In a new interview with Eric Blair of “The Blairing Out With Eric Blair Show” at Metal Hall Of Fame event in Anaheim, Nita Strauss, the current touring guitarist for Alice Cooper, has talked about the unexpected death of legendary Rush drummer Neil Peart, who died at 67 because of brain cancer.

Nita Strauss mentioned about how difficult it was to lose such a legendary name for the rock community. She said: “It’s always such a tragedy to have the loss of someone that’s meant so much to our community. Me not being a drummer, it didn’t hit me as hard as I saw some other people on social media, but, of course, I am a big fan of what they did for the genre of music that I love so much, so it’s a huge loss, for sure.”

Eric also mentioned that Nita’s longtime boyfriend, Josh Villalta, is the drummer and asked how his reaction was, Nita replied, “He actually came in. I was doing a live stream, and he came in and told me, ‘Neil Peart died,’ and kind of threw me in for a shock and interrupted me. I think he was just so surprised and so overcome by the loss of a legend in our community that he was, like, ‘I have to tell you right now.’ So, yeah, definitely it hit us in our house, for sure. And it’s great to see the community come together and the shockwave kind of pull us all together and realize how lucky we were to have such a great legend in our community.”