68 Facts About Neil Peart

Neil Ellwood Peart OC was a Canadian-American musician, best known as the drummer and primary lyricist of the rock band Rush.

Neil Peart was born in Hamilton, Ontario, and grew up in Port Dalhousie.

Neil Peart drew most of his inspiration from drummers such as Keith Moon, Ginger Baker, and John Bonham, players who at the time were at the forefront of the British hard rock scene.

In 1994, Neil Peart became a friend and pupil of jazz instructor Freddie Gruber.

Neil Peart wrote a total of seven nonfiction books focused on his travels and personal stories.

Neil Peart coauthored with Kevin J Anderson three steampunk fantasy novels based on Rush's final album, Clockwork Angels.

Neil Peart announced his retirement from touring in an interview with Drumhead Magazine in December 2015.

Neil Peart was born on September 12,1952, to Glen and Betty Neil Peart and lived his early years on his family's farm in Hagersville, Ontario, on the outskirts of Hamilton.

The first child of four, his brother Danny and sisters Judy and Nancy were born after the family moved to St Catharines when Neil Peart was two years old.

Neil Peart attended Gracefield School and later Lakeport Secondary School, and described his childhood as happy; he stated he experienced a warm family life.

Neil Peart had a penchant for drumming on various objects around the house with a pair of chopsticks, so for his thirteenth birthday his parents bought him a pair of drum sticks, a practice drum, and some lessons, with the promise that if he stuck with it for a year they would buy him a kit.

Neil Peart's parents bought him a drum kit for his fourteenth birthday and he began taking lessons from Don George at the Peninsula Conservatory of Music.

Neil 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.

Neil Peart worked on the Bubble Game and Ball Toss, but his tendency to take it easy when business was slack resulted in his termination.

At eighteen years old after struggling to achieve success as a drummer in Canada, Neil Peart travelled to London, England, hoping to further his career as a professional musician.

Neil 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.

Neil Peart soon settled into his new position, becoming the band's primary lyricist.

Neil Peart's 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.

The supporting tour culminated in a three-night stand at Massey Hall in Toronto, a venue Neil 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.

Neil Peart returned to England for Rush's Northern European Tour and the band stayed in the United Kingdom to record the next album, 1977's A Farewell to Kings, in Rockfield Studios in Wales.

Neil Peart has described his time in the band up to this point as "a dark tunnel".

In 1991, Neil Peart was invited by Buddy Rich's daughter, Cathy Rich, to play at the Buddy Rich Memorial Scholarship Concert in New York City.

Neil Peart accepted and performed for the first time with the Buddy Rich Big Band.

Neil Peart remarked that he had little time to rehearse, and noted that he was embarrassed to find the band played a different arrangement of the song than the one he had learned.

At the recommendation of bassist Jeff Berlin, Neil Peart 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, Neil Peart performed at the Buddy Rich Memorial Concert at New York's Hammerstein Ballroom.

Neil Peart wrote the book as a chronicle of his geographical and emotional journey.

Neil Peart was introduced to photographer Carrie Nuttall in Los Angeles by longtime Rush photographer Andrew MacNaughtan.

In early 2001, Neil Peart announced to his bandmates that he was ready to return to recording and performing.

Neil Peart always shied away from these types of in-person encounters, and it was decided that exposing him to a lengthy stream of questions about the tragic events of his life was not necessary.

Neil Peart described himself as a "retired drummer" in an interview in December 2015:.

Neil Peart had been suffering from chronic tendinitis and shoulder problems.

Neil Peart died from glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer, on January 7,2020, in Santa Monica, California.

Neil Peart had been diagnosed three and a half years earlier, and the illness was a closely guarded secret in Peart's inner circle until his death.

Neil Peart's death was widely lamented by fans and fellow musicians alike, who considered it a substantial loss for popular music.

Neil Peart's drumming skill and technique are well-regarded by fans, fellow musicians, and music journalists.

Neil Peart's influences were eclectic, ranging from Pete Thomas, John Bonham, Carl Palmer, Michael Giles, Ginger Baker, Phil Collins, Chris Sharrock, Steve Gadd, Stewart Copeland, Michael Shrieve and Keith Moon, to fusion and jazz drummers Billy Cobham, Buddy Rich, Bill Bruford and Gene Krupa.

Neil Peart had long played matched grip but shifted to traditional as part of his style reinvention in the mid-1990s under the tutelage of jazz coach Freddie Gruber.

Neil Peart played traditional grip throughout his first instructional DVD A Work in Progress and on Rush's Test for Echo studio album.

Neil Peart went back to using primarily matched, though he continued to switch to traditional at times when playing songs from Test for Echo and during moments when traditional grip felt more appropriate, such as during the rudimental snare drum section of his drum solo.

Neil Peart discussed the details of these switches in the DVD Anatomy of a Drum Solo.

Neil Peart played Zildjian A-series cymbals and Wuhan china cymbals until the early 2000s, when he switched to Paragon, a line created for him by Sabian.

In concert starting in 1984 on the Grace Under Pressure Tour, Neil Peart used an elaborate 360-degree drum kit that would rotate as he played different sections of the kit.

Neil Peart performed several songs primarily using the electronic portion of his drum kit.

Shortly after making the choice to include electronic drums and triggers, Neil Peart added what became another trademark of his kit: a rotating drum riser.

Neil Peart's digitally sampled library of both traditional and exotic sounds expanded over the years with his music.

Neil Peart referred to this set, which he used primarily in Los Angeles, as the "West Coast kit".

Neil Peart was noted for his distinctive in-concert drum solos, characterized by exotic percussion instruments and long, intricate passages in odd time signatures.

Neil Peart's complex arrangements sometimes result in complete separation of upper- and lower-limb patterns; an ostinato dubbed "The Waltz" is a typical example.

Neil Peart's solos were featured on every live album released by the band.

Neil Peart's instructional DVD Anatomy of a Drum Solo is an in-depth examination of how he constructs a solo that is musical rather than indulgent, using his solo from the 2004 R30 30th anniversary tour as an example.

The song "Limelight" from the same album is an autobiographical account of Neil Peart's reservations regarding his own popularity and the pressures associated with fame.

From Permanent Waves onward, most of Neil Peart's lyrics revolved around social, emotional, and humanitarian issues, usually from an objective standpoint and employing the use of metaphors and symbolic representation.

In 2007, Neil Peart was ranked No 2 on the now defunct magazine Blender's list of "worst lyricists in rock".

For most of his career, Neil Peart had never publicly identified with any political party or organization in Canada or the United States.

In October 1993, shortly before that year's Canadian federal election, Neil Peart appeared with then-Liberal Party leader Jean Chretien in an interview broadcast in Canada on MuchMusic, but stated in that interview that he was an undecided voter.

Neil Peart has often been categorized as an Objectivist and an admirer of Ayn Rand.

However, in his 1994 Rush Backstage Club Newsletter, while contending the "individual is paramount in matters of justice and liberty," Neil Peart specifically distanced himself from a strictly Objectivist line.

Neil Peart was a member of the Canadian charity Artists Against Racism and worked with them on a radio public service announcement.

Neil Peart authored seven non-fiction books, the latest released in September 2016.

Neil Peart's experiences were penned in Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road.

Years later, after his marriage to Nuttall, Neil Peart took another road trip, this time by car.

Three decades after Neil Peart joined Rush, the band found itself on its 30th anniversary tour.

Neil Peart had a brief cameo in the 2007 film Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters, in which samples of his drumming were played.

Neil Peart had a brief cameo in the 2008 film Adventures of Power and in the DVD extra does a drum-off competition.

Neil Peart appeared in concert with Rush in the 2009 film I Love You, Man, as well as a Funny or Die web short in which the film's main characters sneak into the band's dressing room.

Apart from Rush's video releases as a band, Neil Peart has released the following DVDs as an individual:.

Neil Peart received the following awards in the Modern Drummer magazine reader's poll:.