Bang On
With only a few weeks to go before the next leg of the tour and on the brink of success, Alex and Geddy were stuck with a major predicament. They started auditions for drummers, but they didn’t want to compromise their adopted style. A first day of auditions in a warehouse in eastern Toronto produced little, leaving the pair feeling decidedly dubious whether they could recruit someone suitable in the time.
On the second day, a young drummer turned up. After a recommendation from a mutual friend and drummer John Trojan, Vic had been over to visit the farm parts manager Neil Peart. Having watched Neil practice in the back of his Dad’s dealership, he was sufficiently impressed to get the boys to take a look as well. When he came… well, Neil was not overly endowed with social skills, and as he hunched into the room and unloaded his small kit of Rogers drums and Ajax cymbals from trash cans, Alex was less than impressed. As a final indictment, if there was one thing the farm boy didn’t look, it was cool. Neil wasn’t totally convinced either: he’d already had the low down on this new-fangled outfit Rush from the other members of his own band, Hush. Don’t bother, they said, Rush was no more than a “Led Zeppelin clone band.” Besides, he’d made his decision to go semi-pro and wanted to stick with it. No wonder then, that he was not selling himself strongly.
Neither was Neil nervous – he displayed a level of confidence that the other two could only wonder at. Neil started from the point of view that he had nothing to lose, so he was uncompromising in what he wanted from the situation. In the subdued atmosphere, Neil set up his well-travelled kit and started to play in the only way he knew how, putting heart and soul into the performance. “He pounded the crap out of them,” said Alex. Agreed Geddy, “He knocked our socks off.” The pair was bowled over by Neil’s passion, not to mention the techniques that he had picked up through the many practice hours and the soul-destroying navigation of the UK club circuit. He even threw in a few stick twirls for good measure.
Despite Neil’s weird looks and intense manner, after the threesome jammed together for a while (a session that begat the song ‘Anthem’), Alex had to agree that he was the best man for the job. He had brought back from the old country a certain Englishness in his playing, and, said Alex at the time, “He’s just too good.” When the three talked about subjects from Monty Python to Tolkien, it became clear that their shared interests extended further than music. Following a couple of subdued conversations between the incumbent players, Neil was in – if he wanted to be.
The irony of Neil’s arrival on their doorstep was not lost on Geddy and Alex, given their understanding that he’d travelled half the world looking for just such an opportunity. As Neil realised he had to make a decision that went against his thinking, he was forced to admit that his thinking was flawed. There was no way he was going to spend his life as an amateur of anything – it was out of character for one thing, and would leave him with a yearning that he would not be able to fulfil any other way. Neil joined Rush a week later on Saturday 29 July 1974, which coincidentally was Geddy’s 21st birthday. The next day, the trio laughed, hollered and joked their way into Toronto to spend some of the record company advance on new equipment. Recalled Alex, “We went crazy, saying, “I’ll take that guitar and those amps. He’ll take those drums.” It’s something you dream about for years and years, and we actually got to do it.“
Two weeks later, after an intensive rehearsal period, the band went back on tour. They kicked off in front of eleven thousand people at the Pittsburgh Civic Arena, as support for Uriah Heep and Manfred Mann’s Earth Band. Joining them on tour were Ian, Liam, Howard and new boy Jimmy “J-J” Johnson, who arrived following a brief period with David Scace as guitar tech.
Having put off the decision, it was with trepidation that Vic Wilson called up Cliff Burnstein to break the news about the new drummer. “He says, I have to tell you something and I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, well, John Rutsey is no longer in the band,” recalls Cliff. “I said, well, when did this happen. He said, well, two weeks ago… I have got a new drummer… I said why didn’t you tell me. He said, well, I was afraid you guys would not want to do the deal.” Vic needn’t have worried: Cliff’s first meeting with Neil came a few days later, before a gig in St Louis, and he was immediately taken with the new drummer. “They would have made great music whoever the drummer was but, because it was Neil, it became more cerebral,” says Cliff. “Neil was the key in many ways to the direction things would take.” Besides, at the time Cliff didn’t feel in much of a position to judge. “I didn’t know shit,” he says. “I was turned 26 and only in the business for a year and didn’t know my ass from my elbow. These guys were 20 years old and had never been on the road before and were so earnest about putting on a good show, and ready to play making no mistakes, that kind of thing. It was all very sweet.”
Neil’s arrival was like a key turning in a lock. Within a very short period of time, Alex, Neil and Geddy realised exactly how deep their shared aspirations went. At least, of all the problems that would beset Rush in the future, the band’s line up was one thing that would not trouble anyone again.