Traveling Music by Neil Peart

In my other blog, I recently wrote about Traveling Music, a book by Neil Peart, best known as the drummer and lyricist of the Canadian rock band Rush. As I noted there, it seemed more appropriate the aspects of his book pertaining to music in this blog. During the road trip to Big Bend National Park in Texas which the book is built around, he listened to CDs that he liked from a wide variety of eras and genres, and he comments on his own relationship to and impressions of each of them. In other parts of the book, he talks about the early stages of his musical career. Other music-related tangents are scattered throughout the book.

Among the artists Peart listens to on his trip are Frank Sinatra (quite a few different albums over the course of the trip, including Sinatra & Company, with a cover of Kermit the Frog’s “Bein’ Green”, and the one Peart cites as his favorite, Watertown), Mel Tormé and Buddy Rich (with an aside about the Buddy Rich tribute album Peart produced), Mickey Hart (of the Grateful Dead, in a side project where he collaborated with many others) , Linkin Park (two albums from a band Peart calls a “‘must hear’ favorite”), Isaac Hayes (Hot Buttered Soul), Massive Attack (Blue Lines), Pink Floyd (Wish You Were Here), the Tragically Hip (two albums by this Canadian group, with Peart giving particular praise to the lyrics), Roxy Music (Avalon), Vertical Horizon (a younger band whose leader Peart had become friends with after becoming a fan of their music), Miles Davis (Kind of Blue), Dusty Springfield (Dusty in Memphis, where in talking about all the great composers whose songs appear, he particularly singles out “two great songs by Randy Newman”), Paul Young (with particular reference to some of the musicians he collaborated with, such as Manu Katché), Coldplay (two albums), Jeff Buckley (Grace, which Peart calls his “current favorite CD of all”, Patsy Cline, 98 Degrees, Madonna (Ray of Light), Dido (with a positive mention of Eminem’s “Stan”, though Peart admits to not being a big fan of rap in general), and Radiohead (OK Computer, though interestingly he seems more to admire their approach than truly love their music).

I was mildly surprised by some of the music Peart said he liked, though I was not surprised that he listened to music outside of the genre he himself is a part of, as most good musicians do. He mentions that he had long been putting together tapes and later CDs of songs to be played over the P.A. before Rush concerts (variously titled “ShowTapes”, “ShowTunes” and “Rush Radio”), and being surprised that an English audience actually booed when a Police song came on (Peart seems to be a fan of the Police himself, speaking positively of them several times). Having read a couple of guys from Iron Maiden having an similar experience with playing Journey before their concerts, I was not so surprised; a lot of fans are a lot more narrow-minded than the bands they follow (in fact I plan to someday write an essay dedicated to this unfortunate phenomenon). I suppose I was if anything more surprised by his love for a band like Linkin Park than for artists like Sinatra, perhaps because many older musicians don’t seem to listen to artists a lot younger than themselves that much. It’s to Peart’s credit that he is an exception. In any case, while I have some of the albums Peart talks about, he did succeed in making me curious about many of those I haven’t heard, particularly those he praises at length.

Where I most strongly disagree with Peart is on some of his comments on the Beatles. He lists his “pantheon” of music greats (ranging from Ellington and Sinatra through Dylan and Joni Mitchell to Kurt Cobain and Jeff Buckley, and makes a point of noting that Elvis Presley and the Beatles are not among them (nor are the Rolling Stones, who he talks about more towards the end of the book), and of saying that other than one single he won selling newspaper subscriptions as a kid, he never owned any of their records. He discusses this at some length, and brings up the issue of the Beatles several more times in the book. While of course taste is subjective (as Peart himself acknowledges), he seems to try to make a more objective argument for leaving the Beatles out of his list, and his comments about them strike me as somewhat inconsistent. He accuses the early Beatles (and Elvis and the Stones) of being too derivative of black music, and talks at some length about how they were influenced by others (while neglecting to mention how some of those same others, notably Bob Dylan, Pete Townshend and Brian Wilson – while it is certainly true, for example, that Pet Sounds helped inspire Sgt. Pepper, Pet Sounds in turn had been inspired by Rubber Soul). On the other hand, he acknowledges that the Beatles wrote some “great” songs, and implicitly admits that they were pioneers. At times he displays a fairly thorough knowledge of the Beatles’ catalogue and history, even their solo work (he mentions Ram as an example of good solo work by McCartney), and at other times talks as if he had hardly listened to them at all, such as when he says that when he was a teenager in the late 1960s, he thought that “they seemed more like ‘pop’ music, sometimes almost the dreaded teeny-bopper, bubblegum music my young-musician friends and I so despised.” While one could argue that the Beatles did play (very high-quality) teen music in the early 1960s, there is nothing remotely “bubblegum” about their late 1960s output.

Peart also seems to subscribe to several somewhat inaccurate popular views of John Lennon and Paul McCartney and their relationship. For one thing, he sees Lennon as the edgy, experimental one and McCartney as more conventional. While it is true that many of the Beatles' more obviously experimental tracks were Lennon's, McCartney often played a major role in putting them together (e.g., the tape loops on "Tomorrow Never Knows" and the orchestral freak out on "A Day in the Life"), not to mention the fact that McCartney's songs often were also pioneering in the way they were recorded ("Eleanor Rigby" being an obvious example). Peart quotes McCartney as saying "Strawberry Fields Forever" was "too weird", yet though I've read a fair amount of Beatles-related literature, I've never seen such a quote, and I'm somewhat dubious about its accuracy. In stating his agreement with those who think The White Album should have been cut down to a single album (an argument that I don't want to get into now), he also quotes McCartney as saying in response "Shut up, it's the Beatles' White Album." The quote I've seen is "Come on, it's the Beatles' White Album", which sounds a bit flippant, but is hardly the arrogantly dismissive response Peart has him making. This is not to say Paul could never be arrogant; only that Peart's view is overly negative (on the other hand, I should note that many of his references to McCartney are more positive; aside from mentioning that he did some good solo work, he mentions that he recommended the Who – Peart’s favorite band as a teen – to perform at the Monterey Pop Festival, among other things). He also mentions Lennon's "How Do You Sleep" as illustrating "the depth of his contempt for his former partner", when in fact from what John himself said later it was more of an exaggerated emotional outburst which didn't represent his true feelings toward Paul. In fact that was the nadir of their relationship; a few years later the two were occasionally hanging out together and while their relationship cooled off again somewhat, they did sometimes speak by phone and Lennon spoke positively of McCartney and quite a few of his songs in interviews not long before his death.

In the course of the book, Peart quotes the author Nick Hornby several times. Interestingly, he says he agrees with almost everything Hornby had to say about pop music, except the music itself, as he liked almost nothing Hornby liked, and he guessed that Hornby wouldn't like anything he (Peart) liked, which again shows how subjective taste in music is. In any case, Peart also quotes Hornby on the Beatles, and I think this quote goes to heart of Peart's own ambivalence about them. Basically, Hornby says that in the case of the Beatles "some very good, very pretty, very sharply written, brilliantly produced, and undeniably memorable songs have been credited with almost supernatural power. It's what happens when people are defied." His point is that because of the popular and critical adulation the Beatles received and the unquestionably major influence they had, their songs are no longer seen as just songs, and their work tends to overshadow everything else that happened musically in the 1960s, to the extent that almost everything that happened during the decade gets connected with them. I think Hornby is basically correct here, as I have to admit even I find it hard to look at Beatles songs the same way I look at other songs. As great as the Beatles were, their superiority to other important artists of the time shouldn't be exaggerated (Hornby points out that a similar thing happened with Shakespeare). Basically, I think that Peart. perhaps subconsciously, feels a certain degree of resentment for the way the Beatles tend to overshadow other artists who he likes as much or better, and so he is inclined to be somewhat negative about them. It would also be somewhat understandable if some people who grew up in the 60s may have occasionally gotten tired of hearing the Beatles, as their music was no doubt played a lot (I don't usually want to hear any particular song more than once a day myself, even if I love it). Towards the end of the book, when Peart talks about playing a big concert in Toronto with AC/DC and the Rolling Stones, he remarks that he had never been a big Stones fan and had never owned any of their records other than a solo project by Charlie Watts but that "perhaps, as with the Beatles, I heard them so much it wasn't necessary to own their records!"

Peart several times says that for him one of the most important things about musicians is their artistic integrity. He tends to prefer artists who he perceives as writing and singing from the heart rather than treating it as a job or a way to get rich. I can understand where he's coming from, but then judging someone's artistic integrity is a tricky matter. Some artists who may seem to have a lot of integrity may in fact be much more calculating about their music than they appear to be, and artists who seem to just write and perform commercial music may be perfectly sincere in what they do. In any case, very few artists manage to go through their entire career without ever compromising, and in many cases compromising a little may result in better music. Peart claims that it seem to him when he was a teenager that the Beatles didn't share the "desperate sincerity" he admired, but considering how adventurous they were in the mid to late 60s, it would be hard to claim they were pandering to commercial expectations in any way. He also criticizes the Rolling Stones for agreeing to change "Let's Spend the Night Together" to "Let's Spend Some Time Together" on the Ed Sullivan Show, contrasting it with Jim Morrison defiantly singing "girl, we couldn't get much higher" when performing "Light My Fire" with the Doors on the same show. While I'd agree that in this particular case the Doors look better, I would not assert that this alone means the Doors were a superior band in an overall sense (I'm not a huge fan of either, but I like them both about equally). While an obviously high standard of artistic integrity would be a point in an artist's favor, it would only be a minor factor in determining my listening preferences.

Peart's stories of playing music in Canada and England when he was young are also quite interesting, such as his time playing with a band in England whose van and amplifiers were all stolen, and whose guitarist had a girlfriend who was so jealous of his devotion to music that she sawed his guitar in half. After returning to Canada, he played briefly in a band that did covers of Genesis, Frank Zappa and the Who (I'd be curious what Genesis songs they did, but he doesn't say -- at another point in the book, he praises the double drumming Phil Collins and first Bill Bruford and then Chester Thompson did in concert, but that would have been some years later). It was while playing with this band that he was invited to audition for Rush, whose drummer was quitting the band. He doesn't talk in great detail about his career with Rush, though there are some interesting passages about how they record and how they put together their concerts. Inevitably, though, reading the book did cause quite a few of their songs to play on what Peart would call my "mental transistor radio". One song that has always been a favorite of mine is "Time Stand Still", and it is one that particularly sums up the travel parts of the book: "I'm not looking back but I want to look around me now, see more of the people and the places that surround me now." Of course, in this case he does spend some time looking back, but he allows the reader to join him in doing so. While I may disagree with some of his opinions, overall I for one enjoyed the experience.