I remember hearing Tom Sawyer for the first time. Tom Sawyer was my introduction to the band RUSH. It doesn’t matter where I was when I first heard it or whether I heard it on the radio or from my brother playing the new album, Moving Pictures. It only matters that I heard it…or more importantly, that I actually listened.

To simply say Neil Peart’s drumming opened my ears to a whole new musical perspective is an understatement. I was blown away.

But I am writing about a drummer in a writer’s blog because Neil Peart was such an amazing drummer, it overshadowed his stellar skills as a lyricist.

Neil Peart’s lyrics were not shallow pop lyrics. Yet again, I am referring to how Neil Peart introduced me to new perspectives, in this case, lyrical.

Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against shallow pop lyrics, in fact love many. I refer to pop lyrics as shallow from a visual analogical reference. Anyone who has ever seen the top of an iceberg knows they are beautiful and such beauty is worthy for many pop lyricists to write about.

Neil Peart’s rich lyrical stories were the first I remember that pulled me under and showed me how the iceberg is larger below water than it is above.

You only need to peek into moving pictures to find yourself racing down a country road in your uncle’s red sports-car, peering at Fitzgerald’s New York through the camera’s eye, living in the limelight, or running from a torch driven witch-hunt; and that was my percussive driven introduction to the depth potential of lyrics. It was only the beginning, my beginning that is as I had new classics I had to catch up to, and all the while, the Toronton Trifecta kept churning out more.

I don’t usually blog about topics other than to support my own creative efforts, but when I learned of Neil Peart’s passing, I quickly realized how much of an influence he had been to me. It seems appropriate I should blog recognition to someone who influenced me in ways that led me to where I would even find myself having a writing blog.

Neil Peart….You told rich and powerful stories with visual and layered lyricism and drove them with a complex mechanical heartbeat. Your art had an impact on me and I believe it has played a part in forming and directing me in my own creative efforts in writing.

For that, I thank you. May you live on through the spirit of radio.