to find even one. When it comes down to it, I’d much rather hear about a battle between By-Tor and the Snow Dog than gods by the names of Apollo and Dionysus. Which would suggest that I reckon Rush should return to “basics” … that they have become too ambitious for their own good.91
Rolling Stone, however, offered an unusually kind review of the album.
Lifeson, Peart and Lee prove themselves masters of every power-trio convention. In fact, these guys have the chops and drive to break out of the largely artificial bounds of the format, and they constantly threaten to do so but never quite manage. If they don’t succeed soon, complacency may set in. Already the lyrics are approaching a singsong regularity of meter, and the melodies are beginning to lean too heavily on mere chording. I affirm this band’s ability to rock out, but I really want to give Rush a hard shove in the direction it’s already heading.92
However one evaluates the album, on its own merits, it certainly signaled the end of Rush 2.1. Though remaining true to progressivism, the band would follow no preconceived ideas of what that might mean.
13 “Mystic Rhythms: Rush’s Neil Peart on the First Rock Drummer,” NPR Morning Edition, January 6, 2015.
14 Betsy Powell, “Peart is a Different Drummer,” Toronto Star (June 30, 1997), pg. E4.
15 Peart, Far and Near, 6.
16 Dan Near, “Rush: Up Close,” Media America Radio (January-February 1994).
17 Peart quoted in Beyond the Lighted Stage.
18 Peart quoted in Rex Rutkoski, “Interview: Neil Peart,” Rochester Freetime (April 27-May 11, 1994.
19 Peter Howell, “Gold is the Color of Rush’s Metal,” Toronto Sun (October 19, 1993), C1.
20 Peart quoted in Beyond the Lighted Stage.
21 Geddy Lee quoted in Beyond the Lighted Stage.
22 Lee in Menon, Rush: An Oral History Uncensored (Stardispatches, ibooks, 2013), no page numbers.
23 Lee quoted in Menon, Rush: An Oral History Uncensored.
24 Lifeson quoted in Menon, Rush: An Oral History Uncensored.
25 During the 2015 R40 tour, Rush finished the final four songs of the concert as though playing in the basketball gym of Rod Serling High School.
26 T.S. Eliot, On Poetry and Poets (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009), 21.
27 Geoff Barton, “Caress of Steel Review,” Sounds (January 3, 1976).
28 I’m indebted to Steve Horwitz for pointing out the similarity between Lifeson’s guitar work on Caress of Steel and Steve Hackett’s work with Genesis at the same time.
29 David Brown, “Caress of Steel,” Record Mirror (February 12, 1977).
30 Hamilton Place Official Program, February 9, 1976.
31 Neil Peart, “Life without the Possibility of Parole,” in Stephen Humphries, Art of Rush: Hugh Syme, Serving a Life Sentence (2112 Books, 2015). This gorgeous book has no page numbers. Peart’s piece as at the beginning of the book.
32 Peart, Roadshow, 13.
33 Geddy Lee quoted in Beyond the Lighted Stage.
34 Lifeson quoted in Menon, Rush: An Oral History Uncensored.
35 Peart in Dave Dickson, “Spirit of Peart,” Kerrang! 44 (June 17–30/July 1-13, 1983). He also rejects the notion he is an “ist” of any kind except for an individualist. See, Peart quoted in Nicholas Jennings, “Rock N Roll Royalty,” Maclean’s (September 30, 1991).
36 Peart quoted in “Innerview with Neil Peart,” Innerview with Jim Ladd (1984).
37 “Interview with Neil Peart,” Toronto Star (September 9, 1993).
38 “Interview: Neil Peart,” Modern Drummer (April 1984).
39 Peart quoted in Rick Johnson, Creem (March 1976).
40 Nick Shofar, Northeast Ohio Scene (June 3, 1976); and Chris Welch and Brian Harrigan, “The Great Musicians: Neil Peart,” History of Rock 10 (January 1984).
41 Scott Cohen, “The Rush Tapes, Part 1: Neil Peart Sizes Up ‘Farewell To Kings,’ The Latest Canadian Rock Opus,” Circus, October 13, 1977).
42 Jon Pareles, review of Exit … Stage Left, Rolling Stone (February 2, 1982).
43 Peart interview, 2112/Moving Pictures Blu Ray. First encountering the work of Samuel R. Delany in 1971, Peart found that science fiction was a genre of ideas and endless possibilities.
44 Peart, Traveling Music, 218.
45 Peart quoted in Roy McGregor, “To Hell with Bob Dylan—Meet Rush. They’re in it for the Money,” MacLean’s (January 23, 1978).
46 Norman Provencher, “Rush Rocks Right into the Order of Canada,” Ottawa Citizen (February 26, 1997), B7.
47 Peart, “Hold Your Fire,” Backstage Club Newsletter (January 1988).
48 Lee quoted in Stutz Fretman, “On the Art of Being Rush,” Hijinx (January 1992).
49 Peart, “Counterparts,” Rush Backstage Club Newsletter (January 1994); and Frank Lancaster, “It’s True: The NMS Interviews Neil Peart,” National Midnight Star (April 23, 1992).
50 Andy Greene, “Q&A: Neil Peart on Rush’s New LP,” Rolling Stone (June 12, 2012).
51 Peart, Far and Away, 261.
52 Peart, Far and Near, 58.
53 The fullest definition and understanding of “Bleeding-Heart Libertarianism” is at: http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/. The website defines those who advocate Bleeding Heart Libertarianism: “we are libertarians who believe that addressing the needs of the economically vulnerable by remedying injustice, engaging in benevolence, fostering mutual aid, and encouraging the flourishing of free markets is both practically and morally important. The libertarian tradition is home to multiple figures and texts modeling commitment both to individual liberty and to consistent concern for the marginalized, both here and abroad. We seek here to revive, energize, and extend that tradition—to demonstrate that contemporary libertarians can, in addition to their traditional vindication of individual liberty, offer effective, powerful, and innovative responses to the problems of economic vulnerability and injustice and to their social, political, and cultural consequences.”
54 Peart, Far and Near, 153.
55 Horwitz, “Rush’s Libertarianism Never Fit the Plan,” in Jim Berti and Durrell Bowman, eds., Rush and Philosophy (Chicago, IL: Open Court, 2011), 270.
56 Peart quoted in Mary Turner, “Neil Peart,” Off the Record (August 27, 1984). In a 1992 interview, he claimed that he had not forsaken the ideas of Rand as much as he had moved well beyond her by reading so much more. See “It’s True: The NMS Interviews Neil Peart,” National Midnight Star (April 23, 1992).
57 Neil Peart interview, 2112/Moving Pictures Blu-Ray.
58 It would be nearly impossible to cite every place Peart has mentioned a beloved and influential author. For a start, see Bruce Pollock, “The Songwriting Interview: Neil Peart,” Guitar for the Practicing Musician (October 1986). See also, Paul A. Harris, “Lesson in How to Avoid Pitfalls of Rock n Roll,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch (October 31, 1991); “Neil Peart on Rockline,” Bob Coburn on Rockline (December 2, 1991); “Far and Near: An Interview with Neil Peart,” Huffington Post (October 9, 2014).
59 Greg Quill, “New World Man,” Music Express (September/October 1982). As mentioned at the beginning of this work, Peart and Kevin J. Anderson formed not only a close friendship, but they also became a dynamic writing team. In his discussion with the Huffington Post (October 9, 2014), Peart noted that Anderson serves as a “test reader,” a confidante.
60 Neil Peart’s mom quoted in Beyond the Lighted Stage. In the same documentary, Lee says something similar. Peart “was one of the weirdest people we’d ever met. Just because we didn’t know anyone who was so literate and opinionated.”
61 Neil Peart quoted in Beyond the Lighted Stage.
62 “Neil Peart on Rockline,” Bob Coburn on Rockline (December 2, 1991).
63 Greg Quill, “Neil Peart: New World Man,” Music Express (September/October 1982).
64 Peart quoted in Matt Scannell, “New World Man,” Prog 52 (March 1, 2015), 35–36.
65 Peart quoted in Rick Johnson, Creem (March 1976).
66 Terry Brown, quoted in Malcom Dome, “Rush: R40,” Prog 52 (January 2015): 41.
67 Nick Shofar, “Rush’s ‘Concept’ Is Rock And Roll,” Northwest Ohio Scene, June 3, 1976.
68 Larry Rohter, “A Heavy Metal Juggernaut,” Washington Post (April 19, 1977).
69 Geoff Barton, review of All the World’s a Stage, Sounds (November 1976).
70 Geddy Lee quoted in Beyond the Lighted Stage.
71 Steve Morse, “Sending New Signals, Rush on the Defense,” Boston Globe (December 6, 1982).
72 Graham Hicks, “Hemispheres: Shattered by Latest Rush Opus,” Music Express (December 1978).
73 John Wesley, quoted in Malcom Dome, “Rush: R40,” Prog 52 (January 2015): 42.
74 Interview with Neil Peart, Jim Ladd, Deep Tracks (February 3, 2015).
75 Peart, Far and Away, 72.
76 Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future (New York: Vintage, 1989), 59.
77 Interview with Neil Peart, Jim Ladd, Deep Tracks (February 3, 2015). Peart explains the story in great detail, including the reactions of his mother and father, in travelog of West Africa: The Masked Rider (1996; Toronto, ONT: ECW Press, 2004), 102.
78 Peart, Far and Near, 18-19.
79 Peart, Far and Away, 282.
80 Peart, Far and Near, 77. It should be noted that scholar Camille Paglia has described the Christian God in exactly the same manner.
81 Peart, Far and Near, 80.
82 “The Big Fresh,” Edmonton Journal (December 3, 2006), B3.
83 Ula Gehret, “To Be Totally Obsessed—That’s the Only Way,” Aquarian Weekly (March 9, 1994).
84 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy (London, ENG: Penguin, 1993).
85 Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo (London, ENG: Penguin, 2004), 48–49.
86 Peart, Roadshow, 144.
87 Neil Peart, “A Port Boy’s Story,” St. Catherines Standard (June 24–25, 1994).
88 Alan Maki, “Peart Drums Up a New Hockey Theme,” Toronto Globe and Mail (January 10, 2010).
89 Chris Norris, “Rush Never Sleeps,” Rolling Stone (July 10–24, 2008).
90 Mike Portnoy, quoted in Malcom Dome, “Rush: R40,” Prog 52 (January 2015): 44.
91 Geoff Barton, “It Could be a Meisterwerk,” Sounds (October 21, 1978).
92 Michael Bloom, Hemispheres (Not Rated), Rolling Stone (March 22, 1979).