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Brandishing power-prog anthems and \u00fcber-preposterous concepts, Rush survived personal tragedy, Nazi slurs and multiple taserings to be crowned the Biggest Cult Band In The World, back in 2012. \u201cYes! We win!\u201d they told Paul Elliott.<\/p>\n
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All The World’s A Stage: Rush’s Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee onstage in 1976.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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In the back of a van crammed with amplifiers and guitar and drum cases, four long-haired men sit in a tight circle, silently. The three members of highbrow Canadian heavy rock band Rush \u2013 guitarist Alex Lifeson, bassist\/vocalist Geddy Lee and drummer Neil Peart, the latter sporting an extravagant handlebar moustache \u2013 cast furtive glances in the direction of the fourth man, Paul Stanley, the frontman for New York\u2019s greasepaint warriors Kiss.<\/p>\n
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On this warm summer afternoon in 1975, the two bands are midway through a North American tour. The venues are modest; neither band had sold many records. But if there\u2019s a stark contrast between them \u2013 Kiss in their lycra and panstick; Rush with their fantasy-prog epics \u2013 there has grown an odd-couple camaraderie. It\u2019s in this spirit that Rush have invited Stanley to hear their just-finished third album, Caress Of Steel, but they\u2019re beginning to regret it. Stanley starts fidgeting during clunking second track, I Think I\u2019m Going Bald, and appears to lose the will to live at around 10 minutes into the episodic behemoth, The Fountain Of Lamneth.<\/p>\n
\u201cPaul was just staring at the floor the whole time,\u201d recalls Alex Lifeson. \u201cIt was obvious that he was thinking, \u2018What the fuck is this?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Stanley\u2019s silent judgment was prophetic. Caress Of Steel was released in September 1975 and wheezed to a US chart peak of 148. Rush\u2019s next batch of dates was dubbed, only half-jokingly, the \u2018Down The Tubes\u2019 tour. Meanwhile, bosses at their label, Mercury, demanded that Rush stop \u201cfooling around\u201d and return to the straight-forward hard rock style of their self-titled 1974 debut.<\/p>\n
Rush were at a crossroads. \u201cWe had three choices,\u201d says Lifeson. \u201cWe could just pack it in. We could do what the record company wanted us to do \u2013 make the first record again. Or we could do what we truly believed in.\u201d<\/p>\n
The group entered Toronto Sound Studios in February 1976 and emerged with an answer: a 20-minute, Orwellian sci-fi suite in which a lone hero battles an authoritarian regime led by a sinister priesthood. 2112 would give Rush\u2019s next album a name, and set its defiantly pretentious tone. On the back cover the group posed, clad in what Lee now refers to as \u201cour absurdly prophetic robes\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had our fists raised,\u201d says Lifeson. \u201cDown with The Man! And that\u2019s what that record\u2019s all about. Lyrically and conceptually. That was the statement we wanted to make. If we went down we would go down in flames.\u201d<\/p>\n
The gamble paid off: 2112 saved Rush. It was their first album to reach the Billboard Hot 100, and sealed a hard-won reputation as the thinking man\u2019s heavy metal band.<\/p>\n
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Fly By Night: (l-r) Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, Neil Peart in 1977.<\/p>\n
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Tenacity was hard-wired into Rush from the start, perhaps even earlier. Alex Lifeson\u2019s Serbian parents had fled the former Yugoslavia after World War II and had met in Toronto in the early \u201950s (the family surname \u017divojinovic translates as \u2018Son of Life\u2019). Born Gary Lee Weinrib, Geddy was the son of Jewish parents who had survived Auschwitz. Fifteen in 1968, he joined Lifeson and drummer John Rutsey in their high-school group, replacing bassist Jeff Jones, but the following year he too was usurped, by one Joe Perna, as Rush briefly became the four-piece Hadrian, although Lee and the Rush name were soon reinstated. Meanwhile, he\u2019d legally changed his name to Geddy, a nickname derived from his mother\u2019s heavily accented pronunciation of Gary.<\/p>\n
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Influenced primarily by UK rock \u2013 Led Zeppelin, Cream, The Who \u2013 the nascent Rush started playing in clubs in 1971 when Canada\u2019s drinking age was conveniently lowered from 21 to 18. Two years later, the band\u2019s manager, Ray Danniels, set up an indie label, Moon, to release a debut single: a heavy version of Buddy Holly\u2019s Not Fade Away. Their first album, recorded in two days and released on Moon in March 1974, had Rush tagged as Zeppelin imitators, not least due to Lee\u2019s high-pitched wailing. \u201cSing high and play fast,\u201d says Lifeson of the early formula. \u201cEasy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Within a couple of months came a key breakthrough when the song Working Man achieved heavy rotation on Cleveland radio station WMMS. \u201cThat was the perfect kind of song for an industrial town in the Midwest,\u201d Lifeson says. \u201cAnd people really responded to it.\u201d A deal with major label Mercury quickly followed. But in July 1974, John Rutsey left Rush having been diagnosed with diabetes. \u201cJohn\u2019s health was an issue,\u201d Lee says. \u201cBut it wasn\u2019t the only issue. We were young and not that deep. It was like, OK, we gotta get a new drummer\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
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A year older than Lee and Lifeson, Neil Peart had already spent 18 months in England in his late teens, earning a meagre wage in Carnaby Street jewellers The Great Frog and trying to join a band. When he auditioned for Rush, Lee and Lifeson were, in the former\u2019s words, \u201ccompletely blown away\u201d. Peart\u2019s technique, powerful and complex, was the result of self-confessed \u201cmonomania\u201d during his teenage years in semi-rural Ontario. But as Lee says, \u201cWe were city guys, so to us Neil was this goofy guy from the country. He looked weird, gangly, and he was working in his dad\u2019s farm equipment store. We thought he was kind of a rube. But he was far more worldly than us.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Peart was also a devourer of books, a rarity among rock musicians. Lee and Lifeson suggested he write the group\u2019s lyrics, but he required some persuasion. \u201cExtroverts don\u2019t ever understand introverts,\u201d says Peart (who passed away in 2020).<\/p>\n
Peart\u2019s literacy added a new dimension to Rush. On second album Fly By Night, his evocative storytelling enhanced the band\u2019s increasingly grandiose music. Rivendell referenced Tolkien; By-Tor & The Snow Dog imagined a mythic battle between good and evil, its protagonists named after manager Danniels\u2019 two pet mutts, Biter and Snowdog. Most telling was Anthem, for which Peart appropriated the title of a 1938 novel by Russia-born philosopher Ayn Rand, author of The Fountainhead. Peart later cited Rand as the inspiration for 2112.<\/p>\n
The connection would spark what is still the biggest controversy of the band\u2019s career. By acknowledging the influence of Ayn Rand on his lyrics, Peart had aligned himself to a thinker whose theory of Objectivism could be interpreted as \u201cenlightened self-interest\u201d, as Peart holds, or, at worst, ultra-right-wing capitalism. And in a 1978 interview with the NME, he was challenged on the beliefs he shared with Rand. Peart, who describes himself today as \u201ca bleeding-heart libertarian\u201d, remembers the interview with writer Barry Miles as \u201can intellectual conversation\u201d. But in the published feature, parallels were drawn with the Nazis (\u201cShades of the 100 Year Reich?\u201d posited Miles). Peart felt \u201ctotally betrayed\u201d. Lee, given his family history, was enraged. \u201cI wanted to kill the guy,\u201d he says. \u201cHow dare he paint this picture of us as fascists?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI was surprised by the furore,\u201d says Miles today. \u201cBut I stand by what I wrote. Societies that fail to protect the weak pave the way for fascism.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt didn\u2019t hurt our career per se,\u201d says Lee, \u201cbut it definitely hurt our image. And it just felt so cruel. But I think there was a huge divide between being a North American and being a Brit at that time. In Britain it was a very politically charged time.\u201d<\/p>\n
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There was certainly a tense atmosphere in the UK the previous June, when Rush travelled to Rockfield studios in Wales to record the follow-up to 2112. During celebrations for Elizabeth II\u2019s Silver Jubilee, the Sex Pistols\u2019 God Save The Queen was at Number 2 in the UK singles chart. \u201cWe saw the Sex Pistols on TV when we were at Rockfield,\u201d Lee recalls. \u201cOh look, these guys are playing three chords! Over and over again! We were instantly seen as accomplished musicians by virtue of the fact that we knew about 10 chords. They were legitimising us.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Isolated in the Welsh countryside, Rush were creating music on an epic scale, typified by the 11-minute prog-metal odyssey Xanadu, inspired by the Samuel Taylor Coleridge poem Kubla Khan and recorded in Rockfield\u2019s courtyard at dawn to include twittering birdsong. Marijuana was involved. \u201cWe smoked too much,\u201d relates Lee, \u201cand we drank too much.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rush had earned their partying stripes on tour with Thin Lizzy in 1976, after Lizzy\u2019s Scottish guitarist Brian Robertson threw down the gauntlet. Lee recalls: \u201cRobbo challenged us to a drinking contest. I said, You don\u2019t know what you\u2019re dealing with. We\u2019re Canadians \u2013 lumberjack stock. We were travelling in a van with the Lizzy guys, drinking a ridiculous amount of whiskey, and Robbo lost control of his stomach. We were like, Yes! We win!\u201d But in 1977, Rush met their match in the shape of infamous booze-and-drug fiends UFO. \u201cThe UFO guys just couldn\u2019t go on-stage unless they were drunk,\u201d says Lee. \u201cWhen we played a dry county in Texas, I looked out the dressing room window to the parking lot, there were UFO, drinking out of the boot of a car.\u201d<\/p>\n
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With a heavy gigging schedule, de rigueur for \u201970s rock bands, Rush were becoming a huge cult phenomenon. But they were an easy target for snooty rock critics. In a review of A Farewell To Kings in the Village Voice, Robert Christgau mocked Rush as \u201cthe most obnoxious band currently making a killing on the zonked teen circuit\u2026 like a power-trio Uriah Heep, with vocals revved up an octave. Or two.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the face of such hostility, the band remained resolute. Their 1978 album, Hemispheres, again recorded at Rockfield, was even more overblown than its predecessor, its first side swallowed up by another vast conceptual piece, based on Greek mythology and titled, in all seriousness, Cygnus X-1 Book II: Hemispheres. The recording process was, says Lifeson, \u201ca struggle\u201d. And at its end Rush realised they\u2019d come to the end of a path. \u201cHemispheres was a bit formulaic,\u201d says Lee. \u201cWe started feeling we were repeating ourselves. It wasn\u2019t healthy.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The reinvention of Rush was heralded by The Spirit Of Radio, the flagship single from seventh album Permanent Waves, released on a symbolic date: January 1, 1980. For a new decade, Rush had a new sound, mixing the virtuoso hard rock of old with contemporary influences: a volte-face from a band that had laughed at the Sex Pistols a few years earlier. \u201cIt was an exciting time musically, we wanted in on it,\u201d Lee says. \u201cSka and reggae were blending into mainstream pop and rock. New wave was happening.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Switching from rock to reggae and back via Rush\u2019s tricksiest time-signature change so far, The Spirit Of Radio aimed to replicate the sound of surfing channels. \u201cThat was a deliberate metaphor,\u201d says Peart, whose lyric was a lament for a lost golden age of FM rock radio: a time when, Peart believed, \u201cDJs were engaged with the music they played.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Spirit Of Radio gave Rush their first international hit. \u201cSo many radio stations were playing it, and clearly they were not listening to the lyrics,\u201d says Lee. \u201cWe were kind of sticking it to them, and they were championing it as a song about radio. A great moment of irony.\u201d<\/p>\n
Permanent Waves was also a transitional album for Peart as a lyricist. Rand\u2019s influence was still evident in the song Freewill, but Peart had shaken off Tolkien and Coleridge. Rush even looked different. The prophetic robes were gone, so too Peart\u2019s moustache. The drummer now had his hair cut short, and Lifeson was rocking a new-wave skinny tie.<\/p>\n
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Caress Of Steel: Peart, Lee and Lifeson off to a gig in 1976<\/p>\n
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In 1981 came the biggest selling album of Rush\u2019s career. Moving Pictures defined the modern Rush sound: the clean lines and lean power of songs such as Tom Sawyer and Red Barchetta. Says Lifeson: \u201cWe were shifting even more into writing shorter songs. And that\u2019s something that connected with people on a larger scale.\u201d Moving Pictures topped the Canadian chart and reached Number 3 in both the UK and the US, but Peart was already chafing at their new-found celebrity. Lines he wrote in the song Limelight \u2013 \u201cI can\u2019t pretend a stranger is a long-awaited friend\u2026 One must put up barriers to keep oneself intact\u201d \u2013 were reminiscent of Pink Floyd\u2019s Roger Waters in The Wall. \u201cThe Wall is my life story, too,\u201d says Peart. \u201cThe alienation factor \u2013 all of us, as touring musicians, lived that.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u201cLimelight [on Moving Pictures] came at a time when Neil was struggling, working out how to deal with it,\u201d reflects Lee. \u201cWe all were going through it in our own way. Alex and I seemed to be able to block those things out. Neil can\u2019t. It\u2019s not in his nature to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Lifeson had different issues. In 1982, while recording Signals, the guitarist began to feel marginalised as Lee\u2019s obsession with synthesizers began to dominate Rush\u2019s sound. While mixing the song Subdivisions, Lifeson fought to get his guitar heard. It proved futile. \u201cThe guitar barely exists on that song,\u201d he says. \u201cI remember clearly pushing those faders up and our producer Terry Brown looking at me, smiling, and pulling them back down. That moment stuck with me.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Lee and Lifeson were in direct conflict. \u201cI was carried away on the wave of technology,\u201d Lee says. \u201cAnd you owe it to yourself as an artist to find out if this can help your music.\u201d Lifeson disagreed: \u201cFor me, the guitar is what drives a three-piece band. But when the keyboards came in they just soaked up the whole mid-range. The guitar got stepped on.\u201d<\/p>\n
This discord remained unspoken, but it simmered throughout the \u201980s. \u201cI never fully understood how painful that was for Alex to reinvent his role in Rush,\u201d Lee admits today. \u201cBut true to his nature, he didn\u2019t stand in the way of it. He just got upset after it was over.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lifeson swallowed his pride and Rush carried on. By the early \u201990s they were, in the words of Rush fan and Manic Street Preachers bassist Nicky Wire, \u201cthe biggest cult band in the world\u201d, impervious to rock trends like grunge. But near the end of that decade came a catastrophe that appeared to finish the group at a stroke. In July 1997, Peart\u2019s 19-year-old daughter Selena was killed in a road accident. Ten months later, his partner Jacqueline Taylor died from cancer. At his daughter\u2019s funeral, Peart told Lee and Lifeson: \u201cConsider me retired.\u201d Lifeson remembers it as if it were yesterday: \u201cOn that day, the band just didn\u2019t exist any more. It was all about Neil and how he could get through this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Peart took to the road, riding a motorcycle across North America for months on end, journeys later chronicled in his memoir Ghost Rider: Travels On The Healing Road. Eventually, in 2001, after marrying photographer Carrie Nuttall, Peart called Lee and Lifeson and said he was ready to work again. \u201cHe hadn\u2019t played drums for three years,\u201d Lifeson says. \u201cWe could see that he was still extremely fragile, and not really sure if he was ready for it, but we went into it very gently and just let him build up his skills again and get into physical and mental shape. It was tough.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Recorded over 15 months and released in 2002, Rush\u2019s comeback album Vapor Trails marked a return to the band\u2019s core values as an old-fashioned power trio. For Neil Peart, it was a very personal triumph. \u201cThat album was very therapeutic for Neil,\u201d reflects Lifeson. \u201cLyrically, it\u2019s all about him, all about that experience. He needed to do that. And as difficult as it was for Geddy to sing those words that were so personal to Neil, we were very supportive of that.\u201d<\/p>\n
During Peart\u2019s interview with MOJO, it is only when discussing Rush\u2019s 1984 song Afterimage, written about the death of a friend, that he makes reference to the loss of his wife and daughter. \u201cAfterimage was a response to a tragedy,\u201d he says. \u201cLooking for a reason why, and recounting shared memories of a life. I think it\u2019s true to say and sad to say that my experiences only reinforce the knowledge that if you believe in death you cannot live.\u201d<\/p>\n
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In the years following Peart\u2019s return to the band, Rush\u2019s profile has been at its highest since the 1980s. There was huge media interest when, most unexpectedly, Alex Lifeson was arrested on New Year\u2019s Eve 2003 at a party at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Naples, Florida, after what was described as a \u201cdrunken brawl\u201d. Clashing with police officers, Lifeson was tasered repeatedly and had his nose broken. Having avoided jail by pleading no contest to a charge of resisting arrest, Lifeson now dryly refers to the incident as \u201cunfortunate\u201d.<\/p>\n
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On a more constructive note, the band\u2019s stock rose again in 2010 with the release of a feature-length documentary. Rush: Beyond The Lighted Stage contains fascinating extracts from a previously unscreened, early-\u201970s local TV footage in which the teenage Lifeson is seen arguing forcefully with his parents about his chosen rock\u2019n\u2019roll path, and also featuring candid scenes from a recent dinner at a favourite restaurant, where the three members of Rush are giggling drunk (\u201cThat was a goofy night,\u201d says Lee. \u201cNot atypical\u201d). And what it revealed was that rarest of things: a successful rock band in which the friendships have endured. Says Peart: \u201cI know how it can be with bands \u2013 I\u2019m friends with [Police drummer] Stewart Copeland. But that shared thing that we have, it works both musically and personally.\u201d<\/p>\n
Like the suburban high school kids of whom Peart wrote in Subdivisions \u2013 those who would \u201cbe cool or be cast out\u201d \u2013 Rush were never a fashionable band, even at the height of their success. In the mainstream rock press they have suffered ridicule, most of which they can now laughingly accept. As Lee confesses: \u201cIt\u2019s hard to say \u2018The Fountain Of Lamneth\u2019 with a straight face.\u201d But with longevity has come the revenge of the nerds. In the US, only The Beatles and The Rolling Stones have had more consecutive gold and platinum records than Rush\u2019s 24, and among the most influential rock acts of recent years are many Rush fanatics, such as Dave Grohl, Smashing Pumpkins\u2019 Billy Corgan, and Metallica\u2019s Kirk Hammett, who christens Rush as \u201cthe High Priests of Conceptual Rock\u201d.<\/p>\n
It is a title that still applies. In a year with a special resonance for Rush comes the band\u2019s 19th studio album, Clockwork Angels. And although they are reluctant to use the term, it is recognisably a concept album. Moreover, its storyline \u2013 influenced by science fiction, specifically the steampunk genre, and featuring a hero caught between the forces of order and chaos \u2013 bears more than a passing resemblance to that of their career-making 2112.<\/p>\n
Rush have come full circle. As Peart wrote on the Hemispheres album, way back in 1978: \u201cPlus \u00e7a change, plus c\u2019est la m\u00eame chose\u2026 The more that things change, the more
they stay the same.\u201d<\/p>\n
[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n
This article originally appeared in Issue 223 of MOJO<\/em><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider color=”#111111″ module_class=”custom-divider” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” custom_padding=”||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_divider][et_pb_text module_class=”credit-names” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font_size=”14px” text_orientation=”center” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n Images: <\/strong>Getty<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cWe had our fists raised. If we went down we would go down in flames.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":1900,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mojo-presents"],"acf":[],"modified_by":"kschwarz","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1896"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1896\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1929,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1896\/revisions\/1929"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}