SKF NOTE: Once I identify the year of this interview I will let you know. As I’ve written before, digitizing my old analog drum tapes teaches me many lessons in hindsight, one of which is: Label all interview cassettes carefully and thoroughly at the time of the interview. Don’t assume some future person — interviewer included — can identify all the interview details.

I know for certain this is Neil Peart and me in the 1980s. Rather than best guess the other details now, I will keep digging and add those details later.

In this excerpt I asked Neil if there was ever a time he struggled with being a writer and being a drummer. In answering, Neil talks about his start as Rush’s lyricist, and about his writing interests moving to prose from verse. At the time of this interview, Neil realizes his prose writing goal will have to remain, for the most part, on hold as long as he remains with Rush. Rush, he says, is a 100-percent commitment.

“I think there will become a time when I’m as good as I can ever be, and I will have to say, ‘Okay, I can live on this for awhile,” [but] I have another goal,” Neil Peart said.