CALGARY -- For the curators at the National Music Centre in Calgary, the announcement of the death of Neil Peart was acutely felt Friday.
The music centre just closed a six month long exhibition dedicated to Rush frontman Geddy Lee's vast collection of bass guitars, and it also has a set of Peart's drums that were made specifically for him to perform the theme to Hockey Night in Canada on.
"This is a guy," said CTV Pop Life host Richard Crouse, "who started off with allusions to being like a Keith Moon or John Bonham, from the Who and Led Zepplin, then introduced elements of big band drummers like Buddy Guy and Gene Krupa to (create a) sound unlike anybody else.
"He was the youngest person ever inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 1983," Crouse added, "simply because no one else sounded like that."
"He definitely raised the bar on what a rock drummer could, and can, be," said National Music Centre director of programs Adam Fox.
"And I think he also showed that the drummer could be not just a secondary force in a band, but also, to a large degree, a centrepiece."
On Twitter, an assortment of prominent voices took a moment to express their condolences and to pay tribute to Peart, widely regarded as one of the greatest rock drummers of all time.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which inducted Rush in 1994, paid tribute to Peart:
Brian Koppelman, the show runner of Billions, pointed out that while Peart was an exceptional drummer, his lyrics were also exceptional.
And Koppelman added this:
Rolling Stone offered a retrospective of 12 classic Rush tracks:
