Book Review
Ghost Rider – Travels On The Healing Road
By Neil Peart
By Joe Tatulli
This is my first ever book review, so like most things I attempt for the first time I didn’t read the user’s manual.
When I started listening to RUSH a few years back I was always impressed with the quality of the sound produced by this touring rock trio from Toronto, Canada. Songs like Tom Sawyer, Limelight, Subdivisions and Closer To The Heart peeked my interest and made my playlist, but I never really took a deeper dive to become a huge fan. In reality the band was prolific, running third just behind the Beatles (#1) and The Rolling Stones (#2) for the most consecutive gold or platinum albums by a rock band. But that’s the band. The book review is about drummer Neil Peart’s autobiographical book Ghost Rider, Travels on the healing Road. This almost 500-page story is about Peart’s 55K mile motorcycle odyssey searching for meaning and purpose for a life lost after the death of his teenage daughter Selena in an auto accident, followed by the death of his common law wife of 22 years, Jackie, of cancer; all in less than a year.
My first thought after starting the book was, something good must have happened because I’m reading a book about it. Peart is a serious and thoughtful writer at heart, and as the lyricist for RUSH he penned many a classic rock tune.
So my first observation regarding the book is that it’s well written and therefore a very good read. Peart crafts his story around his daily riding where his focus turns to survival mode “on the machine” and off of the serious gloom and sadness of his life without the two people he loved most. A large part of the book consists of a series of letters written to Peart’s good friend and riding buddy Brutus (listed as Scooter Trash on many album liner notes). He and Brutus would travel from concert city to concert city on their BMW R1100GS’s during many of RUSH’s tours. The tours would many times start and end in Toronto and would stop in large venues from coast to coast, and Peart and Brutus would have the time of their lives riding their BMWs on routes that Brutus would plan and route in advance of the tour. The daily mileage during the Ghost Rider experience was anywhere from 450 to 650+ miles per day. Peart was a good long distance rider. Brutus was also an experienced rider but unfortunately was incarcerated after getting busted with a large quantity of a then illegal, naturally occurring substance, cannabis. Peart rode alone for the entire journey.
From Neil Pearts’ Subdivisions, 1982
Drawn like moths we drift into the city
The timeless old attraction
Cruising for the action
Lit up like a firefly
Just to feel the living night
Subdivisions
In the high school halls
In the shopping malls
Conform or be cast out
Subdivisions
In the basement bars
In the backs of cars
Be cool or be cast out
One of the interesting features of this therapeutic ride was Peart’s familiarity with BMW dealer locations. Having ridden these areas in the past he knew where they were, and in many cases knew the service managers and owners’ names. He didn’t run on bald tires and always stopped for the ever-important oil change. Peart also rarely camped, although he carried camping gear just in case. Motels were fine along the way, but when a location along the healing road had great hiking or an interesting museum Peart would stay an extra day or two in what I would call an overpriced, ritzy hotel with a fancy bar and restaurant. Hey, a guy’s gotta eat and sleep, right? He also read prodigiously throughout the trip, stopping at both small boutique and bigger bookstores to pick up something to read, usually four or five volumes at a time. He would then mail the books to good friends and family when he was done reading them.
Peart shares his story with great honesty weaving his emotional condition on any given day with his riding experiences. He likes to ride fast when and where appropriate and going off road is a planned part of the adventure. I was impressed with his all-weather riding style and the self-aware humility of this very private man. Of course, there are a few women along the way. He shares many of these experiences with readers as they happen. Most of the time the ladies turn out to be just curious about his very red motorbike, and this guy in riding leathers. He is actually very shy in his brief conversations with these women as he relates his encounters. In one encounter a woman sort of recognizes him but isn’t quite sure. In the end nothing much comes of the encounters until he meets the very attractive Gabrielle in LA.
Peart has many friends and family scattered throughout his travels, but when he gets to LA (where he stays for a while) there are many friends and colleagues from his RUSH world that live and work there. At this point in the story, he is starting to show some signs of brighter emotional improvements and that’s when he is introduced to Gabrielle. They grow close but have to part ways due to work schedules and Peart’s needing to get back to Canada. They stay in touch, but things don’t work out. The ride back to Toronto from LA is all on the slab. Peart writes, “So instead of my usual meandering routes, I got on the Interstate in Los Angeles and just started riding, my feverish thoughts ticking off the miles across California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa, Wisconsin, the upper peninsula of Michigan, Ontario, and — in only five days — back to the house by the lake.”
I could go on, but I’ll draw my review to a close here. Neil Peart continued to ride for many more years, and after being introduced to photographer Carrie Nuttall by long time RUSH photographer Andrew MacNaughtan happily fell in love. They married in 2000, and had a child, Olivia Louise, in 2009. In 2001 Peart came out of his self-imposed retirement and returned to writing, recording and performing with his bandmates again. They recorded and performed on the global stage through 2015 when Peart described himself in a December 2015 interview as a “retired drummer.” He sadly died from cancer on January 20, 2020.
From Limelight (1981), my favorite RUSH song, lyrics by Neil Peart.
Living in a fisheye lens
Caught in the camera eye
I have no heart to lie
I can’t pretend a stranger
Is a long-awaited friend
All the world’s indeed a stage
And we are merely players
Performers and portrayers
Each another’s audience
Outside the gilded cage