Posted on 01/14/2020 3:13:58 PM PST by DoodleBob
Neil Peart, the longtime drummer for the Canadian band Rush, died last week of brain cancer, leaving behind a legacy as one of rock's most technically accomplished percussionists and perhaps its most articulate libertarian lyricist. The 67-year-old songwriter regularly championed individualism, choice, and freedom over soul-crushing conformity.
Early Rush songs are saturated with such messages. The song "Freewill," released on 1980's Permanent Waves album, puts self-determination at the root of the human experience: "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice."
In "The Trees," released two years earlier, Peart tells a fable about a forest where the maple trees demand to be made equal with the taller oaks. It doesn't go well:
So the maples formed a union
and demanded equal rights.
"The oaks are just too greedy.
We will make them give us light."
Now there's no more oak oppression
for they passed a noble law.
And the trees are all kept equal
by hatchet, axe, and saw.
Sometimes Peart's individualism could be compressed into a single line, as in Rush's 1981 hit "Tom Sawyer": "No, his mind is not for rent/to any god or government."
Rush's 1976 album 2112, which Peart dedicated to the "genius of Ayn Rand," tells the story of a futuristic theocracy that outlaws individualism and creativity, including the electric guitar. Rand's novel The Fountainhead had a particularly heavy influence on Peart, who described the affinity he felt for the book's protagonist in a 1997 interview with Scott Bullock for Liberty magazine:
Howard Roark stood as a role model for meas exactly the way I already was living. Even at that tender age [18] I already felt that.
(Excerpt) Read more at reason.com ...
Yes, Billy Joel’s drummer is really good.
One band I would have liked to see just once. Oh well.
Philly, you posted exactly the song was in my head. One of their finest, IMHO. Not a rock anthem, just a song about growing older and living life. 1987, Hold Your Fire.
Way back in 1976, I remember hearing the “2112” album when it first came out; I was a teen. Had started guitar about two years prior, and when I heard that album I was instantly drawn in.
Moving Pictures, Grace Under Pressure, and Power Windows are some of the greatest albums ever, IMHO.
Been a fan ever since. The Professor will be missed, and fondly remembered by me.
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