He was the virtuoso drummer whose fills and rolls both mesmerised and baffled Rush fans. Neil Peart’s playing has inspired generations of musicians - and yet he always believed he had more to learn.

Words: Philip Wilding Images: Fin Costello/Getty Images

He would have hated this, of course. Accolades and adulation hung on Neil Peart like a bad suit. One only has to listen to Limelight to understand the consternation being the focus of attention brought him. He’d have run an eye along this list, brow furrowing incrementally as he looked down at the great and the good of prog and realised that he was standing on the shoulders of giants. A small smile, though, at numbers four and nine; wait until the guys hear about this.

“I’m at the height of my powers in one sense, but also I can’t help feeling the empathy for someone like Keith Moon: he never got to be 59. Dennis Wilson, neither. John Bonham… These are cautionary tales in a sense, but they break my heart: they had children, they had loved ones, they never got there, they never got this. This kind of career.”
Neil Peart

It’s been less than a year since we lost Neil Peart. Some days it feels like he’s been gone forever and others, when, out of context, you hear a familiar fill from Xanadu or a line from Losing It, you can forget he’s gone at all. And then in that brief flicker of memory and heartbreak you remember, and the clouds roll in again. He’d have just turned 68 and would probably have been tooling around in his man cave: a generous garage attached to his Californian home that was filled with his collection of Aston Martins, gleaming a burnished silver in the overhead lights.

He once gave me a ride in one of those cars, a series of tight Californian hill-turns screaming down towards the Pacific; he drove like he played drums, with real intent. We were as close to the road as I’ve ever been in a car - it felt like we were sitting on the floor, the endless Californian sky a blur of intermittent blue above. He was about to turn 60 and life was coming at him fast, but he was wide open to it, tuned into the universe. Clockwork Angels was at the mixing stage and sounded so fresh and full of promise. He was already in training to go out on tour. He was brimming with happiness, ready for the next thing.

“How do I feel about turning 60? I feel proud as hell,” he said as we passed another car that may as well have been parked given how effortlessly he went by it. “I’m at the height of my powers in one sense, but also I can’t help feeling the empathy for someone like Keith Moon: he never got to be 59. Dennis Wilson, neither. John Bonham… These are cautionary tales in a sense, but they break my heart: they had children, they had loved ones, they never got there, they never got this. This kind of career.”