The legendary Rush drummer Neil Peart passed away in 2020 at the age of 67 after years battling cancer and since then the remaining members of the band didn’t talk that much about his passing. The bassist, keyboardist and vocalist Geddy Lee is currently promoting his new memoir called “My Effin’ Life” and in a session of Questions and Answers alongside the actor Paul Rudd, who was the host of the event, he recalled (Transcribed by Blabbermouth) that last time that he saw Neil Peart.
Geddy Lee talks about the last time that he saw Neil Peart
“(During his final months, Neil) would listen to a different Rush album and he would be analyzing it and listening to something he hadn’t heard sometimes since we’d made it. And by the time that he sadly passed, he had listened to pretty much all the work we had done as a band.”
“And the last time I saw him… he wanted to tell me how proud he was of the music we have done together. Some of this stuff is hard to talk about. And it just blew me away that, in that moment, we were sitting on his balcony at his house. And whenever we left him towards the end, we never knew if we’d see him again or not.”
He continued:
“And so we were sitting on his balcony and he was having a smoke, because he loved to have a smoke, like clockwork. And we were talking about what a great moment it was that he was here in this place and we had just seen some parakeets flying into the trees and we both were bird nerds so we could talk about that.”
“But he went on to talk about these songs and what they meant to him and he thought it was very important for me to know that, that our life as a rhythm section together was important to him. So I thought that was beautiful,” Geddy Lee said.
Neil Peart joined Rush in 1974, not long after they had released their self-titled debut album. He replaced John Rutsey, who had to leave the band due to health issues.
Peart not only changed the sound of the band with his amazing drumming skills but also became their main lyricist.