"Bravado" If we burn our wings Flying too close to the sun If the moment of glory Is over before it's begun If the dream is won -- Though everything is lost We will pay the price, But we will not count the cost

By Nancy Imelda Schafer
Editor-in-chief

Neil Peart; pronounced P -ear-t. (as in ear)
"The Professor" as he is sometimes affectionately referred to. The writer/Lyricist and drummer for the Canadian band RUSH.

Because I am a writer and love music to the degree that I do, it is a given that I am instinctively drawn to his words. I was first introduced to Rush in the early spring of 1996. The first song that crossed my brain was Peart's "Bravado." Today, I live by the words to the song "Bravado" (above), taken from the album "Roll The Bones".

Geddy Lee, Rush' Lead singer say's about "Bravado":
"That line to me says really says so much about the people, really that move the world, you know, the people that go out there and do what has to be done. And they're not worrying about what it's going to cost them personally down the road, they're doing what has to be done, and they're prepared to pay the price for it without worrying about.... the payment that comes later."

Neil Peart was born September 12, 1952. Peart is married, and only child Selena died in a tragic car crash in August 1997.

He took up drumming when he was 13 years old and received professional drum lessons for his birthday. Originally inspired by the aggressive drumming of the late Keith Moon, he is also influenced by the likes of Carl Palmer and Bill Bruford.

Growing up near Toronto, he played in a series of high school bands before moving to London during the early 70's in order to try and further is musical career. Disillusioned by the British music scene he later returned to Canada where he eventually hooked up with Geddy and Alex. He became a member of Rush in June, 1974.

"The Professor" likes to read and his lyrical influences stem from some of his literary heroes - Ernest Hemmingway, John Steinbeck, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dos Passos, Barth, Rand, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

During an interview with Mary Turner titled "Rush: Off The Record," Neil was asked how the inspiration for the lyrics from "Distant Early Warning" came about.
He responded; "It's a style of writing I've been sort of working towards over the last couple of albums that's, uh, kind of inspired by T.S. Eliot in a indirect way, but that style of pouring so much into it, so many images, and almost flooding the reader or the listener with ideas and images so that you don't seem to grasp anything out of it, but in the end of it you're left with something, and you're left with a feeling, or, uh, just an impression of it, I guess, and that's one thing I was getting out of that style of writing when I was reading it, and a prose writer called John Dos Passos writes that way, too. His books are so flooded with pictures and images that you can't hope to grasp them all, or understand the intricate weaving of it all, but at the same time, after you've read one of his books, or one of T.S. Eliot's, uh, poems, you take away something from it, you know. You're left with something that's inexpressible, some emotional response to all those words, because they're so carefully crafted."

About fiction and it's influences on his lyrics, during a 1988 interview with Malcolm Dome, Peart said; "If I had to define that part of fiction which has had the most profound influence on me, though, it would definitely be the 1920's and 1930's American writers, people such as William Faulkener, Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Their whole ethic was dealing with reality and the world in which they found themselves rather than gothic romances, sci-fi or fantasy. At the same time, they had a very romantic sensibility and tackled the world with a sense of love. Even when there was cynicism involved, the darkness was still presented in a stylistically beautiful manner. It became a sort of romantic realism to me."

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