First trailer arrives for the Neil Peart documentary No One's Disciple

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has released the first trailer for Neil Peart: No One's Disciple, a documentary about the Rush drummer who died in 2020.

His bandmates Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson both speak in it, along with drummers who followed him: Chad Smith of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Stewart Copeland of the Police, Danny Carey of Tool and Gavin Harrison of Porcupine Tree. Parts of the film show them playing Rush songs with Lee and Lifeson.

Lee explains in one clip why the film exists at all. "After Neil passed away, we never really were able to pay tribute to him," he says, adding that it weighed on him.

The trailer also carries archival interview footage of Peart, including his own account of how he started, describing himself banging around the house at 11 or 12 until "my parents got the idea that I liked to hit things with sticks."

The film runs 96 minutes and was co-directed by Scot McFadyen and Sam Dunn, who made the 2010 Rush documentary Beyond the Lighted Stage and who run the production company Banger Films together.

It premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 16, becomes available to the public on September 19 and airs across the CBC network on September 23.

Peart died in January 2020 at 67, after a glioblastoma diagnosis he had kept private for roughly three and a half years. Rush have since returned to the road with Anika Nilles behind the kit, and Peart's widow gave the arrangement her blessing. CBC announced the film last month, and it is among the year's larger rock documentaries.