Probably the drummer with the highest reputation in the rock/metal genre, Neil Peart died on January 7th due to brain cancer. This article, written by Brain Hiatt from RollingStone describe the whole event, as well as summing up the drummer’s life story.
The title of the article is ‘Rush drummer Neil Peart who set a new standard for rock virtuosity, dead at 67’ with subhead ‘hall of fame drummer and lyricist succumbs to brain cancer’. The headline although may sell the drummer short in the eyes of drummers, hardcore rock fans, but it’s accurate and respectful, which are crucial in terms of an article like this. For someone who had barely known or never heard of Neil Peart, this is a very safe headline. Also, with the subhead, it captured most of the story, including who is this guy, how old is he, and what killed him.
The first paragraph covers the whole events in 3 sentences, and it had all the information at the time, which is good. Although there’re many stories in the wake of this event, RollingStone is one of the first to spread this news).
The main part of the piece following this line of thoughts: his origin, drumming style; Rush’s response(with the message of leaves the family in peace, an example of the press and the band benefits each other); his life as an author and lyricist; achievements, and the praise he got from the peers as well as all over the world; he’s retirement to spending time with his family, which leads to probably the most famous trait of his beside as a musician, that is his wife and daughter died early, this I feel needs to be cover if you want to write what makes Neil Peart, which the author did a fine job to describe that event without personal approach. There will be many more articles that are personal and arguably have more impact on his loyal fanbase, but this is not the place to do so, there’s an invisible rule for covering news like this, add in personal influence in an article like this, is like in a funeral and one person keeps talking about himself, it’s not respectful. Overall the main part did a good job of telling or reminding the reader who Neil Peart is, again, a more personal story and niche content will work better with people who invest more in him.
The rest of the article is just a summary of his biography and some trivia like he’s jazz career, both of these, the author weaves in lots of quotes from Neil as well as others, it works in terms of it shows more perspective to the readers.
Besides the article itself, the website also has a news report in video format and a podcast from the crew, who talk about the influence of Neil Peart, comes with some footage of some previous interview the RollingStone did with him, it can be executed well, the host is pretty professional, most of the time he’s just playing the role of a storyteller.
Overall, there aren’t many issues with this article, after all, it’s not supposed to be challenging or thought-provoking, you just need, and must follow the rules for a story like this one.
Tales of the Dearly Beloved 