Diehards

By Erin Feinberg, featuring an essay Neil Peart - excerpt below


Diehards

In London, England, on Wednesday, May 25, 2011, I took another photograph from my drums, this time at the end of the show, just before the encore. Like the photo of the Santiago audience, this one tells many stories - and one of them is mine.

In the early '70s, as an ambitious teenage drummer, I moved to London with my drums, records, and $200. I was seeking fame and fortune, of course, which were not forthcoming - those would later come to me, all unexpectedly, back home in Canada, literally behind the parts counter at my father's farm equipment dealership.

Returning to London to play with Rush in the late '70s had been hugely important to me, and so it remained every time - at the Hammersmith Odeon, the Wembley Arena, and this time, at the new O2 Arena. Like playing in Toronto, Montreal, or - in recent years - Los Angeles, London was a kind of "hometown gig" to me. Exactly forty years since I arrived there as an ambitious teenager, my bandmates and I were playing in front of 13,517 people. (I counted.)