No band can claim to be on the same page at all times. For every great album where every piece of inspiration comes together, there will be a handful of tracks where things either take a turn for the worse or everyone’s inspiration comes together with a major musical thud. Although Rush has been known to soldier on throughout every weird experiment they ever made, Neil Peart remembered always running into the same problem when working with Geddy Lee.
Before the band had hit the big time, though, Rush was still operating with original drummer John Rutsey in the group. Informed by the sounds they were hearing from groups like Led Zeppelin, much of their self-titled album shows them making their future classics in a more bluesy mode, including the massive juggernaut ‘Working Man’.
Once the band got out on the road, various health issues led to Rutsey leaving the group, knowing he couldn’t commit to another year. After various scouting exercises, Peart rose to the occasion, bringing in a small drum kit and stunning Lee and Alex Lifeson when they heard him play for the first time.
While the band already had Lee on vocal duties, they started to see the benefit of having someone so well-read behind the drum kit. Being an avid fan of literature throughout his life, Peart would become the primary lyricist as the years went on, writing songs that reflected his state of mind or creating fantastical sequences to suit the music.
From there, the dynamic of the band started to flip. Rather than only jamming on different riffs and seeing what they came up with, Lee would often find himself being given handfuls of lyrics that Peart would create and build the music to suit the lines. Even though this made for a great collaboration between the two, Peart admitted that he often encountered a problem once Lee started to sing.
When talking about their writing style, Peart would often be told by Lee that the entire lyric sheet doesn’t roll off the tongue that well, saying, “When I go over them with Geddy, he’ll complain that either I’ve gone overboard with the alliteration or there are certain vowel-consonant combinations that, from a singer’s point of view, are very difficult to deliver because you have to think so much about the elocution of those syllables that you can’t possibly deliver them with the necessary emotions.”
Lee first encountered this problem on the band’s first album with Peart, Fly By Night, saying that the song ‘Beneath Between and Behind’ was a huge mouthful when trying to sing correctly. As time went on, though, the duo developed as a creative force, with Peart starting to see Lee’s critiques as his lyrical editor.
When they finally found a lyric that worked, the results would be the highlights of Rush’s career, like the disillusionment with fame that came out of ‘Limelight’ or the lament of a fallen friend on ‘Nobody’s Hero’. Rush may be known for having a handful of cerebral lyrics, but there was never any question that Lee would interpret Peart’s words in the best way possible.
