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Chad Smith with Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson of Rush in 'Neil Peart: No One's Disciple'
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Chad Smith, Danny Carey and More Drumming Royalty Gather to Honour Rush's Neil Peart in New CBC Documentary
Billboard Canada speaks to Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Smith as well as Rush founding members Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson about Neil Peart: No One's Disciple which airs publicly today (Sept. 23) after premiering last week at TIFF.
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Before Rush's reunion tour became a major phenomenon, founding members Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson were already finding a way to pay tribute to drummer Neil Peart the best way they knew how: through the musical legacy they left together.
After a world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) last week, Neil Peart: No One's Disciple premieres on CBC and CBC Gem tonight (Sep. 23). The documentary, co-directed by Scot McFadyen and Sam Dunn and produced by Banger Films and Elevation Pictures, captures the first stirrings of that Rush reunion.
"For years, we wanted to pay tribute to [Neil Peart], we just didn’t know how," Geddy Lee tells Billboard Canada on the red carpet of TIFF. "Once Covid hit, any plans we had fell apart. We couldn’t just put together a tribute concert the way the Foo Fighters did [for Taylor Hawkins]. When the opportunity came to pay tribute to him on film, we thought that was wonderful. It was a great way to talk about his musical legacy, what he meant to the drum community and what kind of relationship went back and forth between him and fellow drummers. They were the ones who could really explain his brilliance."
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Instead of using a conventional talking heads-style music documentary format, they settled on a different approach. They got together with four world-class drummers in a studio to play their legendary music. These performances — with Danny Carey of Tool, Stewart Copeland of The Police, Gavin Harrison of King Crimson and Porcupine Tree and Chad Smith of Red Hot Chili Peppers — form the throughline around which Peart's life story is threaded.
"So many music documentaries now don't have a lot of music in them," argues co-director Dunn. "It's a lot of people talking about music. You get a five second clip from the music video and then you're back to more talking. For us, we wanted to create an environment where music was gonna help tell the story."
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As a viewer, you get to see those drummers not just gush about Peart's influence but demonstrate it through their own drumming and their own interactions with Lee and Lifeson.
Early in the film, Carey, who plays some of the most complex drum patterns in mainstream rock music in Tool and other bands, struggles to nail the intro to Rush's "2112," which demonstrates how sophisticated the timing is and how in-tune the band members are with each other.
Smith, drummer of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, lets out a primal scream after finishing his performance of "Working Man." Sweaty and smiling, it's clear he's left it all on the floor.
Talking to Billboard Canada the day of the premiere, he affirms he was putting his all into it. Rush and Peart are extremely meaningful to him, and he wanted to do right by the music.
"I was nervous, man," he says. "14-year-old Chad was freaking out."
Smith was a young drummer in Michigan when he first discovered Rush's music. At that point, he was more influenced by English hard rock bands of the '60s and '70s: John Bonham of Led Zeppelin, Bill Ward of Black Sabbath, Keith Moon of The Who.
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Then, he heard Rush's 2112 and live album All the World's a Stage and his mind was blown.
"It changed everything," he says. He adopted a "poor man's Neil's setup" — Peart's legendarily gigantic and elaborate drum kit — and studied the intricacies of his drumming technique.
While he's a little more improvisatory in the Chili Peppers, Smith is inspired by the technicality Peart brought to his drum parts, which have inspired a generation of fans despite their complexity — even those that know nothing about drumming.
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"There's no way Neil can do the middle 4-bar drum break of 'Tom Sawyer' and just kind of wing it," Smith says, laughing. "Everyone knows those licks and those parts. [You go to their show] and you see 20,000 air drummers drumming it. They're not all drummers, but they know it."
Those performance scenes bring depth to the more conventional biographical examination of Peart's life: how much he read, the philosophy that went into the lyrics he wrote for Rush, his struggle with perfectionism as he aged, his deadpan humour. It also examines his personal struggles when, later in his life, Peart lost his daughter and wife and embarked on a five-year motorcycle trip across the continent.
Lee says that both the documentary and the tour are "grief work," a way for him and Lifeson to connect with their late friend and bandmate and the unfinished legacy they left behind. Now, touring with drummer Anika Nilles, they have been able to grieve him every night through the music.
"He’s there with us on stage every night," says Lee. He's not just talking about the tributes and video footage and shoutouts that pepper the concerts, but the music they all play together that carries his DNA. "His spirit is felt. His lyrics resonate through every song we play."
Lifeson explains that there's a certain understanding of Peart that you can only get from other musicians, and especially other drummers. It's not just musical, but deeply human.
“They express not only the musicality that was Neil Peart, but also the guy he was," he says. "He was a funny, sweet, loyal guy. A lot of people don’t see that. This is a chance for people to get inside of that vision."
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Neil Peart: No One's Disciple is released on CBC and CBC Gem tonight (Sept. 23).
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