- Neil Peart's Handwritten Lyric Sheets -
There’s something special about seeing Neil Peart’s lyrics in his own handwriting. In a world of digital fonts and perfect alignment, these pages feel human; full of thought, hesitation, and intention. You can almost imagine him sitting quietly with a pen, shaping the words that would later become the songs so many of us grew up with. For Rush fans, these handwritten lyric sheets are more than artifacts; they’re a glimpse into Neil’s creative mind at work.
This project started unexpectedly when I came across a small surviving fragment of the original lyric sheet for "Bastille Day." Even though it was only a partial page, it stopped me in my tracks. Using that fragment as a guide, I tried to picture what the entire sheet might have looked like and recreated it as faithfully as I could. That one experiment turned into something much bigger; a way to connect more deeply with the music and preserve a piece of its unseen history.
As I continued, I collected as many genuine handwritten lyric sheets as I could find, but there were still songs with no known originals. Rather than leave those gaps empty, I used the "Bastille Day" recreation as a blueprint to create tribute pages for the missing songs, staying as close as possible to Neil’s handwriting and layout style, while still taking some creative liberties to capture the essence of the lyrics. These recreated sheets are meant only as a tribute to Neil, Geddy, and Alex, and as a way to offer fans a more complete visual journey through the songs that have meant so much to all of us.
It’s unfortunate that Neil seemed to have stopped writing lyrics by hand after Grace Under Pressure, but that absence became part of the inspiration behind this project. These tribute pages are my way of keeping the look and spirit of his penmanship alive across Rush’s early catalog. Enjoy-
