RUSH Drummer On 'Time Machine' Tour: 'Magic Still Happens'

RUSH drummer Neil Peart has updated the "News Weather And Sports" section of his official web site with his latest entry, entitled "Cruel Summer." An excerpt follows below.

"[One] theme I've touched on before is how different one tour is from another — not just in its itinerary, but in its musical dynamic among the three of us. In 'Roadshow', writing about the Thirtieth Anniversary tour in 2004, I described how it had seemed to me that tour — how a run of good shows would be punctuated by one 'magic' show, in which we would transcend ourselves and feel the band, crew, and audience swept into an ineffable vortex of musical elevation.

"However, in 2007 and 2008, during the two summers we spent on the 'Snakes & Arrows' tour, I wrote that the dynamic seemed completely different — we established a benchmark 'good show' early on, then continued improving on it incrementally, show by show, without any that seemed particularly set apart, or 'magic.'

"This summer, on the 'Time Machine' tour of 2010, it has been different again. At dinner before the fourth or fifth show, Geddy [Lee, bass/vocals], Alex [Lifeson, guitar], and I were talking about how the shows were going, and Geddy said, 'I don't think we've peaked yet.'

"And he was certainly right. Even well into the second leg of the tour, after almost twenty shows, I felt that we seemed to enter a new 'zone.' The basic structure of the show, the details of arrangements, tempos, and transitions, had been refined night after night as we went along (noting that we rehearsed for two months for what was to have been a three-month tour),but once we had nailed down the foundation, each of us was reaching higher. More determination and care were being poured into our individual performances, and together those energies were fusing into a white-hot unit that surprised even us. Raw energy sparked in our improvisational sections, especially — Geddy in the bass rideout to 'Leave That Thing Alone', Alex in his new acoustic piece (following from his previous such performance, 'Hope', I believe he's calling this one 'Hopeless') and in his frenetic leadwork in the middle instrumental section of 'Working Man', in which he plays with what a long-ago reviewer called 'seeming teenage abandon.' During that part, at the end of the night, when I look out from the drums and see Alex skipping back as we begin the ensemble section out of that solo, I can't help but smile at the crazy guy I've been watching for thirty-six years.

"So magic still happens.

"(Though not always: I loved the line Geddy delivered one night when our opening movie malfunctioned. He apologized to the audience, then casually remarked, 'Sometimes magic doesn't happen.')"

Read the entire entry at NeilPeart.net.