Background and career
Neil Ellwood Peart ( PEERT; September 12, 1952 – January 7, 2020) was a Canadian musician, songwriter and author, who was the drummer, percussionist, and primary lyricist of the progressive rock band Rush. He was nicknamed "the Professor", after his resemblance to the Gilligan's Island character of the same name. His drumming was renowned for its technical proficiency and his live performances for their exacting nature and stamina. Peart earned numerous awards for his musical performances, including an induction into the Modern Drummer Readers Poll Hall of Fame in 1983 at age 30, making him the youngest person ever so honoured. Peart was born in Hamilton, Ontario, and grew up in Port Dalhousie (now part of St. Catharines). During adolescence, he floated between regional bands in pursuit of a career as a full-time drummer. After a discouraging stint in England, Peart returned home to concentrate on music, where he joined Rush, a Toronto band, in mid-1974, six years after its formation. Together they released 19 studio albums, with ten exceeding a million copies sold in the United States. Billboard lists the band third in "most consecutive gold or platinum albums by a rock band". Early in his career, Peart's performance style was deeply rooted in hard rock. He drew most of his inspiration from drummers such as Keith Moon, Ginger Baker and John Bonham, who were at the forefront of the British hard rock scene at the time. Over time, he began to emulate jazz and big band musicians Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich. In 1994, Peart became a friend and pupil of jazz instructor Freddie Gruber. During this time, Peart revamped his playing style by incorporating jazz and swing components. In addition to serving as Rush's primary lyricist, Peart published several memoirs about his travels. His lyrics for Rush addressed universal themes and diverse subjects, including science fiction, fantasy, and philosophy, as well as secular, humanitarian, and libertarian themes. Peart wrote a total of seven non-fiction books focused on his travels and personal stories. He also co-authored three steampunk fantasy novels with Kevin J. Anderson based on Rush's final album, Clockwork Angels. The two also wrote a dark fantasy novella, Drumbeats, inspired by Peart's travels in Africa. Peart announced his retirement from touring in an interview with Drumhead Magazine in December 2015. In January 2018, bandmate Alex Lifeson confirmed that Rush had disbanded also due to Peart's health issues. During his final years, Peart lived in Santa Monica, California, with his wife, Carrie Nuttall, and daughter. After a three-and-a-half-year illness, Peart died of glioblastoma on January 7, 2020, at age 67.
Peart was born on September 12, 1952, as the first child of Glen and Betty Peart and lived his early years on his family's farm in Hagersville, Ontario, on the outskirts of Hamilton. When he was two years old, the family moved to St. Catharines, where his brother, Danny (d. 2025), and sisters Judy and Nancy were born. At this time his father became parts manager for Dalziel Equipment, an International Harvester farm machinery dealer. In 1956 the family moved to the Port Dalhousie area of the town. Peart attended Gracefield School and later Lakeport Secondary School, and described his childhood as happy; he stated he experienced a warm family life. By early adolescence he became interested in music and acquired a transistor radio, which he would use to tune into popular music stations broadcasting from Toronto, Hamilton, Welland, and Buffalo. Peart's first exposure to musical training came in the form of piano lessons; he later said in his instructional video A Work in Progress that these lessons did not have much influence on him. He had a penchant for drumming on various objects around the house with a pair of chopsticks, so for his 13th birthday his parents bought him a pair of drumsticks, a practice drum, and some lessons, with the promise that if he stuck with it for a year they would buy him a kit. Peart satisfied the agreement, and his parents bought him a drum kit for his 14th birthday; furthermore, he began taking lessons from Don George at the Peninsula Conservatory of Music. His stage debut took place that year at the school's Christmas pageant in St. John's Anglican Church Hall in Port Dalhousie. His next appearance was at Lakeport High School with his first group, The Eternal Triangle. This performance contained an original number titled "LSD Forever". At this show he performed his first solo. Peart got a job in Lakeside Park, in Port Dalhousie on the shores of Lake Ontario, which later inspired a song of the same name on the Rush album Caress of Steel. He worked on the Bubble Game and Ball Toss, but his tendency to take it easy when business was slack resulted in his termination. By his late teens, Peart had played in local bands such as Mumblin' Sumpthin', and the Majority. These bands practiced in basement recreation rooms and garages and played church halls, high schools, and skating rinks in towns across Southern Ontario such as Mitchell, Seaforth, and Elmira. They also played in the Northern Ontario city of Timmins. Tuesday nights were filled with jam sessions at the Niagara Theatre Centre.
At 18 years old (and after struggling to achieve success as a drummer in Canada), Peart travelled to London, England, hoping to further his career as a professional musician. Despite playing in several bands and picking up occasional session work, he was forced to support himself by selling jewellery at a shop called The Great Frog on Carnaby Street. While in London, he came across the writings of novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand. Rand's writings became a significant early philosophical influence on Peart, as he found many of her writings on individualism and Objectivism inspiring. References to Rand's philosophy can be found in his early lyrics, most notably "Anthem" from 1975's Fly by Night and "2112" from 1976's 2112. After 18 months, Peart became disillusioned by his lack of progress in the music business; he placed his aspiration of becoming a professional musician on hold and returned to Canada. Upon returning to St. Catharines, he worked for his father selling tractor parts at Dalziel Equipment.
After returning to Canada, Peart was recruited to play drums for a St. Catharines band known as Hush, who played on the Southern Ontario bar circuit. Soon after, a mutual acquaintance convinced Peart to audition for the Toronto-based band Rush, which needed a replacement for its original drummer John Rutsey. Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson oversaw the audition. His future bandmates describe his arrival that day as somewhat humorous, as he arrived in shorts, driving a battered old Ford Pinto with his drums stored in trashbags. Peart felt the entire audition was a complete disaster. Lee later remarked that he was instantly mesmerized by the way Peart played triplets, also hitting it off on a personal level (with similar tastes in books and music); meanwhile, Lifeson had a less favourable impression of Peart and still wanted to try out one last drummer. After some discussion between Lee and Lifeson, Peart officially joined the band on July 29, 1974, two weeks before the group's first US tour. Peart procured a silver Slingerland kit which he played at his first gig with the band, opening for Uriah Heep and Manfred Mann's Earth Band in front of over 11,000 people at the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh on August 14, 1974. Peart soon settled into his new position, also becoming the band's primary lyricist. Before joining Rush he had written a few songs, but, with the other members largely uninterested in writing lyrics, Peart's previously underutilised writing became as noticed as his musicianship. The band were working hard to establish themselves as a recording act, and Peart, along with the rest of the band, began to undertake extensive touring. His first recording with the band, 1975's Fly by Night, was fairly successful, winning the Juno Award for most promising new act, but the follow-up, Caress of Steel, for which the band had high hopes, was greeted with hostility by both fans and critics. In response to this negative reception, most of which was aimed at the B-side-spanning epic "The Fountain of Lamneth", Peart responded by penning "2112" on their next album of the same name in 1976. The album, despite record company indifference, became their breakthrough and gained the band a following in the United States. The supporting tour culminated in a three-night stand at Massey Hall in Toronto, a venue Peart had dreamed of playing in his days on the Southern Ontario bar circuit and where he was introduced as "The Professor on the drum kit" by Lee. Peart returned to England for Rush's Northern European Tour and the band stayed in the United Kingdom to record their next album, 1977's A Farewell to Kings, in Rockfield Studios in Wales. They returned to Rockfield to record the follow-up, Hemispheres, in 1978, which they wrote entirely in the studio. The recording of five studio albums in four years, coupled with as many as 300 gigs a year, convinced the band to take a different approach thereafter. Peart has described his time in the band up to this point as "a dark tunnel".
In 1991, Peart was invited by Buddy Rich's daughter, Cathy Rich, to play at the Buddy Rich Memorial Scholarship Concert in New York City. Peart accepted and performed for the first time with the Buddy Rich Big Band. Peart remarked that he had little time to rehearse with the band, and noted that he was embarrassed to find the band played a different arrangement of the first song than the one he had learned. Feeling that his big-band drumming performance left much to be desired, Peart would subsequently try to make amends for this by producing and playing on two Buddy Rich tribute albums: Volumes 1 and 2 of Burning for Buddy: A Tribute to the Music of Buddy Rich, released in 1994 and 1997, respectively. While producing the first of these albums, Peart was struck by the tremendous improvement in ex-Journey drummer Steve Smith's playing, and asked him his "secret". Smith responded he had been studying with drum teacher Freddie Gruber. In early 2007, Peart and Cathy Rich discussed another Buddy tribute concert. At the recommendation of bassist Jeff Berlin, Peart once again augmented his swing style with formal drum lessons, this time under the tutelage of another pupil of Freddie Gruber, Peter Erskine, himself an instructor of Steve Smith. On October 18, 2008, Peart once again performed at the Buddy Rich Memorial Concert at New York's Hammerstein Ballroom. The concert has since been released on DVD.
Peart described himself as a "retired drummer" in an interview in December 2015:
