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.
