SOUNDTRACK: RUSH
[READ: August 2021] Neil Peart Illustrated Quotes
This book came across my desk at work and I was totally surprised. We do get a lot of music book and we get a lot of pop culture books, but this seemed so unlikely to sit in our music library. I hadn’t even known it existed.
So, what we get here is 100 or so pages of things Neil Peart has said with an accompanying cartoon drawn by Lindsay Lee.
Lee’s style is pretty varied which is nice. The selections of quotations are also very varied which is less nice. Some are thoughtful passages and other just seem to be things Neil said at some point.
You get stuff like:
How could anyone ever be bored in this world when there was so much to be interested in, to learn, to contemplate? with a drawing of Neil driving a motorcycle on top of the globe.
I liked:
Playing a three hour Rush show is like running a marathon while solving equations.
There’s some clever insights into stardom–how fans can be judges, how “Limelight” is till true for him.
But then there’s ones like
I had loved cars since childhood. Mom says my first word was “car.”
What the heck?
I did enjoy reading that Neil used to roller skate in the hallways of stairs before a show and that he and Alex recorded water and nature sounds for parts of “Natural Science” (they need t obe mixed louder, guys).
I also enjoyed reading that Neil worked at Lakeside Park when he was 14,
But then there’s a quote like:
I first learned to cross country ski while working at nearby Le Studio in the early 80s.
or
One night in Quebec a heavy rain hammered down on our metal roof (wonderful sound–nature’s drum solo).
These are nice insights, but they are hardly “quotations.”
I did like reading some details of course, like that the first thing they bonded over was humor–Monty Python especially. Or that one of Neil’s music teachers told him never to play drum while wearing sneakers.
There’s a funny story from his childhood about an Indian friend telling his mom that Neil liked spicy food and the way Neil’s mouth was scalded with spice.
And the funny one where he saw a story titled, “Worst Rock Lyricists.” “The magazine had declared Sting the worst rock lyricist which seemed kind of dumb. The, in second place, I was startled to see–gulp–my name. Ouch.”
The drawings are pretty solid all the way through–showing Neil at various stages in his life. She accomplishes quite a lot with a simple black/white/gray palate. Although the one thing that made me laugh was the artist thanking her lord and Savior Jesus Christ that she got to do this since none of the Rush guys are religious (and Geddy is Jewish).
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