Why I Like Rush

A long time ago [I was all of 14] I was in San Antonio visiting a friend who used to live nearby when I lived in Ohio.  He was an Air Force brat who moved there because his dad got transferred to Randolph.  He knew I was a music nut, so while I was visiting he turned me on to a group I had never heard before.  There were lots of guitars, the bass was wailing, and the drummer was great.  The only thing was the singing – who was this shrieking chick and why is she screaming like Yoko Ono?  Only it wasn’t a girl, it was Geddy Lee when he was still communicating with bats.  The album was A Farewell to Kings [at that time it was brand new]; the song he played me was Xanadu, complete with Kubla Khan references from Coleridge.  This was during a time when disco was king, so anything that sounded like guys playing real instruments to music that something other than a four-on-the-floor beat was refreshing.  So when I got home I got their 2112 album.  And when it was new, I also got Hemispheres.  Little did I know then that I would still be a Rush fan in the same year when I’m about to turn 50.  After 36 years of listening to them, why do I like these guys?

They’re a power trio.  I love power trios!  Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience established the template for what a power trio should sound like.  Rush stuck with the guitar-bass-drums template with Rush, Fly By Night and Caress of Steel, the little by little they started to alter their sound.  Although they changed their sound through the years, it was still just three guys making the sounds.

The sound.  These guys play with the precision of Pink Floyd and the power of Black Sabbath.  Their arrangements are complex which require a high degree of technical skill to play.  Think of progressive music like Yes or Genesis, only with emphasis on the guitars instead of keyboards and you get the picture.  Like Pink Floyd, what you hear on the record is pretty much what you’re going to hear live, only the bass is a bit more pronounced - they have a thunderous bottom end.  Geddy Lee is a busy guy on-stage – he plays the keys, the bass, pedals, and sings.  When he switches between his instruments the transitions are seamless.  Geddy Lee is a monster bass player.  Lerxst [Alex Lifeson] is not mentioned in the same breath as Beck, Page, Hendrix or any of the other guitar heroes of mythic stature, but he more than holds his own.  He plays both rhythm and lead like Pete Townshend or Tony Iommi.  When he plays lead, the man can shred with the best of them.

Neil Peart.  The best drummer in rock – period.

Lyrics.  Sometimes the lyrics can be spot-on about human existence. Other themes might include science, science fiction, morality, death, dystopian society.  Neil Peart's topics are numerous and various.    Here's a few:

Distant Early Warning is a nod to the fears of the Cold War.
Afterimage is asong about death and is quoted on the inner sleeve of Different Stages.  Neil Peart’s daughter and wife each died within a year of each other, and as a dedicated to them the band quoted the following – “Suddenly...you were gone...from all the lives you left your mark upon..."
Red Barchetta – a car song during a time when cars are banned, like guitars were in 2112.
Subdivisions gets right to the point of the high school experience – either you’re with the cool kids or you weren't.
Limelight deals with feelings being in the spotlight and the difficulties of fame.
Between the Wheels looks at life and the inability to keep time from passing you by.
Red Sector A makes illusions to the Holocaust, a subject that would hit very close to home for Rush since Geddy Lee’s parents are Holocaust survivors.
Nobody’s Hero is a lamentation on the death of a two people – one a friend of Neil Peart who died from AIDS-related complications, the other a girl who was murdered in Neil Peart’s hometown.
The Way the Wind Blows laments the rise of religious fundamentalism everywhere.
Earthshine is about the phenomenon of light reflecting off the Earth back onto the dark part of the moon.

Tom Sawyer - "His mind is not for rent to any god or government" [the individual vs the collective].   I’m still trying to figure out “catch the spirit, catch the spit.” 

Influences [as told in various interviews] - the guys who influenced them are the same guys I listen to, and you can hear these influences in their music.

Alex Lifeson-

1.      Pete Townshend [The Who] - “he taught me how to play rhythm guitar and demonstrated its importance, particularly in a three-piece band.”

2.      Jimmy Page [Led Zeppelin] – “my biggest influence. I wanted to look, think and play like him. Zeppelin had a heavy influence on Rush during our early days. Page’s loose style of playing showed an immense confidence, and there are no rules to his playing.”

3.      Jeff Beck – “If I had to pick a favorite guitarist of all time, it would probably be Jeff Beck. The notes he squeezes out of that thing with a whammy bar, a volume control knob and his fingers are simply incredible.”

4.      David Gilmour [Pink Floyd] – “I also had a meeting with David Gilmour when he was here. It was the first time I’d seen him play. I went back to say hello, and he was a very engaging, charming guy. We talked a lot about the power of the acoustic in terms of writing, because it doesn’t lie. It tells you straight up whether an idea has merit.”

Geddy Lee –

1.      Chris Squire [Yes] – “I’d never heard a bass player placed so upfront in the mix. Chris Squire hadsuch a driving, aggressive sound… Squire’s melodies were brilliant, and they were definitely out there.” 

2.      Jack Casady [Jefferson Airplane] – “His tone was very different from other American bassists; it was edgier, and his riffs were really challenging — they aggressively pushed the songs along. I like when a bass player gets a little pushy and won’t keep his place. He steps out of line, but in a great way.”

3.      Jack Bruce [Cream] – “Cream were one of my favorite bands, and a very influential band to me when we first started out. Alex felt the same way; we used to play a lot of Cream songs.”  He “wasn’t content to be a bottom-end, stayin'-the-background bassist.  He’s playing a Gibson bass obviously too loud, to where it’s distorting the speakers. But it gave him this aggressive sound and a kind of spidery tone, and I love everything about it.”

4.      John Entwistle [The Who] - "John Entwistle was a bit more overt and flashier than Jack [Casady]     was. John Entwistle, especially on “My Generation,” just threw it all out there, and for a young bass player that was so admirable and ballsy and audacious."

Humor –Geddy Lee doesn’t use on-stage amps; he runs his bass directly through the front-of-house sound.   So what does he use to occupy this space that should be taken by stacks of amps?  Coin-operated clothes dryers or rotisserie chicken ovens.  During the Test For Echo tour, he had a fully-stocked household refrigerator there [stocked with Molsons or Labatt’s].  I read he also had a sausage maker for the last Time Machine tour.  I was watching the R30 DVD and saw these clothes dryers on his side of the stage and thought “what the hell are they doing there?”  That’s when I found out he doesn’t use on-stage amps.  And to make this seem even more strange, be they clothes dryers or chicken ovens, they’re miked!

Alex Lifeson is a pretty funny guy too.  As I watched the Rush in Rio DVD toward the end of playing La Villa Strangiato, Lerxst stepped up to the mike and started a nonsensical stream-of-consciousness  ramble to introduce the band.  He referred to Geddy as “the Guy from Ipanema,” at which time Geddy started playing The Girl From Ipanema.  The audience ate it up – I laughed myself silly.  On Lerxst’s solo project Victor, he did a “song” called Shut Up Shutting Up.  The “vocals” are his wife and her girlfriend yapping at each about men, all the while Lerxst keeps yelling at them to “shut up!”

Concepts – Their latest album, Clockwork Angels, is a concept album [their first] in its entirety.  To borrow from my last blog about Rush:  “In a young man's quest to follow his dreams, he is caught between the grandiose forces of order and chaos. He travels across a lavish and colorful world of steampunk and alchemy, with lost cities, pirates, anarchists, exotic carnivals, and a rigid malevolent Watchmaker who imposes precision on every aspect of daily life.”    

2112 [1976] is a full album side story of a guy who discovers music, despite the efforts of dictatorial priests of the Solar Federation who frown on such relics of their collective past.  The priests don’t like the guy’s discovery, and destroy the thing with “wires that vibrate and give music.”  The whole piece is a tale of the pursuit of individual freedom.

Cygnus X-1 is divided into two “books” that appear on different albums – Book I- The Voyage [A Farewell to Kings – 1977] and Book II-Hemispheres [Hemispheres – 1978].  Cygnus X-1 tells of a space explorer who is sucked into a black hole.  The explorer ended up in a world called Olympus, where he witnesses struggles between those who follow Apollo [the logical thinkers] and the people who follow Dionysus [the emotional people].  He is horrified by the lack of balance, the polarization of the people.  After Apollo and Dionysus hear the explorer’s silent screams, the deem him Cygnus, the god of balance.

Fear was originally three songs over three consecutive albums [Witch Hunt (Part III) - Moving Pictures (1981), The Weapon (Part II) - Signals (1982), The Enemy Within (Part I) - Grace Under Pressure (1984)].  Rush added Part IV [Freeze] on Vapor Trails.  Neil Peart once said that the idea he got for this series was something he heard from an old man about how the biggest motivating force in a person’s life isn’t money, possessions, or love, but by fear.  Each of the parts of Fear deals with a certain aspect of fear – the things that scare people [The Enemy Within], how anything that scares someone can be used against him/her [The Weapon], and the mob mentality [Witch Hunt].  Part IV [Freeze] is the fine line between running away from one’s fears and facing them down head-on.

Instrumentals – In Neil Peart, Rush has one of rock’s more cerebral lyricists, but sometimes it’s best to just let the music do the talking.  Rush is one of the few bands to record instrumentals.  Sometimes they work very well [YYZ from Moving Pictures, The Main Monkey Business from Snakes & Arrows], other times not so much [Where's My Thing? from Roll the Bones], but at least they do them.  La Villa Strangiato from Hemispheres is simply astounding.  Most bands won’t even try such a thing.

Mid-course corrections.  For Rush, anything worth doing is worth overdoing.  After the science fiction epics that graced 2112, A Farewell to Kings and Hemispheres, they opted to slim down their arrangements to make their music more accessible to a wider audience [some would call that “selling out” – Geddy Lee called it a need to “come out of the fog and put down something concrete”].   The immediate results [Permanent Waves and Moving Pictures] speak for themselves about the wisdom of that decision.  After Grace Under Pressure, they went too far with the keyboards.  I can’t listen to Power Windows or Hold Your Fire.  Luckily they saw they strayed too far from their roots as a classic power trio.  I think Lerxst put his foot down about wanting to get back to guitar-based rock.  The producer they hired for Presto and Roll the Bones [Rupert Hine] was somewhat aghast that a guitar band smothered their music in keyboards.  Those two albums were more guitar-oriented, but they lacked balls.  By that, I mean the productions were thin-sounding, tinny, and had no bottom end.  Enter Kevin Shirley, who prodded the band to record “old school” – use analog recording equipment, get away from the electronic drums, digital recording, use vintage guitars/amps.  The result of this collaboration was Counterparts, one of my favorites.  Vapor Trails was too loud, mastered too high, and had all of its dynamics crushed out of it, especially anything with an acoustic guitar.  Snakes & Arrows and Clockwork Angels fixed all of those problems.  Throughout their history Rush have been able to see when they’ve gone too far in a certain direction and make a correction.  It’s like they actually hear and act on criticisms from their fans – very refreshing.

Live Albums.  Rush has put out eight live albums to date.  I have six of them [A Show of Hands, Different Stages, Rush in Rio, R30, Snakes & Arrows Live, Time Machine 2011: Live in Cleveland].  Different Stages is unique – the first two discs document the Counterparts and Test For Echo tours.  A third disc captures them in 1978 at London’s Hammersmith Odeon, so you have a nice “then and now” comparison.  They play with the same precision in a live setting that they do in the studio, but you know it’s live.  From Different Stages on to the present, their live sound is captured well – bottom end and all.  The separation between the instruments is very clean.  To hear them play La Villa Strangiato live [as heard on Rush in Rio and Time Machine] is especially impressive when one considers they had to record it originally for Hemispheres in three parts instead of all in one go. 

The songs I like:

Rush [1974] – Finding My Way, Working Man

Fly By Night [1975] – Anthem, By Tor & the Snow Dog

Caress of Steel [1975] - Bastille Day, The Necromancer

2112 [1976] – 2112, A Passage to Bangkok, Tears

A Farewell to Kings [1977] –  Cygnus X-1 Book I-The Voyage, Xanadu

Hemispheres [1978] – La Villa Strangiato [instrumental], Cygnus X-1 Book II-Hemispheres, The Trees

Permanent Waves [1980] – The whole thing

Moving Pictures [1981] – the whole thing

Signals [1982] – Subdivisions, The Analog Kid, Digital Man, The Weapon [Fear Part II], New World Man

Grace Under Pressure [1984] – Distant Early Warning, Red Sector A, The Enemy Within [Part I], Red Lenses, Between the Wheels

Power Windows [1985] –Mystic Rhythms

Hold Your Fire [1987] – Force Ten

Presto [1989] – Show Don’t Tell

Roll the Bones [1991] – Ghost of a Chance, Bravado

Counterparts [1993] – Animate, Stick It Out, Nobody’s Hero, Between Sun & Moon, Leave That Thing Alone [instrumental], Alien Shore, Cold Fire, Cut to the Chase, Everyday Glory

Test for Echo [1996] – Test for Echo, Driven, Half the World, Limbo [instrumental], Totem, Carve Away the Stone

Vapor Trails [2002] – Earthshine, One Little Victory

Snakes and Arrows [2007] – Far Cry, Armor and Sword, Spindrift, The Main Monkey Business [instrumental],  The Larger Bowl, The Way the Wind Blows, Hope [instrumental – Alex Lifeson solo guitar], Bravest Face, Malignant Narcissism [instrumental], We Hold On

Clockwork Angels [2012] – the whole thing.

Note:  I don’t have a copy of their covers EP, Feedback.  I’ve heard four of the songs [Heart Full of Soul, The Seeker, Crossroads, and Summertime Blues] on R30.  They aren’t bad – they’re just faithful covers of songs from their musical heroes.  Heart Full of Soul was different as it was done acoustically on R30.  It’s very weird to hear a band that utilizes so much technology to unplug.

They endure.  The band has been around since 1968.  Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee were still teenagers when the band formed.  In that time, many genres have come and gone – punk, New Wave, disco, grunge, boy bands, etc – but Rush has done their own thing and have endured.  They went on a 5-year hiatus after Neil Peart lost his daughter and his wife, but they came back when Neil was ready and they continue to endure.  They’ve made progressive music even though music critics over these many years don’t hide their disdain for anything progressive.  They still have their fans from way back when, and now the children of those fans wave the Rush flag.