Neil Peart, lyricist and percussionist for legendary Canadian band Rush, is remembered by Pershing’s Own, the United States Army Band:
When legendary Rush drummer Neil Peart died last January, I wanted to write about the significance of his life, but couldn’t. His death was a blow that surpassed the passing of any other stranger.
Of course, Peart was no stranger to millions of fans. We were his long-awaited friends. We grew up on Peart’s lyrics, and we grew old with them.
I also didn’t write because others were already saying everything that could be said. You cannot overstate the role that Peart played shaping a generation of liberty-inclined thought. Others covered his influence on music and drumming. You don’t need me for that.
Let’s fix the record on one point. Rush was not rock by nerds for nerds, as Bret Stephens mistakenly wrote. Not in my hometown. Rush fans were the cool tough kids, young boys bearing arms on Pennsylvania’s state holiday – the opening of deer season. Rush fans had a proud swagger wearing their raglan Rush shirts in the schoolyard the morning after the concert. A real Rush fan in my hometown was more likely to pop the “treasurer of the math club,” than be the treasurer, as Stephens described the typical fan.
But now comes a tribute to Neil Peart that captures what no other tribute quite captured. Pershing’s Own, the United States Army Band, has this touching arrangement of, fittingly, “Time Stand Still” from 1987’s Hold Your Fire. If you thought Rush was all loud progressive rock with glass-cracking vocals, you haven’t heard “Time Stand Still”, originally backed by Aimee Mann.
The U.S. Army Arrangement by Sgt. First Class Tim Whalen distills out the most beautiful elements of the 1987 track. The arrangement is sparse, and all percussion is notably absent. It is a song about time, and lives, and experiences passing.
Summers going fast, nights growing colder, children growing up, old friends growing older
When the song was released in 1987, I was all of nineteen. Hearing it then on crisp September nights, I knew I wasn’t entitled to those lyrics. But one day, if I was blessed, I would be.
H/T to Blazing Cat Fur for the link.
