TONIGHT ON THE CATHOLIC CHANNEL: WE DISCUSS NEIL PEART

Tonight I’ll be on SIRIUS XM’s Busted Halo show on The Catholic Channel, talking about the lyrics of Neil Peart – the legendary drummer of Rush. Peart is an atheist, so he might be alarmed, but it's OK: Busted Halo's "Faith and Culture Thursdays" is about finding meaning in "non-religious" music.

It’s a bit unusual for a drummer to write lyrics (when the drummer isn’t the singer), but Rush is an unusual band. Neil Peart wasn’t in the original lineup – Geddy Lee on bass and vocals, Alex Lifeson on guitar and the late John Rutsey on drums – Peart joined for their second album, 1975’s Fly By Night, and they haven’t had a lineup change ever since. On the first album, Geddy and Alex wrote the lyrics, but they really weren’t into it. Since Neil was always reading books, they figured he might be a good writer, and he became the band’s lyricist.
The first song on Fly By Night was “Anthem,” named after the Ayn Rand novella of the same name… it was about a totalitarian future where the word "I" is no longer part of the language. It includes the lyrics go "live for yourself, there's no one else worth living for, begging hands and bleeding hearts will only cry out for more." That kind of thing didn't really fit in in the hippie era, or even the post-hippie era.

I think Peart's thing personally was to always be an individual (and not follow a large collective) and politically, he was very pro-small government. but Rush's lyrics were interpreted by their many detractors as being "fascist," which is ironic... as Geddy Lee's parents were both concentration camp survivors.
In 1976, Rush released their fourth album, 2112. The title track was 20 minutes long with seven different movements and took up all of side 1. It was about a totalitarian society where a forced equality was imposed on everyone - the title character was happy with that, until he finds a guitar, and wants to express himself through that, which, as it turns out, is not allowed. He rebels against them, but it's futile. On side 2, there’s a song called "Something For Nothing" is filled with lines that could be Tea Party bumper stickers in 2010: "you don't get something for nothing, you don't get freedom for free." On the original album, Neil Peart dedicated the album to "the genius of Ayn Rand." One of the big points of Ayn Rand was that she was very much about the individual, and wasn't very altruistic.

Fast forward to Rush's most recent studio album, 2007's Snakes & Arrows, inspired by Neil's traveling around North America on his motorcycle. He didn’t like the control that organized religion seemed to have, especially in the U.S. Songs like "The Larger Bowl" and “Far Cry” are sort of an about face from his earlier lyrics. Ayn Rand probably wouldn't have been concerned with the people who Neil write about in “The Larger Bowl”: "The golden one or scarred from birth, some things can never be changed, such a lot of pain on this earth, it's somehow so badly arranged. Some things can never be changed, some reasons will never become clear, it's somehow so badly arranged, if we're so much the same like I always hear." "Far Cry," laments how "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" - the idea of "sharing" is pretty removed from a Randian way of thinking!
A few years earlier, from 2002's Vapor Trails, is "One Little Victory," a song that I think anyone could get with, no matter what side of the political fence they're on - or no matter what they think of Ayn Rand. The song was written in the aftermath of a tragic year in Peart's life: his daughter died, and a few months later, his wife also passed away. I'm always moved by the entire song, but it is heavy and loud and powerful. While Neil was going through what he was going through, so many of us were still recovering from 9/11. But I think the song will always be an inspiration to anyone in the aftermath of a tragedy, no matter what side of the aisle they’re on.