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Have a seat, Ernst.

I will. A great idea.

I brought something you love.

- I think I should pour this. - Yes.

- Oh. - Sip-sip at will.

- Oh, I quit drinking...

In my mind.

- Okay, well I can drink it all.

- No, it’s okay, I started again.

- And I think we should-- - Let’s pour...

- Yeah. You wanna do these honours?

- Oh, thank you.

- Pour... - Let’s see, two-right?

- Two fingers, right? - Two fat fingers.

- My fingers aren’t fat enough.

- That was his favourite--

- Have to use your fingers. Wah wah.

- Yeah.

- Cheers. - Cheers.

- And, cheers, bro.

- Cheers, brat.

- Bingo.

Every day at 5:00 we’re in the studio, mixing.

5:00 came...

5:00 on the button.

And he would have two fat fingers.

And every time we came to see Neil over 40 years,

the first thing he did was go to the fridge,

ask us if want an ice cube,

and he’d pour the three of us

two fat fingers of Macallan’s.

- And his fingers got fatter over the years.

That’s right.

Aw...

So that’s for him.

- Yeah.

The missing wingman.

- The chair that’s not here.

- Our next guest is one of the greatest drummers

in all of rock ’n roll.

Please welcome for the finale of Drum Solo Week, Neil Peart.

- Okay, for you, Rush, 2112,

Neil Peart, one of the great drummers

of all time, study up.

- Are you ready to get your mind blown?

- Do it!

- You wanna get some Neil Peart all up in ya?

- I don’t know.

Neil gets a good ride.

Oh my god, you’re the best drummer on the planet!

Other drummers on the planet, all the rest of us,

there’s one deeper indignity that we must face,

which is that people come up to us

and say, my god, it’s you, you’re my...

second favourite drummer!

Fucking Neil!

Ranking drummers...

God knows how many times Neil must’ve won that.

That’s how it came onto my radar,

it’s like, who’s this guy who keep winning everything?

I’d better check him out!

The drum parts are so iconic and technical

hard, fast shit!

And straight-faced!

He was a fucking stone-cold assassin!

Neil was more than just a drummer.

He was fascinated with all kinds of things.

He did want each moment to be pure and valuable.

He wanted to find the value in each person,

each song, each lyric, each word.

How do you summarize a man

who is had this epic life on so many levels?

Some great successes and a lot of loss.

To sum up somebody like Neil...

...it’s a daunting, daunting task.

Check, check.

Is that better with the vocal, Geddy?

- Little bit, yeah.

Tiny bit more level on the voice.

Something that’s always bothered me

is after Neil passed away,

we never really were able to pay tribute to him

in any gathering way.

We had a plan.

- We had a plan to do something here.

- Pandemic came crashing in.

- And everything was locked down and...

And that weighed on me quite a lot.

- Yeah.

More keyboards please, for Alex.

For me, Neil’s legacy,

his importance as a rock drummer...

The way he blurred the lines

between progressive rock, jazz, pop, heavy metal,

all those styles that exist within our music.

And the dogged drive that he had,

his unwillingness to compromise,

made him a drummer

that really inspired other drummers.

Well!

Look who’s here!

Neil loved his drumming community.

He loved drum brothers.

Hey, man, how are you? - Good, man.

Drummers, they’re like catchers,

they’re like goalies.

They see a kinship in each other.

So when we were thinking of how to pay tribute to him,

it made sense to bring together

his drummer friends for a jam.

I mean, we’re talking about guys

that are monster drummers in their own right.

Bringing them together to talk about drumming,

about music, to talk about Neil

and what made him unique as a musician.

Feels like the right way to honour his legacy.

Okay, this is a louder drummer...

- I’m loud.

- It’s an honour to have you here,

to help us pay tribute to the dude,

wherever he may be.

- Wherever he may be, with his...

- Wherever he may roam! - Apples in his Macallan’s!

- Yeah.

Riding motorcycles, I hope.

- Two fat fingers.

We were on tour in Toronto,

and I was having lunch with Al,

and he was like, yeah, for this thing,

we’re gonna do 2112 and Working Man,

and I said, oh, do you think it’d be okay

if could I play Working Man with you guys?

And he’s like, yeah! I mean, I would love it!

That would be great.

I’m just so honoured to be able to play with these guys

and this music is so close to my heart, and then of course,

to honour my friend Neil is just, like, on top of it

is amazing.

Maestro.

Maestro.

- Oh, yes sir. Ah.

Ready?

- Whenever you’re ready.

- Woo hoo hoo!

We’re not ready.

- That’s it, that’s the take.

- Get out of the parking lot!

♪ I get up at seven, yeah, and I go to work at nine ♪

♪ I got no time for livin’ ♪

♪ Yes, I’m workin’ all the time ♪

♪ It seems to me I could live my life ♪

♪ Better than I think I am ♪

♪ I guess that’s why they call me ♪

♪ Call me the working man ♪

♪ They call me the working man ♪

♪ I guess that’s what I am ♪

♪ When I get home at five o’clock ♪

♪ I take myself out a nice, cold beer ♪

♪ Always seem to be wonderin’ ♪

♪ Why there’s nothin’ goin’ down here ♪

♪ It seems to me I could live my life ♪

♪ Better than I think I am ♪

♪ I guess that’s why they call me ♪

♪ Call me the workin’ man ♪

♪ They call me the working man ♪

♪ I guess that’s what I am ♪

When I started to get around 11 or 12 years old,

I was banging around the house with chopsticks

on my little sister’s playpen and smashing up

pots and pans and my parents got the idea

that I liked to hit things with sticks.

So, my 13th birthday, they got me drum lessons.

I practiced all the time and continued to get better.

And so once I got interested in rock bands and all that

and I was old enough to quit high school...

I wanted to be a full-time musician,

that’s all I thought about.

Fortunately, I was in a very serious band at the time.

We did practice every day, you know,

we didn’t drop out of school to be bums.

We made some demos for record companies in Toronto,

but they gave us the classic of those days,

we don’t hear a single.

So, you know, we were up against this wall.

So as the band was running into frustrations,

I conceive this notion that I would move to London

and take my drums and my records.

The world view that I took with me

was that all I had to do was get good

and I would be successful.

It was as simple as that.

And I really believed that’s how the world worked.

That if I got good, I would be successful.

- I got an airmail letter from Neil,

and it was, I understand you’re living in England,

and I wanna come over and further my musical career

and can I come and stay with you?

This was a big thing

for a, you know, a St. Catharine’s boy, like,

as it was for myself,

but here we are in London, you know?

And he’s gonna give this a shot.

- I’d copied down a list of record companies,

booking agencies, management companies,

and so on from record jackets out of my collection,

and traipsed around to all these offices in rainy London.

He told me a funny story.

Somehow he had found out where the Jethro Tull offices were

and he went into the office

and asked if they were looking for a drummer.

This was the year when they were between drummers.

And it was kind of unlike Neil to do something

as forthright as that, but he marched right in there,

said I’m ready to go, and the lady said,

well, that’s not quite how it’s done here,

and thank you very much.

- I always remember one kind-hearted receptionist

telling me, Well, you’re very brave.

In other words, you’re a fool!

But I proceeded with that

and eventually found another job to keep me alive,

which was working in souvenir shops

and poster shops in Carnaby Street

in Piccadilly Circus.

Through that souvenir shop, ironically, I met musicians

that I got started with in a band over there,

and was able to do quite a variety of different work,

playing in pop cover groups

and a little bit of casual session work

and doing auditions.

He got in a couple of bands,

and they got touring around.

They played The Marquee.

It’s the most amazing club in London,

the Rolling Stones, Rory Gallagher, everybody.

But bar bands, cover bands, you don’t make any money.

And we had to pay bills, right?

We had to live.

The gigs lasted about two weeks,

and then suddenly,

there was no more work and, you know,

I was sharing a bed-sitting room

on the farthest extreme of London

with my friend Brad.

Like, you know, not able to pay rent,

not able to buy food,

and then really facing poverty.

- I could see he was discouraged.

And so, one day, he said,

do you think we could do acid on Saturday night?

Which was... I said, sure!

I don’t know... Get some.

Back then, the acid was so strong,

you would sort out the entire universe,

but the next day you’d forget.

We didn’t forget this time.

We figured out the meaning of life right there.

And the meaning of life is,

you get up in the morning and you go to work.

You have to have a sense of purpose,

or you’re not going anywhere.

♪ They call me the working man ♪

♪ I guess that’s what I am ♪

When I was in the ferment of London

in the professional music business,

it was very obvious that things didn’t work out

the way I thought they did back in St. Catharine’s.

Um, so that was a huge lesson.

But it also forced me

into another life-changing decision...

was that while I’d rather do something else for a living

and play the music I love, you know, that was clear.

I’d rather play down in the basement,

and play the music I like, especially if I can get

likeminded musicians to do that.

And I came back to St. Catharine’s then

and went to work for my dad full-time

at the farm equipment dealers and played in bands at night.

- I came home from England

and we used to go for lunch at this greasy spoon.

You know, I pulled in and he came out,

and there was this white Corvette,

and it pulled in the parking lot

of the farm equipment dealership.

And I said, okay, well, who is that?

He said, did you ever hear of a band called Rush?

I said, nope.

No, I’ve never heard of them, sorry.

Well, they’re going on tour

and they’re looking for a drummer.

But...

He knew.

He knew this was the one.

He knew this was...

the chance.

When he first pulled up in his Pinto,

and he bounded out of the car

with his drums and garbage bags...

My first thought was, wow, what a goof.

- Yeah, right. - ’Cause he was tall and...

And we were groovy.

And we were totally groovy,

we had belts with big buckles and--

- Bell-bottoms. - Things like that.

And I remember thinking,

there’s no way this guy’s cool enough to be in our band.

Because he was a tall, gangly...

- Oh, yeah.

- ...guy that looked like so nerdy and...

- But when he started playing triplets...

- That changed everything. - He got really cool.

- Yeah. - Really fast.

- So fast.

- I met the guys and we got talking,

and the immediate things, interestingly,

were books and humour that we started talking about.

I remember talking about, you know,

we were 22 years old,

1974, talking about the Lord of the Rings

and Monty Python.

Actually, those were probably the first two touchstones

of the books we read

and the things that made us laugh.

In retrospect, that is so beautiful,

the fact that we played well together

and we laughed well together.

That’s the kind of thing that might last 34 years.

♪ Well it seems to me I could live my life ♪

♪ Better than I think I am ♪

♪ I guess that’s why they call me ♪

♪ Why they call me The workin’ man ♪

♪ They call me the workin’ man ♪

♪ I guess that’s what I am ♪

♪ Well they call me the workin’ man ♪

- Oh, sorry!

Throw it away!

- Oh, awesome.

Throw it away. I quit!

- You are the best. - Thank you, guys.

- I love you guys. Bubba!

Just love that interaction...

- Oh...

- This is kind of song is just like...

It’s your fucking happy zone. - Yes.

- You can just feel it. - Yeah.

- This one, this one... - Contagious.

Yeah, you can really let loose.

- I can... I see why you guys have played it every night.

I just love that it’s from the beginning

of what you guys did, and...

- At first, when we were talking about

what songs to play,

Working Man didn’t come to mind because it’s pre-Neil,

but he made it his own--

- Yes, exactly.

- And this version that we’re playing really is his version.

It’s his inspiration. Yes.

- Because, how many years did we play it, 40 years?

- Yeah. - With him?

Yeah, he owned it.

- He owned it, yeah, fucking right.

- Do we have a version of him singing it by any chance?

- Who? - Neil singing it?

I get up at 9 o’clock.

I do not like beer, I will not drink the beer.

And then I go to work.

And that’s why they call me the working man.

- That’s why they call me one of the guys at work.

- Yeah, one of the guys at work.

- That was his favourite expression.

- Gotta go! Going to meet the guys at work.

Before we met Neil, we were a bar band,

and we wrote songs

that made people jump up and down in bars.

I wanted to be the greatest bass player

I could possibly be,

and lyrics were just a hassle, man.

So, when we noticed how much Neil read

and his verbosity,

Al and I talked.

We approached him and said, you know, we can see

that you’re reading five or six books a day.

Maybe you should be the guy who writes lyrics,

you know, you have sort of a background in literature

and an interest...

And I don’t know if he was really keen

on having that added pressure,

but he agreed that he would try it, and he started,

and thank god he did.

- The power of words has been big for me

since I was a little kid, really,

in grade one and grade two, I was writing poems in school

and reading voraciously.

And lyric writing just started as a little side bar for me.

And coming into this band, neither of the other two

were much interested in it, so I went, okay,

I’ll have a go.

Well, then, having committed to it,

then my father’s values of if it’s worth doing,

it’s worth doing well,

and I got into the craft of it, of course.

♪ Anthem of the heart and mind ♪

A funeral dirge for eyes gone blind ♪

Whatever he wrote, I just tried to sing.

I remember when he gave me

Beneath, Between, and Behind,

which was the first lyric he wrote...

I was thinking, my god, how can I get all these words

in one line, I mean, it was just like rapid fire,

and you wrote that guitar riff, that...

And it melded, it was like, okay, this can work.

I just have to sing really fast.

Coming into this band at the tender age of 22,

of course I still had a lot of post-adolescent things

and fantasy and science fiction books, for sure.

And Tolkien weaves into the early stuff.

A lot of metaphor and those kind of flights of fancy

that were, I think the natural pre-occupations

of a geeky young man.

Starting with Caress of Steel,

a huge evolution had taken place in Neil.

And the things he wanted to express.

He started talking about concepts.

- And he would bring lyrics in,

and he wouldn’t just bring a couple songs,

he’d bring like 20 songs of lyrics.

These-all great ideas, all connected in some way.

If it was going to be a big C concept album

like 2112, Neil would say,

I have this idea to do this kind of thing,

and what do you think of an idea like that?

- Oh, cool.

The year is 2112.

It’s a better year than 2111.

It was a cold winter. Followed by a decent summer.

Then the plague hit. Most everybody died.

They couldn’t wait for 2113.

But who knows what that’ll bring.

- Two, three, four.

- Ah.

- It’s jumping in one beat early.

They’re all different spaces.

- As long as we’re tapping our feet at the right tempo...

- Yeah.

- One, two, three, four--

You know the beginning of the song,

but then when you gotta play it,

you gotta know how many counts,

how many repetitions of this, and...

I thought maybe they just looked at each other

and hit the beats, you know?

I didn’t know it was in time!

It makes it a challenge.

You think you know it, but you don’t

until you actually play it.

Let’s do it from the top again--

- It’s idiosyncratic... - Yeah.

- It’s done to make it difficult to remember.

So we succeeded!

- 2112, I can remember right where I was

that first time I heard it, you know? So it’s...

Good music does that, you know,

it can bring you back to that point every time.

When I was a little kid,

camping out to go and see them,

this seems so far away, you know?

It’s a whole ’nother world. What a thrill, you know?

I’m still, like, pinching myself, going, wow,

did I get to do that?

- Was that right? Was I wrong?

- Uh... I-I don’t know.

I played it right, I know that.

Ah, that was great!

- Yeah, that was pretty good that time.

- Yeah, you got it. - I think so.

- Alright, let’s have lunch.

- One, two, three...

- One, two, three, four!

2112 was inspired by The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand.

It really spoke to me.

There was this great validation

of doing things honestly, idealistically, romantically

that was absolutely the fundamental essence

of 2112.

’Cause we had been coming under tremendous pressure

by the record company to be more commercial

and to compromise our music

and to repeat the chorus more times

and to write some singles.

But nothing was going to change what we wanted.

Nobody could say to me, oh, you should play more simply.

2112 was the first album

we really shaped all of the music to the story.

And, of course, the very last thing we wrote for that album

was the Overture,

which is how an overture is created.

It takes all the themes that exist in the opera,

and you combine them and make an overture

that introduce you to those musical themes.

And it was Neil’s idea to do an overture.

Let’s take all these pieces

and put it together in one really cool opening.

- Great. That fucking rocked.

That was fun. - Pretty good, yeah.

- That was fucking fun. - Awesome.

- That’s called throwing you into the deep end.

- Yeah, that beginning was tricky, man.

God, sorry it took so long to--

- It’s, you know, it’s the nature of our music.

- Yeah, it’s amazing when I started analyzing this stuff,

God, just how genius, you know, Neil’s parts were.

It’s like, it always builds in some clever way--

- Yes.

- When it comes back around again,

he adds this here or there, or you know...

It was always a little more complicated.

It’s always moving forward in the coolest way.

Of all the drummers we know,

we think you are more closely aligned

with his sort of musical spirit.

- In the compositional way for sure, like I said,

when you’re just making things build and...

And the arrangement part of it too, you know,

we’re using toms in this part or that part

to make it grow in the proper way...

To me, Neil approached the music

like a classical piece of music.

The precision, the musicality, the power.

His drum parts were so integral to the arrangement,

and they were musical hooks.

Which, for drumming, a rhythmic instrument,

is not very, you know... doesn’t happen all the time.

- I always explain it in terms of timing.

I started playing drums in 1965.

When all you had to do was go boom-bop-bop-boom-bop.

And you were a drummer.

And then suddenly, in the late 60s,

Keith Moon opened my eyes to a whole new style

of flamboyant drumming.

And then, King Crimson I remember getting aware of

very early on.

Michael Giles’ drumming is so active

5yet so musical on there.

The combination of fills, never mind the frequency,

never repeated himself,

here are permanent lessons for me.

Never play the same fill twice,

which I try, you know, devotedly to do.

And the makeup of those fills,

the composition and placement of those fills.

- The lasting influence for me with Neil

is how good a designer...

...a rhythmic designer he was.

I’ve very carefully studied the songs

that I’m gonna play with Alex and Geddy.

And I wrote out a very detailed chart

of the whole thing.

Then, as I started to play along with it,

I can clearly see,

there’s an extra layer in this verse

that wasn’t in the first verse.

And it’s really when you get into the details of it

that you realize how much thought

went into every drum part.

There’s no extra fat lying around, it’s all very lean.

♪ He’s got a road map of Jupiter ♪

♪ A radar fix on the stars ♪

♪ All along the highway ♪

♪ She’s got a liquid-crystal compass ♪

♪ A picture book of the rivers Under the Sahara ♪

♪ They travel in the time of the prophets ♪

♪ On a desert highway straight to the heart of the sun ♪

♪ Like lovers and heroes ♪

♪ And the restless part of everyone ♪

♪ We’re only at home when we’re on the run ♪

♪ On the run ♪

♪ He’s got a star map of Hollywood ♪

♪ A list of cheap motels ♪

♪ All along the freeway ♪

♪ She’s got a sister out in Vegas ♪

♪ The promise of a decent job ♪

♪ Far away from her hometown ♪

♪ They travel on the road to redemption ♪

♪ A highway out of yesterday ♪

♪ That tomorrow will bring ♪

♪ Like lovers and heroes ♪

♪ Birds in the last days of spring ♪

♪ We’re only at home When we’re on the wing ♪

♪ On the wing ♪

The first time I heard Dreamline, I thought,

I’ll just write out where the bass drum notes are.

Well, it doesn’t repeat.

These are all individually written to follow the vocals.

- When we would present him with a piece of music,

if he loved the melody, he was a slave to that melody.

That’s why it’s hard to explain to a drummer,

when they’re trying to learn a Rush song.

Why is he playing what he’s playing?

Well, listen to the vocal.

He’s trying to stay out of the way of the vocal,

at the same help express the emotion of the vocal

through his drums.

Another thing I love about the relationship

between drumming and lyric writing

is when we start to write a song

and I’m working out a drum part,

I know the lyrics.

You know, I’ve heard of ridiculous stories of bands

recording a whole song and then having to redo it

because when the lyrics were finally written

as the last possible thing as the vocals

are being recorded, they didn’t fit.

And the drummer’s having to be so simplistic

because who knows where the lyrics are gonna fall,

they don’t wanna be in the way of them.

Then all you can do is keep time,

and you wouldn’t dare put a fill somewhere,

because there might be words there.

I loved the fact I know when the vocals are gonna end

so I can make some noise there!

♪ We travel on the road to adventure ♪

♪ On a desert highway ♪

♪ Straight to the heart of the sun ♪

♪ Like lovers and heroes ♪

♪ And the restless part of everyone ♪

♪ We’re only at home when we’re on the run ♪

♪ On the run ♪

- Awesome. - Whew!

- I don’t think I made too many mistakes.

- No, you were spot on.

- I thought it was really good.

- Robert Fripp always used to say, there will be mistakes.

Let’s try to make a better quality mistake.

- Oh, I like that.

- That is good. - Yeah. And there were.

- Yeah. - There always will be.

- They were the best mistakes. - Of course.

- The most memorable things that happen on the stage,

as you know, is when you have that train wreck for a moment,

and everyone’s looking around going, who do I follow?

- But then it suddenly comes back.

- It’s usually the bass player that sorts it out.

But nobody’s listening to the bass player,

that’s the problem.

Neil seldom made a mistake, really.

If there was a little blooper, something minor,

we wouldn’t really notice it.

That put pressure on me to make sure I played right.

I always felt better if I knew I had a good night

’cause I kept up to his standard.

Some so much with Ged.

There’s something that’s a little more.

- Shitty? - No, no, no.

There’s something that’s a little more live and looser

but the way we were responded.

Cause I’ll come over to Ged’s side of stage

and we’ll goof around and, you know,

he might make a clunker while you’re doing that.

It’s no big deal, you don’t care.

But you look over at Neil, you’re like...

You played that note wrong.

Yeah, but I was kissing him when I played that note wrong.

You know, take it easy.

But there would be a sense of living up to his standard

which was good.

One time I had to talk him down,

he was distraught, he was destroyed.

He was doing the Letterman Drum Solo Week

and on national TV and he dropped a drumstick--

Oh my god. My god. My--

Dude, dude, dude.

I drop drumsticks almost every song,

it’s part of my act.

Drop a drumstick, pick up another one,

chuck it, you know.

- We would talk about mistakes sometimes

and I had the steel trap memory for a lot of things

and I could remember a mistake I made in a song,

what venue it was, what tour

and Neil said, oh, yeah, I remember that,

we were in Frankfurt or something.

And I realized, oh, yeah, he has his catalog too.

I mean, that’s the flipside of having a really good memory

because you go, well, I won’t do that again.

It will be something that you learn from.

It matters

for me to try to play better all the time

and to play my best all the time,

to keep it fresh and changing.

It’s kind of responsibility, I see it as a drummer.

A perfect example was around 1994,

I had developed really good precision of time

but I felt a stiffness because of that metronomic need.

And so, I studied with Freddy Groover,

an old jazz guy from the Bronx

who lived through the jazz times

of the ’40s and ’50s and gravitated into teaching.

And Freddy is all about the motion.

And it was all about the motion

of the hands and feet

that contributed to a dance.

Through Freddy’s ideas of round orbital motion,

a beat being a point in a circle

rather than a dot on a line,

he got me into the idea of making things flow,

the space between the beats is what counts.

I used to play straight through the drum

aiming for the floor so all beats were just going

through the surface of the drum head,

with Freddy’s approach,

the drum head is the end of the motion,

everything happens in the air.

- Unfortunately, a lot of pop music is played like that.

It’s extremely vertical.

It’s like people slapping water when they swim.

Mm, yeah.

- It doesn’t--

- Inefficient motion. - Breathe.

- Hand me those lumps of wood for a second,

I got a demonstration.

- If you were playing...

I just wanted to make his skin crawl there

but that’s metronomically fine time,

but when you learn...

- Let’s put it this way, if you’re not breathing,

it’s not alive.

You know?

So you gotta at least put the breath in there, huh?

I had three separate six month sessions with Freddy

and practicing every day, completely reinventing the way

I sat at the drums, the way I hit the drums,

the way I held the sticks,

the way I set up everything around me

was a complete transformation.

- Here’s one of the greatest

rock ’n’ roll drummers ever,

decides to start from scratch.

He cared so much about getting better

and thinking about other ways

that I can be a student of the instrument.

- He did the Buddy Rich thing and it’s very big band.

He’s like, I been rehearsing with Pete Erskine.

This is after the Freddy Groover stuff.

So I was like, oh, and he goes,

well, I’ve been taking lessons every week

and we’re still on the high hat.

He goes, because I have that Canadian swing.

- The white Canadian swing. - Right.

Neil putting that much time and energy

into recreating his whole technique,

to me it shows how obsessed he was maybe.

I don’t know if there’s a better word.

But this is a guy who would go

and rehearse for months by himself

before the band would rehearse for months for a tour.

- We called it rehearsing for rehearsing.

So, and it was a full month

and it was somewhat business hours, Monday to Friday.

In a studio, I would be programming

the electronic drums for him while he basically

put himself through torture getting his hands in shape.

By the end of the first week

his hands would be all blistered up.

It was a painful experience for him for awhile.

That sounds fun.

It is fun.

- I just got to remember how to play the fucking song.

- Oh, yeah.

Must’ve been one of your staples.

- You know, we haven’t played this one live in...

Actually, they did send me Bravado

and New World Man

and I’m listening to New World Man and...

No, that sounds like a lot of work, I’ll do the easy one

and then I listen to it again and then I tried playing it

and said, no, wait a minute,

this is right in my comfort zone.

It’s energetic but it’s, uh, I like that. Let’s play this.

- So, the ending we were doing...

The drum fills are not challenging to play,

they’re challenging to remember

and that was the hardest part is, you know--

Oh, shit! It’s coming up now! It’s coming up now!

That’s just contrary to my instincts

as banging drums,

you know, is not a thinking person

but it goes entirely against the grain.

But if this is for Neil, I’m going to play them

just the way the professor did.

- Bah! Bah! Bah!

- I like that. Yeah.

One, doodle, doodle, two doodle, doodle,

three, doodle, doodle, four...

- Now we can do a big bam-boom if you want

or let it ring out.

- Wow. Washing out. Folks love washing out.

♪ He’s a rebel and a runner ♪

♪ He’s a signal turning green ♪

♪ He’s a restless young romantic ♪

♪ Wants to run the big machine ♪

♪ He’s got a problem with his poisons ♪

♪ But you know he’ll find a cure ♪

♪ He’s cleaning up the systems ♪

♪ To keep his nature pure ♪

♪ Learning to match the beat of the old-world man ♪

♪ Learning to catch the heat of the third-world man ♪

♪ He’s got to make his own mistakes ♪

♪ And learn to mend the mess he makes ♪

♪ He’s old enough to know what’s right ♪

♪ And young enough not to choose it ♪

♪ He’s noble enough to win the world ♪

♪ But weak enough to lose it ♪

♪ He’s a new world man ♪

Coming through the ’70s, of course,

there was a huge revolution in popular music

with punk and new wave coming in.

And those who ignored it were made irrelevant.

But we young enough and adaptable enough

to embrace that.

And I was a huge fan of music in the late ’70s,

early ’80s and the tendency toward tighter songs

and wanted it in my drumming,

wanted it in our band’s sound.

We were listening to Elvis Costello,

Talking Heads and The Police,

all of them became hugely influential on us.

♪ Roxanne ♪

♪ Roxanne ♪

How did you meet Pratt?

Like I know we played together at the Pink Pot.

Yeah. Which I remember very well.

- 1979.

- And we were on like early afternoon.

You guys weren’t even in the building when we--

- No, I-- We watched you from the back, side stage.

- Oh, really? - Yeah.

- I remember you guys came off stage

and you jumped right in the pool.

And that’s only backstage I’ve ever been

in that had a swimming pool.

Yeah, that’s pretty cool.

- Thank you!

We played at the Pink Pot Festival

in Holland and we played kind of early in the afternoon.

Rush was headlining

and so they were kind of a big deal.

They had their stage with this huge enormous drum set.

Rush were kind of the epitome of what went before.

And without knowing music at all

we took umbrage at them

because they were still long haired

and this was an era of a whole different hairdo

and they were diligently non-up-to-date.

And I’m ashamed to say that The Police, The Used,

Rush, Foreigner

and Fleetwood Mac to do battle with

as if they could give a shit about us.

You’ll probably know that back in the day The Police

were sort of against the establishment!

- We were establishment?

- Oh, really?

- And there might’ve been some not unkind words

which I soon was educated out of such a position.

- No offence taken.

Around the late ’70s, I make all the tapes

that they play before our concerts

and I happened to put some Police on

from their first album.

And they would play over the PA before the show

and the audience would boo because somehow

if they were Rush fans

they were supposed to hate the Police and vice versa

which to me being in the band and I made the tape, you know?

And I like all these bands

and all these different kinds of music and enjoy them.

It’s incomprehensible to me

but there are these factions, you know?

And they get so narrowly focused on things

and I think music happens that way too.

I think you just get dismissed and shunted off as, well,

they’re not hip, so.

We’ve gotta be hip

so we can’t talk about people who aren’t hip.

I was not a Rush fan

and so it wasn’t until I met Neil years later,

hey, let’s do lunch.

I got to know him and then got to know the band.

And getting into it, going to see them.

I get it, I understand why

people get all reverent about Rush.

♪ Learning to match the beat of the old-world ♪

♪ Well he’s learning to catch the heat ♪

♪ Of the third-world man ♪

♪ He’s a new world man ♪

♪ He’s a new world man ♪

♪ Oh yeah ♪

Take that!

- Fuck, that is hard work, though.

I thought I was fit.

- Well, you know, it’s a Rush song,

it’s gonna be goofy.

- It’s gonna be hard fucking work.

And I heard that from guy that used to play with Rush.

I’m glad you’re here.

I appreciate you coming to do this.

- Ah, it’s an honour. It really is an honour.

It’s really interesting

how Stewart and Neil became great friends

because they were so similar in so many ways.

I went out to dinner one night with the two of them

and the two of them just like, do, do, do, do!

Throughout the dinner while I was just eating.

There’s an understanding amongst drummers,

they speak their own language

and it’s a dialect that I’ve come to realize

I don’t really understand.

After the dinner, we went over to Stewart’s place

and Stewart this studio

and he has every instrument in the world

and it was pure musical fun.

He loved those jams you did at the Grove.

Oh, man.

Those were a lot of fun.

He would get on the drums, plan, okay Neil’s on drums.

Had them set up facing each other.

Hey, Danny, Neil’s coming over.

So, I had Neil and Danny which means I get to play guitar.

It was fun jamming with them, you know.

You can just hear Neil go off too, man.

It was a great sense of improv.

Those would go on for hours

and a couple of bottles of Macallan

would help, you know?

You get to know someone that way.

It was good times.

- One, two, three, four.

I remember meeting this guy

who’s work I’ve loved and admired for so long.

I’m trying to think of what to say, right?

Like, what do I say to this guy

who’s my favorite lyricist,

you know, my favourite drummer

in my favourite band.

And I know that Neil’s a private guy

and I don’t want to get it wrong.

So, he answers the door and he’s walking towards me

and he’s this big, big guy and he looks down at me

and extends his hand and he says,

I’m a huge fan of your work.

So, all the like steam was of the kettle.

Instantly.

We were by some metric,

if not equals, we were at least speaking

a language that we were both maybe fluent in.

And it changed everything.

They were playing Universal Amphitheatre

in Los Angeles and Al invited me down

and he’s like, are you here yet?

He says, Neil wants to see you.

And I was like, oh, okay.

You know, it’s like being summoned by--

The king will see you now.

I was like, oh, shit!

So, he had his dressing room

far away from everybody else, of course.

And I go in and he’s like,

So nice to meet you.

That’s his voice! And he’s a big guy. Big dude.

I was like, whoa!

And we shook hands and immediately he’s like,

you know, I’m a big fan

of your playing, the Chili Peppers.

And he was asking me about parts on some of our songs

that he knew and I was like, oh my god!

I was like, couldn’t believe, it was so cool.

And it was immediately we were peers.

- When you met Neil, who reached out to who?

- Neil wrote to me. - Yeah.

- And I was very surprised, you know?

And the email was written like a book,

like, all the indents at the start of the line.

Immaculate, no mistakes, no grammar mistakes.

- He was all about that.

That brotherhood of drummers.

If he reached out to you, your playing moved him,

a hundred percent. Yeah.

- God. I mean, I wouldn’t dream

of writing to a guy like that.

Hey, how you doing?

You know? I wouldn’t expect a reply.

I get message from Neil

and he said that I can see you’re playing

with Porcupine Tree in Los Angeles next month,

I was wondering if I could take you to lunch.

He said, let’s meet at 12:30.

I got in a taxi, I got down there about a quarter to 12.

And as I’m walking down the block,

I look and I think there’s a guy sitting outside

looks like Neil Peart.

So, he was actually earlier than I was.

He was so unstarry and without ego,

it was just like two drummers just talking drums.

Afterwards he said, I can take you back.

So, I thought, please, I just hope the band

are standing outside the venue

when I pull up in an Ashton Martin

chauffeur driven by Neil Peart,

this will be, this will be so good.

And, of course, they weren’t.

Neil and I corresponded

but it was a few years until we finally met in person.

By that point it felt like two old friends,

we would talk about drumming

but he would also talk about literature, philosophy,

art, science, nature,

the cosmos, astronomy, consciousness, philosophy.

He was a polymath.

And I loved the fact

that I could have these conversations

across a wide variety of topics

that interested me and it interested him too.

Not a lot of people that I could really do that with

and we would meet sometimes at The Cave, you know.

The Cave was him,

was his fortress of solitude

and he had his little office area

where he sat at the desk and typed and worked.

When you went to visit Neil

you would hang out and you would be goofy

and you would tell your stories

and you would do your real connecting at The Cave.

He had the most beautiful cars and

they were all kind of just right there,

the silver surfers.

And a dangerously comfy couch.

We’d get together on Fridays at The Cave

and just talk about life.

I didn’t have a big brother growing up

and I really feel like Neil became my big brother.

And a lot of that happened at The Cave

where I could kind of ask him for his advice on things

that maybe I was going through.

And so I just remember many times

feeling a certain way walking into The Cave

and feeling completely different on the way out,

like, it’s probably going to be okay.

♪ Living on a lighted stage ♪

♪ Approaches the unreal ♪

- Want to start banging with us, dude?

- I will bang. - You’ll banga!

- Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Chad Smith will join us

for the performance of Limelight.

- I watched you guys in your video

at La Studio where you did it.

First of all, it was really beautiful

’cause you were just fresh faced young men.

Was that-- - 35 years ago.

- ’80? - ’80.

Neil is fucking banging in that video.

He’s just--

Killing them! I was like...

It’s a video!

He wasn’t phoning in.

None of that shit.

Every video we did,

he’s not going to pretend to play the song,

he has to play the song.

He played it full out.

♪ Living on a lighted stage approaches the unreal ♪

♪ For those who think and feel ♪

♪ In touch with some reality ♪

♪ Beyond the gilded cage ♪

♪ Cast in this unlikely role ill-equipped to act ♪

♪ With insufficient tact ♪

♪ One must put up barriers to keep oneself intact ♪

♪ Living in the limelight the universal dream ♪

♪ For those who wish to seem ♪

♪ Those who wish to be ♪

♪ Must put aside the alienation ♪

♪ Get on with the fascination ♪

♪ The real relation the underlying theme ♪

♪ Living in a fisheye lens caught in the camera eye ♪

♪ I have no heart to lie ♪

♪ I can’t pretend a stranger is a long-awaited friend ♪

Neil liked to hang out with other musicians

but the attention from his fans

made him deeply uncomfortable

because they were expecting godhead from him.

When someone came into his sphere

who approached him as Neil Peart the famous guy

he was suspicious and leery.

No, it was very uncomfortable for him.

- He was very hard to approach.

Yeah, to the point of being angry about it.

Limelight.

- Hmm. Yeah.

Can you name a thing that you think

that your fans don’t know about you

that you wish they did?

- Uh...

Yeah, I’m always bad at that, sorry.

Probably not, um...

Jeez, that’s a lousy one.

The way the music industry works,

you know, they want the private life

and they want all of that but it’s not easy.

It really isn’t because you’re expected to play this role

and you’re expected to be some kind of idol by everyone,

by your fans.

So you find ways to defend against that

and the only way is to draw a firm line

between public life and professional life.

That’s the way I look at it, really.

If I go off to do my job then I’m a professional,

if I’m not doing my job, then I’m a person, you know?

So, don’t get them mixed up.

♪ All the world’s indeed a stage ♪

♪ And we are merely players ♪

♪ Performers and portrayers ♪

♪ Each another’s audience Outside the gilded cage ♪

There was a line for him

going from respect for his work

and appreciation for his work

going past that into adulation

or too much fan-boying out.

But I know he wanted people to feel at ease

for a couple reasons.

Both because he was a polite and kind human being

but also because the awkwardness

made him feel awkward.

- Well, Rita and I, my wife and I

went to a show and it was the end of tour or something

and it was at Four Seasons in Toronto and he

said, we’ll meet for breakfast.

And, so, we’re there having breakfast

and all of the sudden he started getting nervous

and I said, what’s your problem?

Look out in the hallway.

And, of course, there was someone.

So, I said, okay, I’ll go out.

So, I went to the guy and I said, so you’ve noticed Neil.

Yeah, man, wow. You know, I just--

I just want to say hi, I just--

I said, so, you know anything about him?

Oh, I know everything about him.

I said, well, if you know everything about him,

you’ll know that he does not like this.

Just we’ll all walk by

and if-- the best thing you can do,

which I would appreciate and he will, is nothing.

I remember one time we were in Brazil

and we were having dinner in Rio,

some fans came in the restaurant

and wanted his autograph.

And he immediately used to tighten up as you know,

so I just got the papers or whatever it was

and I said, just sign that.

And he signed and I signed it and I gave it back to them

and it was fine, it was all over.

So, it’s funny.

He had all kinds of time for people

when they didn’t know who he was.

- That’s true, he was happiest in those times I think.

- But you know, that’s a flaw

because you can’t have it both ways.

You live on the stage and you pay the price.

- Actually, it is a flaw.

You were a genius,

one of the finest rock drummers to ever live,

best selling author,

you’re going to have to let people

tell you they appreciate that.

You’ve attained this

but you can’t forget why

because without them

you wouldn’t have attained it.

♪ Living in the limelight the universal dream ♪

♪ For those who wish to seem ♪

♪ Those who wish to be ♪

♪ Must put aside the alienation ♪

♪ Get on with the fascination ♪

♪ The real relation the underlying theme ♪

♪ The real relation ♪

♪ The underlying theme ♪

♪ Oh yeah ♪

- Fuck yeah! - That didn’t suck!

Okay!

- I can’t play without looking at you

and I can’t look at you without smiling.

That is just the best feeling.

I don’t want to break to formula.

- So, you clearly know this song.

- Obviously, I know the song but when you actually dig in

and Neil’s parts are such integral parts of, of--

- It’s so arranged.

- Yeah, you can’t jam your way through it.

You can but that’s not the way to do it.

So, I’m like, shit!

Even the beginning--

Wha-- What!? What the fuck is that?

I just want it to feel right. - Yeah, of course.

- So... I’m trying to be musical.

Right? It’s like-- it’s really something.

It’s really something. Really something.

- Limelight remains such a joy to play after all the years.

So you know you got it right, you know,

if you can still play a song 30 years later

and still get the same charge from it.

So, I think Moving Pictures represents so much

that we learned up to that point about song writing,

about arrangement and what we could do with the song

and structure and the dynamics.

And really the same values that I applied in my drumming

came to be in the lyrics

by getting better at the craft of it.

I was experimenting so much.

I remember reading some old poetry

and poetry didn’t used to rhyme,

it used alliteration.

A poem would begin like, when the siege and assault

had ceased at Troy,

was the opening line

to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,

I somehow remember but it fascinated me

that poetry once had nothing to do with rhyme.

It was about rhythm and sound.

It was about the assonance of sound.

And, of course, there’s a relationship

with drumming there in subdividing the beats.

We are at the former site,

the ruins of the studio in Quebec, Canada

where I first came in fall of 1979 with the band

to record Permeant Waves

and work here for the next 20 years off and on

but especially for that first ten years.

Recording, mixing, writing songs.

Yeah.

So, this was the main recording room.

My drums would be set up either right here

or at the other end and the piano’s still there.

Danny, he’s an amazing drummer

and is so many ways, similar stylistically to Neil

and so he got stuck with two of the toughest tunes.

First, we handed him Overture From 2112.

Now he has tackle Tom Sawyer,

which really is a showcase for the drums.

And even Neil always said

it was one of the hardest songs for him to play.

So, yeah, I guess we threw Danny right into the deep end.

- Okay, want to try it from the top?

Shall we bluster through?

I guess so.

From the topping, no stopping.

Okay.

Two, three, four.

♪ A modern-day warrior A mean, mean stride ♪

♪ Today’s Tom Sawyer Mean, mean pride ♪

♪ Though his mind is not for rent ♪

♪ Don’t put him down as arrogant ♪

♪ His reserve, a quiet defense ♪

♪ Riding out the day’s events ♪

♪ The river ♪

♪ What you say about his company ♪

♪ Is what you say about society ♪

♪ Catch the mist, catch the myth ♪

♪ Catch the mystery, catch the drift ♪

♪ The world is, the world is ♪

♪ Love and life are deep ♪

♪ Maybe as his skies are wide ♪

♪ Today’s Tom Sawyer, he gets high on you ♪

♪ And the space he invades, he gets by on you ♪

- So, this is the main recording room

which has changed configuration

and size over the years.

In those days we all recorded together in the room.

So, all of us were learning the song

and interacting to each other’s parts.

So, a lot of stuff was hammered out,

is the best way to put it, here.

You know, by playing it over and over again.

And that’s the way we worked in those days

and that’s when I look at a drum part

like Tom Sawyer for example,

infinitely detailed because I paid it 5,000 times.

And as we played it away in here, you know,

I’d be set up over and I’d be going into that again

and the next time I’d add one detail, add a detail.

Most bands, the drums are usually in the back

but with Rush there’s so much space

because they’re just a three piece,

that Neil just had this giant wide space

that he could fill up

and would fill it up with the big long fills

and all the things that we air drum all the time.

You know, like the middle part of Tom Sawyer

is every air drummer’s fantasy section.

- I’ve never gone to other concerts

where people air drum.

And they’re not--

there’s not 20,000 drummers out there.

Yeah, the drummer can do it,

but like random fan guys, if you hear Tom Sawyer...

They’re all air drumming, he’s going, brap, brap, brap!

They’d be like, what?

- I asked him one time, how do you get the air drummers?

I want that.

How do you get the goddamn air drummers,

it’s amazing at a Rush show to see them.

He goes-- and they’re all doing it with him!

I want that!

♪ No, his mind is not for rent ♪

♪ To any God or government ♪

♪ Always hopeful, yet discontent ♪

♪ He knows changes aren’t permanent ♪

♪ But change is ♪

♪ And what you say about his company ♪

♪ Is what you say about society ♪

♪ Catch the witness, catch the wit ♪

♪ Catch the spirit, catch the spit ♪

♪ The world is, the world is ♪

♪ Love and life are deep ♪

♪ Maybe as his eyes are wide ♪

♪ Exit the warrior, today’s Tom Sawyer ♪

♪ He gets high on you and the energy you trade ♪

♪ Right on to the friction of the day ♪

- I about dropped my stick on the big fill.

- Oh, of course.

- For Neil, it was the toughest song

of the night for him.

- Really? Wow. - Yeah.

- Yeah, that hi-hat is pretty brutal, man.

- Thank you so much for being here.

- Thank you for having me.

- Coming to play these crazy songs,

but I like to think he would be

just fucking enjoying the hell out of this.

- He might be. - Yeah, I hope so.

- Or laughing his head off.

- Yeah, I can hear him now, not so easy, is it?

- That’s for sure.

- He would be saying, haven’t you guys retired yet?

We tried, we failed.

- It happens.

- To be back playing music

that he had a part in constructing is...

Is a way to do him honour.

- Yeah, yeah, that’s the least I can do,

with all the inspiration I’ve gotten from him,

you know, that’s for sure.

I wish I could’ve gotten out and ridden some bikes with him

at the moor, you know...

- That’s a long ride. He liked to ride...

- Yeah, I don’t know if I can do that, what he did.

- 300 on a show day?

- Yeah, but before his motorcycle period,

he would be riding his bicycle.

And I remember one time on a day off,

we played Milwaukee and were going to Chicago,

he rode from Milwaukee to Chicago on his day off.

- To Chicago? On a bicycle. - On a bicycle.

And then he goes and does a three-hour show.

Not normal. - Yeah.

- I had started bicycling on the Grace Under Pressure Tour,

so 1984,

and I just kept the bicycle in the luggage bay of the bus

and pretty soon started riding from city to city

and going for distance, on the back roads, of course.

But I always knew that someday I would ride a motorcycle.

In the ’90s, I got into it big time.

And the last couple of tours,

I’ve travelled completely independently,

set my own itinerary, travelled the back roads

of America and the small towns.

Takes enormous concentration and mental discipline

on the motorcycle.

But there’s a whole other kind of input

and a whole other kind of mental activity created.

I have a lot of good reflections and ideas

on work and possibilities,

because your mind is at such a high pitch.

And there are many times I stop,

and I always have a little notebook with me,

if there was some reflection that you want to get down

in ink before you forget it

and something else fills your mind.

So all of that is part of my writing,

and all of my even creative thinking.

Neil had an effortless,

conversational voice as an author.

Lyric writing is largely, if not all about economy.

Trimming it down, making it function

for a singer and a melody.

But his voice as a prose author

was far more casual.

Much more about how he feels

in certain moments and certain places.

You know, for someone who was so intensely private,

it was fascinating to me

how revealing he was in his prose.

Again, like, kind of a contradiction.

When you’re writing,

you’re having a conversation with yourself.

And that’s a great audience for him.

So he could bare his soul,

he could share all these thoughts

about a million things,

in that form much more easily.

And you establish a conversation with yourself,

to help you sort your heart out,

help you sort your emotions out.

It’s really therapeutic.

And artful, at the same time.

So all those things are very appealing.

And so it’s...

That’s what his book, Ghost Rider, was for him.

He got on his bike

and did all those epic journeys

across Canada and up into Alaska,

down through America, into South America, and back.

To be one step ahead of the ghosts

that were chasing him all the time.

And he lived with...

With what he’d gone through, you know,

every second of the day, as I would imagine

every person that’s lost a child.

Never mind, and a wife, goes through.

It never ends.

And just to survive, he needed to be a step ahead.

- He was running from himself, I think, in some ways.

But what a horror he had to run from,

losing his family as he did.

And so, being the natural writer he is,

I think for his own sanity

he needed to write that stuff down.

And of course, it’s an incredible piece of writing.

And he doesn’t whitewash anything.

Everything I ever believed has been blown out of the water,

even my simple karmic morality of,

you do good and you get good.

Sadly, very sadly, it ain’t so.

Earlier today, while riding, I was thinking

of how missing my girls

was so often like a physical ache.

And just now, that connected with the ghost rider,

phantom pain.

Hurting for a piece of you that’s been torn away.

I read Ghost Rider before I met him.

And the fact that he released that book...

I still can’t believe that that’s out there,

because of how brutal that time

must have been for him.

Travels on the healing road, that’s the subtitle.

And I think maybe, on some level,

he was hoping that his experiences

could be helpful to someone else

who might be experiencing something similar.

It was a long and very desperate trip,

especially when you’re trying to claw your way back to life.

Basically, I travelled non-stop.

And certainly, it was ruthless,

travelling all that time.

It was when I came to rest and I came out to California

and met my wife to be and moved out here,

I had a suitcase,

a ghetto-blaster and a bicycle,

those were my possessions.

And I used to write a lot of letters at that time, too.

And I’d write to friends saying,

I’m freer than any man ought to be

and ever wants to be, you know?

I had nothing to hold on to and nothing to be attached to.

And it was a wonderful place to start from.

So then I got some stability there,

with Carrie’s help, then realized that I was...

I was wanting to work again.

So that’s basically what it took,

I had to stop moving first.

- Oh, that’s a nice sound.

Beautiful.

You ready?

- Yes, sir.

- One... Two... One, two, three, four.

♪ Pariah dogs and wandering madmen ♪

♪ Barking at strangers and speaking in tongues ♪

♪ The ebb and flow of tidal fortune ♪

♪ Electrical changes are charging up the young ♪

♪ It’s a far cry from the world ♪

♪ We thought we’d inherit ♪

♪ It’s a far cry from the way we thought we’d share it ♪

♪ You can almost feel the current flowing ♪

♪ You can almost see the circuits blowing ♪

♪ One day I feel I’m on top of the world ♪

♪ It’s falling in on me ♪

♪ I can get back on ♪

♪ I can get back on ♪

♪ One day I feel I’m ahead of the wheel ♪

♪ Next it’s rolling over me ♪

♪ I can get back on ♪

♪ I can get back on ♪

Some songs, like Far Cry,

I just loved to listen to Neil play the drums.

Nobody plays drums like that, you know?

’Cause he’s got such a bag of tricks, I mean,

he can literally do anything.

Any rhythm, any pattern, any anything, he can do it.

There’s nothing I could throw at him that he couldn’t do.

So when it came time to make the Clockwork Angels record,

we really pushed hard, maximum Neil.

There’s some songs on there that I think are some

of the most challenging drum parts

he’s done on any of the songs, ever.

- Hey, you know what else would kick ass

that you just did, that you hadn’t done yet?

When you went into the verse, you took the hi-hat out...

Doo-doo, grah. - Yeah.

- That was awesome.

That was really great, that space right there.

- I jumped it, I jumped the crash.

- Yeah, that was awesome.

- What would you like to do now?

- Let’s do it one more time. - From where?

- From the top. - Oh.

- One more time from the top. - Fucker.

- Just like we just did. - Okay.

You know I’m perspiring.

Towards the end of the sessions,

I remember he came in one day

and I remember he said

his shoulder started to hurt him a little bit.

Didn’t really think much of it

and then we finished the record.

I remember going out and seeing them

on the Clockwork tour and hanging out with him

and I remember him saying, you know, Bouge, I’m tired.

My feet hurt, I’m sore.

That was the first time I remember him

kinda saying anything.

When you play like Neil, it’s very physical,

double kick and two bass drums.

Just the dynamic quality of it all

and when you go to do something like that

and then your body just can’t do it,

it can get frustrating.

Especially when you go back and play,

like, your earlier songs, I’m starting to feel that now,

even, like I’m 64 so

the stuff I did when I was 33, man...

I was hitting harder, you know?

It was just a whole different vibe.

- I’m 64 fucking years old.

I can’t believe it! It’s crazy to me!

’Cause I’m still a kid that just plays the drums

and I’m the luckiest person in the world,

to do what I love to do, but like,

when you get done playing, I mean,

our backstage looks like a fucking infirmary,

it’s like, this guy’s in the ice bath,

and this guy got the thing on his knee.

And I’ve got a shoulder thing, like a pitcher.

Neil used to describe drumming

as running a marathon while doing math equations.

So when he says at the end of a tour, I’m exhausted.

He’s not just saying he’s physically spent,

he’s exhausted.

He was playing in great discomfort

and I think that makes you more aware

of losing your powers,

knowing how hard it is

to maintain your level of excellence.

And how painful it would be

not to be able to maintain that.

We’d like to play a song for you tonight

that we’ve never played live.

The song is called Losing It.

A song like Losing It was written about a movie,

The Turning Point, where they had a dancer,

and she reached that point where suddenly,

her ambitions and her desires

were being betrayed by her body.

And another input into that same song

was the tragedy of Ernest Hemingway

when he got toward the end of his life

and he just simply couldn’t write anymore.

Is it worse to have had that gift and to have used it

and to have lived it, and then to have to lose it,

and say goodbye to it.

I would hate to face the day when I’m betrayed

by my own body, you know, where suddenly,

the things that I want to do in life, I’m unable to.

I think it would be such a deep tragedy,

that it would lead to the kind of feelings of despair

that Ernest Hemingway was driven to kill himself for.

♪ The writer stares with glassy eyes ♪

♪ Defies the empty page ♪

♪ His beard is white, his face is lined ♪

♪ And streaked with tears of rage ♪

♪ Thirty years ago, how the words would flow ♪

♪ With passion and precision ♪

♪ But now his mind is dark and dulled ♪

♪ By sickness and indecision ♪

To go out on the top and not face the diminishing

of your ability, that’s what I couldn’t face.

Having to face losing it as my body evolves,

playing those same songs, the drain of that performance.

Every second night, every second night,

every second night, you know, I’m 63 years old!

And in eight years, I’ll be 71! You know?

I can play Charlie Watts’ drum parts when I’m 71,

I can’t play Neil Peart drum parts when I’m 71.

♪ For you, the blind who once could see ♪

♪ The bell tolls for thee ♪

- Sadder still to watch it die than never to have known it.

For you, the blind who once could see.

The bell tolls for thee.

This is all about his deepest fears.

I mean, he was playing incredibly well

on that last tour, and yet, it was fear like this

that made him say to himself,

I am not going to go out on stage

and embarrass myself, ever.

- In 2014, I thought, hmm, so we have to talk.

Those fateful words, guys, we have to talk.

So in November of that year,

we all got together in Toronto

and I was quite prepared to say, guys, you know, sorry,

but I’m done.

- I had surgery before the last tour

and I just wanted to do one more tour

and he came to Toronto and...

- He didn’t want to do it. - He didn’t want to do it.

He came to tell us that he’s done. He’s finished.

And there’s nothing wrong with that, you know?

38 years of touring,

he’s got the toughest job by far.

Wait a sec.

- I know I do normally, but...

But because I said that I hadn’t felt well

on the previous tours, and now I had a chance to feel good

on one last tour, and I would love to go back on the road.

- I’d left one little window open in my mind, really,

that if anybody said they wanted to do it one more time,

and didn’t know if they’d be able to...

It was like, okay, so,

the bastard pulled that exact card.

Alex, said, well, he’s got the arthritis and that, said,

I’d really like to do it one more time.

Despite breaking him into a million pieces,

he agreed to it, and would do that for me.

Yeah, he did it for you.

He did it for you. - Yeah.

- And he said afterwards, he said,

I was prepared to end unless Alex said that.

And that fuckin’ guy went and said that.

But, you know, he moaned, he said he spent the night

storming around his hotel room saying fuck a million times.

But he woke up the next day and that was it.

He was getting ready for the tour.

He made a decision, he’ll stick by it.

♪ One day I feel I’m on top of the world ♪

♪ The next it’s falling in on me ♪

♪ I can get back on ♪

♪ I can get back on ♪

♪ One day I feel I’m ahead of the wheel ♪

♪ Next it’s rolling over me ♪

♪ I can get back on ♪

♪ I can get back on ♪

♪ One day I fly through a crack in the sky ♪

♪ And the next it’s falling in on me ♪

♪ I can get back on ♪

♪ I can get back on ♪

♪ Oh, I can get back on, I can get back on ♪

I hope that there’s some way

of showing a human side to Neil,

it’s not just all this serious drummer thing.

The guy that was funny,

the guy that was very considerate and sweet.

Who cared about his friends a lot.

He felt he had a debt to repay, I think,

to both of us for the support,

not that we’d ever expected anything,

you just do what you do, it’s your brother

going through a nightmare

when he was going through the death of his daughter

and wife and all of that.

And we stood behind him

and helped him through as best we could.

And he never forgot that.

And I think, frankly, he ended up touring longer

than he would’ve preferred to

because he felt that he owed that debt.

It was like any other tour,

you weren’t really thinking about the end coming

until it actually hit you in the face on that day,

August 1st, 2015.

And once you do, he gets up at the last song

and goes down to the front of the stage.

He never did that, ever.

And burst into tears.

That’s when you knew that, God, this is the end.

- On behalf of our whole organization, thank you!

For 40 awesome years.

And I do hope we’ll meet again sometime.

Bye-bye!

Of course, he wouldn’t add more shows,

and he wouldn’t budge.

He agreed to do 30 shows and 30 shows he did,

he fulfilled his obligation.

And, um...

The cruelest twist of all,

it was the fact that he got ill.

- Mm-hmm.

Can you tell me when you found out

that Neil was sick?

- Rita and I went to Quebec,

the last time that we went to Quebec together

and he asked the strangest questions,

and Rita was like, is there something wrong with him?

I said, I don’t know.

And then at one point, he said to me, he said,

and he was an avid crossword doer, as am I,

and he said, have they changed the way

they format crosswords?

I said, no. No, I don’t think so.

- He mentioned to me that he had been doing

the New York Times crossword puzzle up in Quebec

and that it was seeming harder to him.

Which, for anybody else, you know...

You’re not doing the New York Times

crossword puzzle in an hour, or whatever, in a morning,

it’s just not happening, so.

I think maybe even when he told me, I just thought,

well, buddy.

Welcome to humanity.

Like, you’re having a human moment, you know.

But, you know, eventually it became clear

that there was something else going on.

- I heard from him and he said,

something’s wrong, I have a tumour in my brain

and I just had surgery.

Or something like that.

It was a short paragraph.

And I read that over and over again...

in disbelief, I don’t even think I answered for a day,

I was so shocked.

I didn’t tell anyone.

No one.

I could only imagine what Geddy and Alex

and their families and, you know,

Carrie and Olivia

and the rest of the Pearts were experiencing.

- The news was not good

and he surpassed everybody’s

estimations for how long

he was gonna be able to fight this battle,

by orders of magnitude.

Um...

So, the Friday lunches became...

Maybe just that much more important.

You know, he was still going to the Cave and still working.

But you could see that his...

body was failing and he...

It was, just everything was getting harder.

- I went to the Man Cave.

And...

It was obvious.

And um... At the end...

we said goodbye.

I knew I was never going to see him again.

- As Neil was getting closer,

he invited me over to the house one afternoon

and we sat on his balcony and he said, you know,

I wanted to ask you if you would lead the memorial.

And I said, I’m honoured to.

I have two questions.

One...

anything you want me to say in particular?

He said, no, say exactly what you want.

And then I said, my other question is...

I don’t know why I asked him this.

I said, how long should I speak?

- My last conversation with him...

was about music.

Of course, neither of us knew

it would be our last conversation,

but, he started that conversation

by wanting to share with me how...

proud he was of the work we had done together.

And so, he knew his days were numbered, so...

There are things he wanted to say to his friends.

We were over at the Cave one day and...

And he had retired from riding motorcycles

and so he had mounted his motorcycle up on the wall,

’cause it was no longer going to be ridden.

And he pointed up at the motorcycle

and he said, I made it, I did it.

That didn’t get me.

And he had this smile on his face when he said it,

right, you know?

And...

So...

I want to just celebrate that we had him

for as long as we had him and that...

It’s hard.

To find somebody who’s...

that special and then lose him.

But the bike didn’t get him.

So there’s something.

We always had a connection

rooted in goofiness.

And when we first met him,

he seemed like such a strange character

thrown into this little duo.

But we were so lucky.

First of all, we were lucky we found each other as kids

and were able to grow up together

and be stupid for the rest of our lives together.

And we’re lucky he walked into that rehearsal space

that day, I mean, that big goof,

bounding out of the car.

So much of what he wrote about, we lived.

- Yeah. Yeah.

- Thank goodness for it.

- Yeah.

Dude, thank you so much. Thank you so much.

- Sincerely. - It means a hell of a lot.

- To me too. - I gotta come here for a hug.

Thank you.

That was so awesome.

- Thank you. - It was great.

- Well, I hope it did tribute to our buddy.

- Oh, I’m sure it did.

- Fuckin’ did, man, thank you so much.

It felt special, it felt like an honour,

playing with those drummers.

Alex and I have been afraid of our own music.

We had put our music in a box

and left it as a relic of the past.

And by playing them,

we realized that we have 50 years

and a body of music that is still alive.

I was so inspired.

Geddy was very excited, and he said, Al,

do you think there’s a chance that we could

maybe do something together,

as Rush, you know, what do you think?

- We knew that it’s going to be an impossible job,

to replace Neil.

And we talked about it,

but it took a long time to get to that point,

to go back out.

And a big part of the motivation

was celebrating the music,

celebrating Neil.

And it would’ve been much easier for us

to take someone who grew up with our music,

knew all the songs,

but that would have opened an endless conversation

about comparisons

between their former bands,

our band, Neil would’ve played it different.

And so it was about finding someone

that was out of context.

We had heard of Anika

when she was on tour with Jeff Beck.

She’s very, very skilled.

You know, she’s been a drummer since she was a toddler.

Her father’s a musician. It’s in her DNA.

But Anika is coming into this alien world.

She wasn’t really a fan of our music, so you know,

there was a lot of spooling up she needed to do.

She comes from a different genre of music

that’s a lot swishier and jazzier.

But she’s a quick study, man.

By the last day of the audition,

she just nailed everything.

She got it.

After the last day of the session,

we actually sat together

and we talked

and Nick asked me if I want to continue.

And it was just like, wow,

this... I got this gig.

It’s unbelievable.

It’s really happening.

It was clear really quick that I have to learn 40 songs.

It’s just the amount of complex songs,

my brain was full and I felt, oof,

I cannot put more in it.

Your brain is doing all the maths.

Five, seven, now three, okay, let’s go.

Okay, here, seven again, five again, okay.

And you’re running.

I mean, I never met Neil in person but he was big.

Strong, always played powerful,

so I immediately hit the gym.

I do feel responsible for carrying Neil’s legacy.

And I wish I had the chance to meet him

and I wish I had the chance

to have nerdy drum talk with him, you know?

My biggest task is to get the feeling right.

Besides all this technical stuff and the play,

his feel was unique and this is also a big part

of remembering him.

The more I play the songs, the more I think,

gosh, this is genius.

It has to be played like this because it’s so clever built.

Even if it’s driving me crazy sometimes

to remember all of those details,

I think it’s brilliant.

♪ Complicate me, elevate me ♪

♪ Complicate me, elevate me ♪

Rush is a band with a fanbase

that literally know every note.

- I know. - They’re crazy.

They know it better than me!

I really try to not think about that too much,

but of course, as the first show comes close,

I get a bit more nervous.

I was good at putting the pressure aside until now.

- Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for coming,

thank you so much for still being here.

We’d like to celebrate 50 years of music

that was created by that schmendrick over there,

me, and, of course, the great Neil Peart.

We’d like to pay tribute to Neil tonight,

for so many reasons, long overdue.

I’d love to introduce you to some people

that are going to help us pay tribute.

The highly gorgeous Loren Gold.

And the marvellous Anika Nilles, please.

Okay, let’s get with it.

♪ Begin the day with a friendly voice ♪

♪ A companion, unobtrusive ♪

♪ Plays the song that’s so elusive ♪

♪ And the magic music makes your morning mood ♪

Subtitling: difuze