We were sitting in Topanga Canyon, California, Neil Peart and I, at the Inn Of The Seventh Ray, his choice. We had already moved seats once, because a nearby babbling brook was overwhelming my tape recorder. But if it wasn’t the small stream of water coming down the nearby hill that stopped us, then it was the extraordinary mixture of pan pipes and soothing new-age music coming from the venue’s speakers.
At one point a unique interpretation of Greensleeves made us look up sharply from our raw soup. Soup, the menu told us, that had been ‘created through the vibrations of each day’. I was quick to point out how much that sounded like one of his lyrics, and that that was clearly why he’d chosen this place.
