As a science fiction nerd, I have been attracted to Rush music since my teenage years with their epic fantasy songs, science fiction dystopias, space adventures—the lyrics were all so fundamentally different from the usual “Ooh baby baby” pablum on the radio. I was a skinny kid with a bad haircut, thick glasses, and hand-me-down clothes. I had no experience with girlfriends, so love songs did not resonate, but I did read a lot of books. And Rush music spoke to me.
Grace Under Pressure came at exactly the right time, when I was developing my first novel, and the lyrics fired my imagination. I wrote Resurrection, Inc. with the album playing over and over, and the images conjured by the songs made their way into the story.
When the paperback was published, I wrote a dedication, right up front, “To Neal Peart, Geddy Lee, and Alex Lifeson of RUSH, whose haunting album Grace Under Pressure inspired much of this novel.” (Yes, shudder, I actually misspelled Neil’s name.)
Neil wrote, “Regarding your dedication to the humble members of Rush, needless to say I am pleased and flattered by it, but I think you do yourself a disservice by saying that your work was even partly inspired by the songs of Grace Under Pressure. (Though since I consider that to be one of our most underappreciated albums, I am glad to see it get some attention, however undeserved. And your description of it as ‘haunting’ is one of the highest compliments, in my view, that can be attached to a work of art.)
“I loved the echoes of ‘Red Sector A’ and ‘The Enemy Within’ which you wove into your story, but apart from that you have gone so far beyond anything I have experienced in lyrics that the dedication seems unmerited.
“Never mind—it’s still a very nice thing, and I’m proud of it.”
Best of all, at the bottom of the letter, he added a little P.S. that I took to heart.
Neil and I began corresponding, and we immediately clicked. This was in the days before quick email exchanges—no, Neil and I wrote full-on letters, many pages long, each one an epic missive. I once teased him for going on at “Peartian lengths,” an adjective that he took to heart and repeated in other correspondence.
I loved to hike. He loved to bicycle long distance. I would describe for him my mountain trips, my expeditions in Death Valley. I sent him a photo from the summit of Telescope Peak in Death Valley, a magical place with a unique perspective. In one direction, you can see Badwater Basin, the lowest point in the continental US (279 feet below sea level), and in another direction you can see Mount Whitney (14,505 ft), the highest point in the continental US. (Much later, after many personal tragedies, Neil went to Telescope Peak himself and used that metaphor in his lyrics for the song “Ghost Rider”—“from the lowest low to the highest high.”)
Neil himself took several amazing trips, and they seem unbelievable to me now. He would depart for Africa with his bicycle and go off by himself on dirt roads through the wildest country and the poorest villages, trying to speak the language, communicating with smiles and hand gestures, sometimes talking his way through armed guards at checkpoints. There he was, a famous rock drummer on a bicycle, just experiencing Africa.
“During the past few years, I have become increasingly interested in prose writing myself, and have been slowly trying to ‘train’ myself in the art of expressing thoughts and feelings in ‘good’ writing. Nothing so ambitious as your undertaking; so far I have limited myself to attempting to describe some of my travels; to put into words the experiences and impressions of my adventures in China, Africa, and on different cycling expeditions. Not aiming for publication as yet, but simply as exercises, as good training ground for learning how to use words. My apprenticeship, as it were.”
And what an apprenticeship!
His descriptions were incredible. He went on for paragraphs about African villages he had visited, people he had met, adventures he’d had, and a unique African drum he had purchased from a village artisan. As part of one expedition he’d even climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, chronicling the grueling days-long hike from sea level all the way up to 19,308 feet. He mocked the tourist brochure that blithely claimed, “Any reasonably healthy adult can do it.”
Eventually, Neil put together his experiences around the Kilimanjaro climb in a little self-published book, The African Drum. I helped him with some layout advice, which was what I did in my day job for the Livermore Lab, and he printed up a small number of copies for friends and family. (The African Drum remains one of my most precious treasures.)
Off and on, Neil and I had mused about collaborating on something, possibly lyrics (but I am by no means a poet), though we never found a realistic project that worked for both of us.
Then in 1993, editor Jeff Gelb invited me to contribute a story to an anthology he was putting together, Shock Rock II—horror/dark fantasy stories with a rock music theme. I immediately thought of a creepy adventure modeled on Neil’s experiences in isolated Africa and some of the strange villages he had encountered. Hmmm, I could pull generously from the descriptions and landscapes that Neil written about his real travels, vivid and colorful details that I would never be able to pull off on my own. I suggested to Neil that I would write the actual story with a setting painted from his words, and we’d call it a collaboration. He was excited by the idea, and when I asked Jeff Gelb if he would like a story coauthored with the drummer from Rush, he responded with a dubious letter asking me to prove that I really knew Neil Peart (!).
I worked on
