In my adolescent fantasies I nailed the girl from the cover of “Permanent Waves” on a deserted island. Yet I never dreamed I might one day be front row, center at a Rush concert, nor imagine the circumstances that would lead me there.
I left my interview with drumming legend Neil Peart scatter-brained, and with the intervention of iPhone’s autocorrect updated my Facebook status to “Holy duckbills.” I needed a drink.
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On the schoolyard field of battle known as gym class I made the geeks look good. I got picked last for teams – even behind the chess clubber with the colostomy bag – and the Napoleonic gym teacher seemed to hold me personally responsible for it taking him eight years to complete a Phys. Ed. degree.
Appropriately, I worshipped Rush.
After high school I obtained the freshman 15 factored by three, then in an effort to increase my frequency of fornication I lost some weight. Then I built some muscle. Then I quit my job and started writing about fitness. Then I met Neil Peart.
Holy duckbills.
Believing fortune favors the bold procrastinator, three days before the penultimate performance of Rush’s Time Machine Tour in Vancouver, Canada, I contacted Rush management and told them I wanted to interview Peart about his fitness regimen for my Los Angeles Times column. People need to know how he continues to top “World’s Greatest Drummer” lists while qualifying for a senior’s discount.
I didn’t know if Neil even had a fitness regimen. I just took a shot.
And it was a long shot because Neil isn’t known for cozying up to the media. He doesn’t engage in meet and greets and only occasionally gives interviews. Nevertheless, Meghan Symsyk from Rush management got back to me the day before the concert to say the interview was a go. Neil wanted to talk fitness; I was the one who asked. My stomach hurt.
The meeting was scheduled for 4:30 the next day and I took no chances being late, leaving my hometown of Calgary at 2:30am on minimal sleep and powered by diesel pretending to be coffee I picked up my best friend Craig McArthur and we blasted an all-Rush soundtrack on my Toyota minivan’s factory-installed stereo as loud as our middle-aged ears could tolerate.
Craig is a paramedic and deals with much highway carnage from people driving like dumb asses and this is why he doesn’t break the speed limit. It’s also why I wouldn’t let him drive during the 600-mile trip; I wasn’t going to miss the interview.
We stopped once to refuel, re-caffeinate, evacuate bladders and scrub the entomological holocaust off the windshield. Then it was back on the highway at a clip would have had my wife swearing at me from the passenger seat had she been along for the ride. Craig just gritted his teeth and gripped the holy shit handles. We made it to Vancouver in one piece.
“Bold move,” Craig said as I pulled onto East Hastings Street.
“Huh? What?”
“East Van. Canada’s lowest-income postal code. The scenic route.”
“Oh,” I said. “I didn’t know. It just looked direct on the map for getting to the hotel.”
“Yeah, right. You just want to see the smack whores.” Then he proceeded to point them out. It was depressing.
We crossed the metaphorical train tracks and barely into the safe zone located our hotel: a Ramada Limited. I interpreted “Limited” as, “Lower your expectations.” Our room had a view of a rundown building with an errant weed growing out the front of it three floors up, a Vietnamese restaurant and a “learn to bartend” school with a sign proclaiming “No alcohol on premises.”
We had four hours to kill. I could have let Craig drive some.
We went out for what I am sure was not “the best lasagna in town” then wandered about the city to work out the kinks of the road. We passed a number of stores that sold everything to do with marijuana except for the substance itself then we saw boobs.
At first we didn’t realize they were boobs. Craig and I were both certain it was a man walking towards us. “He” had a short-sleeved button shirt that was completely open and we saw a barrel chest and man-boobs. The face gave numerous indications of being male as well.
But it didn’t sit right. Underneath the masculine veneer was something oddly female. Butt-ugly-harshed-up female mind you, but still a visage that hinted at lacking a Y chromosome. We couldn’t pull our eyes away as we walked towards her and within ten feet finally realized that this was indeed a woman flapping her jugs to the west-coast wind like a pair of beached dolphins with cerebral palsy.
This would not have been worth reporting except for the fact that she caught us staring at her and gave us both a lascivious, penis-shriveling grin. Some teeth were missing.
“What…” I began.
“…the fucking fuck?” Craig finished.
“Toto,” I said, “I don’t think we’re in Calgary anymore.”
Craig sneered. “I need a drink.” So did I, but there was no way in hell I was showing up for the interview with beer on my breath, so I watched Craig down a Guinness with envy in a pub that was trying and failing to be Irish. I had tap water.
Enough time killed we returned to the room and I commenced a grooming ritual reminiscent of the first date with my wife 22 years earlier. I thoroughly brushed my teeth, showered, shaved, trimmed errant nose and ear hairs and used a generous helping of lightly-scented antiperspirant.
I grabbed my voice recorder and notebook and turned to leave. “Wish me luck.”
“Don’t screw up,” he said.
It was a ten-minute walk to Roger’s Arena and I texted Meghan to let her know I had arrived at the security gate. A short time later I saw a tall and attractive young blonde woman walking towards me with a smile. She dress stylishly and sported sexy boots. We went through the requisite greeting ritual and Meghan led me down the back halls of the arena. Then she did a face plant.
Meghan smashed into the floor like she’d been pole-axed then bounced back up to her feet and laughed. “How the hell did that happen?” she said.
“Holy shit! Are you okay?” I’m ashamed to admit I had been thinking more about myself. I worried that she’d broken something valuable and we’d have to call an ambulance and there would be no one to take me to my meeting with Neil.
“I’m fine. Weird though, I don’t even know what I tripped over.”
“Yeah.” I scanned for obstacles and saw none. “You just went down.”
She dusted herself off and we resumed walking and passed a paper sign on a door that read, “Unless your name is Neil, Geddy or Alex we have NO free passes left.” I chuckled and Meghan showed me to a spartan waiting room. There were no piles of food, tubs of beer or scantily-clad groupies. Drag.
Meghan told me she read my most recent column where I lamented how movie stars’ publicists act as gatekeepers against their clients being interviewed about their exercise routines because they want the actors known for their ability to rend Leer’s raiment rather than for washboard abs or bulging biceps.
“You read that and I’m still here?”
“I gave you the green light because of that one,” she said. Then, “What are your seats like for tonight?”
“I think they’re pretty good.” I reached into my wallet and pulled the tickets out to show her.
“Yeah, those are good.” A pause. “Do you want front row?”
I began to hyperventilate. Front row? Then panic. I didn’t study journalism. Was this an ethical violation? Is this a bribe to get me to write nice things about Neil? I already worship the guy aaannnndddd I need to write something about evaluating his performance from a physical fitness standpoint and I can do a better job of that from up close, soooo…
“Uh, yeah, front row might be neat.” Neat? Did I really just say that?
She passed over the tickets; I stammered gratitude and looked at them like they were a pair of Bar Refaeli’s underwear then carefully tucked them into my wallet. Meghan got a text and jumped to her feet. “I’ll be back.”
I was alone in the waiting room with the door left open. Every time someone walked by I looked to see if it was Alex or Geddy, but it was all little people. Like me. Fifteen minutes later Meghan returned. “You’re on.”
It was time to meet Neil Peart. I needed to pee.
As she led me down the hall I reminded myself of the need to behave in a professional manner. Besides the fact that Neil wrote the lyrics to “Limelight,” asserting that he “can’t pretend a stranger is a long-awaited friend,” the Rush documentary Beyond the Lighted Stage discussed how Peart doesn’t enjoy the hero worship associated with being a rock star.
Keeping my cool and staying focused was critical; I had a job to do. That job did not involve groveling at His feet, overwhelmed by the righteous rays of his utter awesomeness.
I entered Neil’s dressing room. Meghan introduced us to each other then left. I wobbled slightly but didn’t faint.
The man so many drummers refer to as “The Professor” is indeed larger than life. Seriously, he’s a big dude. He extended a massive, meaty drummer hand and I shook it in as un-pansy-like a fashion as I could manage.
He directed me to a leather chair and took a couch across from me, then began talking about the Brazilian-made shoes he uses for drumming. He spent about two minutes of the fifteen we had available discussing these shoes. If I was going to get my story I needed to interrupt him with direct questions, so I worked up my nerve and changed the subject.
And my heart managed to not explode.
We talked about his exercise routine; it’s intense and allows him to continue drumming like Vishnu possessed at 58-years-old. If you want the specifics it’s all in the July 25 issue of the LA Times. Google it.
He cracked the odd joke and I laughed too loud like a pimply-faced teen in the presence of his older sister’s amazingly hot and well-endowed friend (her name was Eva). I only got through half the questions because he seemed to know what I needed and pre-emptively answered my queries. At the 15-minute mark I had my story and Neil had rock star stuff to do. Something about a sound check.
As we wrapped it up he complemented my notebook – a gift from my wife. It has a pretty cover and Neil said it looked nice. Then he pulled his own much smaller notebook out of a breast pocket to show me, explaining that he liked it’s diminutive size because he can carry it with him everywhere and write down whatever comes to mind.
He laid it on the table next to mine and flipped through the pages and I saw the Neil Peart scrawl contained therein. This was the notebook of the man whose lyrics I used as my high school graduation quote. This was the notebook of the man who penned the songs that defined the period of my life when I was certain Ronald Reagan was going to get us all blown to radioactive hellfire and I would die a virgin.
I endeavored to contain my nerdgasm.
I found myself out in the hall again with Meghan, nattering about the great material I got for my column. No longer needing to urinate I thanked Meghan profusely for her help and left the arena. Then unused adrenaline kicked in and I commenced spazzing like a spider monkey on a meth bender. I’d been reading The Oatmeal the day before and the best I could come up with for a Facebook update was “Holy fuckballs,” but autocorrect took over.
Back at the hotel I entered our room where a number of fine brown ales were on ice and my immediate plans of freaking out were temporarily derailed. I grabbed a Newcastle and Craig tossed me an opener. “How’d it go?”
I pulled out the two tickets Meghan gave me and held them up. His eyebrows elevated. “Uh, sweet.”
I blurted out my tale, pausing only for gulps of beer.
Craig and I drank, then we went to a restaurant with large-breasted servers and ate and drank, then we went to the arena and found a good home for the tickets that were not front row.
Having some time to kill we wandered outside the stadium where people openly smoked weed and police openly ignored them. Fans hooted with, “Woo! Rush! Yeah!” and a hollow-eyed and desperate-looking tweaker tried to sell us a microbe-infested t-shirt from the “Moving Pictures” tour.
Then Armageddon struck.
Craig loses things. In 20 years of being his friend I’ve known him to lose numerous sets of keys, at least two wallets and occasionally his mind. Earlier I gave him his front row ticket, worrying if doing so was a wise decision, but I wanted to show I had faith in him to keep track of something so precious for a few short hours. Oops.
Upon reaching the gate Craig realized he misplaced the ticket. He went through all his pockets, but couldn’t find it.
Well, fuck.
“You go,” he said. “I’ll head back to the room and see if I left it there.”
“Screw that. Let’s stay together. We’ll both run back and search.” We dashed all of 50 fifty feet before I held up. “Wait. Before we do that, what is the last thing you remember doing with it?”
“I thought I put it in my wallet.”
“Hand it over.” He did without complaint and I sat down on a concrete bench and began to pull every single thing out of his wallet and meticulously go through it. It wasn’t looking good, but in the very last spot I found the ticket neatly folded in half almost invisibly tucked between a receipt for a butt plug and a membership card for a video store that specializes in transsexual midget porn. Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s where I found it.
“You do realize that I have to punch you.” Then I landed a good one on his shoulder.
“Can I have my ticket back?”
“Bite me.”
We got in. We got t-shirts. We got beer. We got to the front row. Our tickets earned us wrist bands proclaiming we were special. Not short-bus special, but for-real special. We discovered our seats, which we would never sit in, were dead center, equidistant between Alex and Geddy’s microphones. Life was good. Life was special.
I looked behind me to take in the middle-aged Caucasian sausage party that is typical of a modern Rush concert, then the lights went down and my idols took the stage blasting out my favorite song: “The Spirit of Radio.”
We screamed. We sang. We drank beer. We played air guitar. We second-hand toked. We drank more beer. We peed.
And after three short hours it was all over except for the hearing loss.
The next day was Canada Day. Hung over and in no hurry I let Craig do some of the driving so I could furiously scribble notes for the column; my friend helping me compile appropriate Rush lyrics to insert Where’s Waldo-style into the story.
And the story ended up being kind of a big deal. My editors liked it so much they made it a centerpiece feature; it took up three-quarters of the cover of the health section and half of the section’s back page. The web version was promoted on the Rush.com homepage, bloggers wrote favorably about it, Facebook “Likes” numbered in the thousands and my inbox flooded with fan mail.
They’re not my fans though; not really. They’re Neil’s.