Ticket to the benefit concert put on by Rush for the victims of the Calgary floods, held in Red Deer Alta. on July 24, 2013.
Dale Boyd
Osoyoos Times
On Jan. 7 the world said farewell to the greatest Canadian drummer ever to grace the stage: Neil Peart.
I was able to see his unmatched skills in person twice, once in a unique concert in Red Deer, Alberta after the 2013 flooding in Calgary damaged the Saddledome and the show turned into a benefit concert raising over half a million for flood recovery, and doing what Rush did best: kicking ass.
Well beyond their golden years at that point, I remember being absolutely awestruck at the physicality that Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson brought to the show that lasted nearly four hours — of course, nothing could compare to Peart’s drum solo that night.
For the uninitiated, nearly every Rush concert eventually clears the runway so Peart can do what he is most famous for, hitting the skins with thundering power and expert speed and technicality. I believe Peart once likened a Rush concert to running a marathon while solving equations. It is truly the crown of my concert-going career and likely won’t get topped. The setting, a 7,000-seat local arena usually reserved for Red Deer Rebels hockey games, made the whole experience feel like a weird dream. The band was awesome enough to not only reschedule their concert, but help out flood victims, it was one of the better silver linings to come out of the terrible natural disaster (which I happened to be caught up in when downtown Calgary looked like a lake, making the whole sequence of events seem even more serendipitous).
Peart was not only one of the world’s greatest drummers, he was also a lyricist and author bringing some of the more mythical, philosophical and fantastical elements to Rush songs. I was gifted his novel Clockwork Angels to accompany the 2012 album of the same name prior to seeing my favourite band twice in two years. I really delved into Peart’s work at that point, and it is with a heavy heart I want to publicly say thank you and goodbye.
I want to thank Rush and Neil Peart for coming back to the stage. It was at just the right time in my life that I was able to catch them on the way out of their touring days and I am forever grateful and cherish those memories.
I didn’t always agree with Peart politically, but I appreciated his dedication and his full-hearted effort to express himself poetically — something you won’t find in most, if any, rock drummers.
Peart suffered great tragedy in his life, losing his wife and first daughter within ten months of each other in the late ‘90s. He wrote Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road about his journey and exploration of recovery. I cannot imagine the strength it would take to get through that, and to get back to the busy life in the spotlight with a band touring and recording. Peart’s poetic lyrics and writings are full of life lessons and meditations on tragedy and the great mystery of life, so it is hard to choose which lyric to end this column with. While there are many classics to pick from, while my favourite album is Moving Pictures, I have always shared an emotional connection to Clockwork Angel’s The Garden: “The future disappears into memory / With only a moment between / Forever dwells in that moment / Hope is what remains to be seen.”
