Can you write about Rush without mentioning John Rutsey?

Dear Payback Time: In 2008 I read Steve Newton’s review of Rush’s Snakes & Arrows tour stop at the then-GM Place. He ended the review with a shoutout to original drummer John Rutsey. Nothing especially noteworthy normally but it sure sounded familiar”¦ I’m pretty sure his review of the 2002 Vapour Trails tour also mentioned John Rutsey. And I’m also quite certain that Mr. Newton’s coverage of the 1996 Test for Echo tour once again made reference to the long-since sacked skins man. Can these be verified? Your online archive only goes back so far. Who knows what might be revealed?

Back to the present, the Eye of Newt (great blog name, by the way) June 14 posting rehashing drumming icon Neil Peart’s famous reticence sent me over the edge and prompted me to write in. Rutsey gets more press time! Amazing that the June 9 and 12 EON postings about Peart managed to avoid his name so thank heavens for small mercies in Rush coverage. Never before has a band member 35+ years gone been so celebrated.

I can only speculate why such fascination for the now deceased drummer haunts this scribe. Perhaps they are related. Perhaps upon hearing Rush’s first album, Mr. Newton was so enamoured with the drum parts that a permanent shrine was erected in his heart. Perhaps he never forgave Neil Peart for replacing him. I may never know but I gotta say: enough with the Rutsey references already! Thanks to the superlative Rush biopic Beyond The Lighted Stage more people than ever know that Peart was not Rush’s first drummer so can we leave it at that? I guess we’ll find out soon assuming June 30’s Rush show merits some more Newtonation.

> Greg Williams

Steve Newton responds: Dearest Greg—you’ve got me dead to rights, buddy. When you ventured to guess that I was so enamoured with John Rutsey’s drum parts that a permanent shrine was erected in my heart, you couldn’t have been closer to the truth. Well, maybe a little closer. It wasn’t Rutsey’s drum parts so much as his one single drum part—that cowbell on “In the Mood”—that cemented me as a hardcore Rutsey maniac, committed to keeping his name alive no matter how many Greg Williams’s I confound in the process. Mind you, if Rutsey’s cowbell hadn’t blended so well on that tune with Alex Lifeson’s colossal boogie lick—one of the most beautiful things I’d ever heard in my life up to that point—I doubt his percussive antics would have seemed so unforgettable. To me that instrumental combo just screams 1974, which was arguably the greatest year for music ever.

Also, it’s nice that you think Eye of Newt is a great blog name. Feel free to use it for your own nefarious purposes. Mine’s called Ear of Newt. Grubs off that one.

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