RUSH Producer Recalls The Tense Moment He Gained Neil Peart's Trust

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After making a hit record with Foo Fighters in 2006, producer Nick Raskulinecz thought he finally had an impressive-enough resumé to approach Rush.

While he initially didn't get the gig, Raskulinecz told Eddie Trunk in a recent interview, surrounding Neil Peart's passing, that the band contacted him a few months later when it had a change of heart. He flew to Toronto the next day for one of the biggest interviews of his career.

The producer recalled his astonishment when he arrived at Geddy Lee's home to be greeted by Geddy himself. There he drank "a ton of coffee" and got to know Lee and Alex Lifeson, talking mostly history and politics.

"Those guys were totally just feeling me out," Raskulinecz said of the encounter.

He got the job and shortly thereafter moved into Allaire Studios in New York's Catskill Mountains with the band. But while Raskulinecz had gained the trust of Lee and Lifeson, gaining the respect of the band's meticulous drummer and lyricist Peart proved a much more formidable challenge.

Listening to Peart record his first drum track for Snakes & Arrows was like "levitating off the ground," Raskulinecz said. But in order to do his job as a producer, he needed to shake the stars from his eyes and work with Peart as he would any other drummer.

After a few takes on that first song, the producer started feeling his legs beneath him again. He went into the drum room, as he often did with other artists, to talk about Peart's approach going into the chorus of the song "Armor and Sword."

Peart, however, was not used to a producer being hands-on when it came to his parts. Raskulinecz recalled the drummer snapping his head up in surprise when he noticed Raskulinecz beside him, attempting to direct a drum fill.

"I referenced something like 'Fly By Night,'" he recalled of the exchange. "'Can you do something like that?' And [Peart] was just like, 'Well, you need something like this?' I was like, 'That's it, perfect!'

But as Raskulinecz went back into the control room, he was sure he had blown it; he had just told arguably the greatest drummer of his generation how to play one of his own songs. Peart was clearly puzzled by the interaction. Rush had parted with another producer right before calling him, maybe this was why.

"...Geddy was sitting in the control room, and I'll never forget the look..." the producer recalled of his short-lived walk-of-shame. "He just looked at me over the top of his glasses and he goes, 'You. He's gonna like you, kid.'"

From that point on, Peart was a dream to record. Not only did the "hero" drummer welcome collaboration on his parts, he appreciate being challenged, and he had the chops to execute just about any passage imaginable.

"I mean, anything that I can thrown out at him, he would try or he would do," Raskulinecz continued. "He was excited that somebody in the room was excited about the drummer that he was."

The rest of the record fell into place after that initial session. Peart and Raskulinecz fell into a groove, bouncing ideas off one another, creating a "language of drums" between them.

Rush enjoyed working with Raskulinecz so much that they brought him back five years later for the band's final studio album, Clockwork Angels.

The process for that album was especially thrilling because Peart entered the studio with no demos of his drum parts, fully intending to collaborate with his producer.

"He came into the studio and on the first day of tracking, he brought me a conductor's baton and he said, 'I will not play the drums unless you have the conductor's baton in your hands. Conduct me; I am yours for this record."

Noting how Peart seemed to loosen up around Raskulinecz, Trunk asked whether there is any footage of them in the studio.

In turns out, we might one day get to watch the genius at work. The producer says he actually video-taped the sessions for both albums and "pretty much every second of us recording the drum tracks."

Photo: Getty Images


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