“ALL THIS MACHINERY MAKING MODERN MUSIC”
(1982-1996)
Alex Lifeson: After 2112, we toyed with the idea of adding someone else to the band. But at the end of the day, we decided it would disrupt the chemistry of what we had. So we started learning other instruments. Geddy really got into keyboards.
Geddy Lee: I was getting bored writing. I felt like we were falling into a pattern of how we were writing on bass, guitar and drums. Adding the keyboards was fascinating for me and I was learning more about writing music from a different angle.
Alex Lifeson: At first, keyboards were used sparingly. On Moving Pictures and Permanent Waves, it was still controlled. We used them efficiently, economically and effectively, I would say.
Geddy Lee: I think Al was a little nervous about being overshadowed by this new sound. But at the time, he was gung ho to do it when we started. We wouldn’t have done it if he wasn’t.
Alex Lifeson: It wasn’t until Signals that I started having real problems with the keyboards. A lot of it had to do with the way that record was coming together in the mix. There was a movement toward highlighting the keyboards more and making them the lead melodic instrument, taking that position away from the guitar. I just felt like the guitar had lost a little bit of its importance.
Terry Brown (producer): We never had a conversation where Alex actually said to me, “This is not cool. I’m worried about it.” We never had that conversation.
Geddy Lee: I think it was after we did
Power Windows. That was the first time it was obvious that Al was starting to object.
Alex Lifeson: I like those records. I like them a lot. I’m proud of them. But it really was a lot of work for me to fit the guitar in, to feel like I could take my space among all this dense keyboard stuff that was going on.
Geddy Lee: There was something else going on around then. I did not feel I was learning enough from Terry anymore. And I think I was speaking for the whole band at the time.
Neil Peart: Signals was the crucible because Terry wasn’t going where we were going. One song that was problematic was “Digital Man” because it combines a ska rhythm with a deep computer sequence. We didn’t see any contradiction there. Terry Brown did.
Terry Brown: I was concerned about the direction of the band when I left and didn’t make any more records with them. I felt it was heading into a direction that wasn’t really my cup of tea.
Geddy Lee: We looked at each other and said if we can predict what Terry is going to say, we’re not learning. That means we’re writing our songs to please his way of doing things, which was fine up until then. But we were afraid of being stagnant. Terry Brown: I’m not sure that I buy it completely. It certainly was a factor that was concerning them. I didn’t really feel it myself. I thought we would have continued to make great records together. But then when you look at what they did after I left, I wouldn’t have made those records that same way. So they needed to make a change.
Geddy Lee: It was very difficult to break off with him. He was a brother, a father figure. He was a member of our band in many ways. But there were so many exciting records being made at the time by different producers. New sounds, new styles. There was kind of a revolution in rock going on. We felt we were sitting on the sidelines. We were desperate to absorb all that.
Peter Henderson was hired to produce Grace Under Pressure (1984). Around that time, RUSH also summoned Peter Collins to a meeting in Providence, R.I.
Geddy Lee: We did two records with Peter Collins ( Power Windows, Hold Your Fire) and then two records with Rupert
Hine ( Presto, Roll the Bones). The keyboards were starting to get thinned out through those two records. Rupert was pushing us away from keyboard dominance. An adjustment
happened after Hold Your Fire.
Alex Lifeson: I was relieved when we started to move away
from this.
Test for Echo, the band’s 16th studio album, was released in 1996. It capped a period of madcap reinvention, exhaustive touring and, from time to time, jangled nerves.
Geddy Lee: Test for Echo was a strange record in a sense. It doesn’t really have a defined direction. I kind of felt like we were a bit burnt creatively. It was a creative low time for us.
Alex Lifeson: When we were working on Grace Under Pres
sure, that was tense in the studio. Things were not working out the way we had anticipated. There were moments where we blew up at each other.
Neil Peart: The tension was mutual, it wasn’t internecine is the word that occurs to me. It wasn’t at each other. It manifested on all of us and rarely between us or among us in those days. There would be disagreements, certainly, but we handled them with respect.
Geddy Lee: There are no factions in RUSH. It’s just the three
of us.
Alex Lifeson: The love and respect that we have for each other is really deep. It’s beyond family. It’s more like a brotherhood built in war. You’ve gone through such a unique experience that your bonds are forever in a way that you can’t describe.
“THE INNOCENCE SLIPS AWAY”
(1997-2005)
On Aug. 10, 1997, tragedy struck the band. Selena, Neil Peart’s 19-year-old daughter, was killed in a car accident. Ten months later, after being diagnosed with cancer, his wife Jackie died.
Geddy Lee: I was up at the cottage and I got the call from Ray. It was just horrible news. Basically, the clock stopped.
Alex Lifeson: It was just absolutely devastating. Geddy Lee: I remember calling Al and saying, “What do we do? I don’t know what to do.” And he said, “I don’t either. But
I’m going over there.” And I said, “OK, I’m coming back from the cottage. I’ll meet you over there.”
Alex Lifeson: We basically moved in with Neil and Jackie to look after them. They couldn’t do anything. They were grieving separately. It was such a sad, sad place to be. I would be there first thing in the morning and I’d leave around 11:30 at night.
Geddy Lee: Our whole group, Ray (Danniels) and all our management people, would do the same thing. You just go there and hope they feel your support.
Alex Lifeson: Neil and Jackie decided to go to London. They wanted to get far away from the scene of the accident and all the reminders they had in the house.
Geddy Lee: It was too difficult for them to be in Toronto. So they left town. They just wanted to grieve privately.
Alex Lifeson: The band shut down completely. We didn’t even think about the band, in fact.
Geddy Lee: Al and I just agreed not to talk about it. We agreed not to talk about the band because it didn’t make any sense to. I could not see carrying on without Neil and neither could Alex. There was just no way. What was the point of talking about it? It seemed so trivial compared to what was going on. We were just worried about him. He was in a very bad state.
Alex Lifeson: Then Jackie became ill. They had discovered cancer in her lungs and it had metastasized and moved through her body. They only gave her a number of months.
Pegi Cecconi (SRO/Anthem management): His wife died of a broken heart. You can call it cancer, you can call it whatever you want.
Alex Lifeson: For her, it was very, very difficult to have lost her daughter. They were so, so, so close. When she learned that she was terminal and was going to die, wow, she was somehow relieved. She literally cleaned the house. For the first time, she went into Selena’s room and organized everything. She packed for Neil the things that she wanted him to have. Then she waited for her death. Peart got on his BMW motorcycle and spent the next 14 months in constant motion, covering more than 88,000 miles, from Quebec to Alaska, down coastal highways to Mexico and Belize. He documented this odyssey in Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road.
Neil Peart: People would say stupid things to me at the time: “Well, at least you still have your music.” No, I don’t want to have my music. I have nothing. It was so presumptuous of people to say things like that.
Ray Danniels: Without going too far into it, Neil lost everything. It was his only child and it was his wife who had been his high school sweetheart.
Pegi Cecconi: There’s a line in Neil’s book where he’s sitting somewhere and he sees a little blade of grass coming up after a horrible winter. And he remembers thinking, “That’s good.” That’s when he realized he was going to survive this. He finally saw some good. It was just a blade of grass after winter.
Alex Lifeson: In his travels, Neil met Carrie, his new wife. She
gave him hope and love, the things he needed.
Pegi Cecconi: Carrie brought Neil back a bit. She was like that blade of grass.
Geddy Lee: Eventually, we got a call from Ray saying that Neil had mentioned the possibility of seeking gainful employment once again. He had already started to rebuild his life by that time.
In 2001, Alex, Geddy and Neil returned to the studio to begin work on Vapor Trails.
Geddy Lee: It was a heartbreaking few years. We were very worried about Neil the whole time. And he was walking a very fine line because how do you write lyrics without baring your soul and how do you that in a way that still applies to a hard rock, prog type of band without it being maudlin? I’m sure he wished that he wasn’t the lyricist during that record.
Alex Lifeson: We really made that record a few times. We worked for a couple of months and then hated everything that we were doing and restarted.
Geddy Lee: It’s funny, I was just talking to Neil about Vapor
Trails the other day. He says when he listens to it now he hears anger and confusion. For me, I don’t hear that. I hear passion.
Neil Peart: I hear it in my drumming, the same sense of frustration and confusion. Of course, it’s explicit in the lyrics but implicit in the drumming too, of the state that I was in at the time.
On June 28, 2002, nearly five years after the tragedies, RUSH opened their tour for Vapor Trails in Hartford, Conn.
Geddy Lee: That was one of the most emotional days of my life. Neil was really nervous. We were all nervous. But it was really hard for him. He’s a shy guy anyway. I think he had a little nip before he hit the stage. It’s hard to believe, but he does have a little bit of stage fright for a guy who is one of the greatest musicians on the planet Earth.
Alex Lifeson: I remember looking out at the audience and there were people crying. It was so emotional. I guess it was their chance to purge some of their emotions.
Geddy Lee: I get emotional just talking about that gig, frankly. I remember trying to downplay my own emotions and get my s--- together to go do the show. After the gig, Neil
didn’t run away as he usually does.
Neil Peart: That to me was the release point. I remember saying to Ray after that show, “It would have been too bad if that never happened again.” That gives me a chill right now, that realization. At the end of the Vapor Trails tour, in November 2002, the band embarked on its first trip to South America, playing three concerts to more than 125,000 fans.
Neil Peart: We really had no idea of what to expect. No history had ever prepared us for it.
Alex Lifeson: “YYZ” is an instrumental song and at one show, the audience were singing — all 40,000 of them — the melody line and bopping up and down for the whole song. We all were just in shock at what we were seeing. We had no idea we had that kind of following in South America.
Neil Warnock (foreign agent): I was saying to them they are bigger than Led Zeppelin down there. They’re bigger than the Rolling Stones. And they always said, “You’re just making it up. You’re just an agent.” And I said, “I’m telling you, guys. If you go, this is going to be huge.” But they just wouldn’t believe me.
Howard Ungerleider (lighting director): I remember a guy in the sushi bar in the hotel was carving the man in the star logo out of vegetables. I actually brought Ged over to see it. And the guy could barely talk. There were tears coming out of his eyes. He was thanking the band for coming down there. I had never seen anything like it. I’m like, “Man, this guy is crying.”
“THE MEN WHO HOLD HIGH PLACES” (2006-PRESENT)
In recent years, there’s been a shift in the way RUSH is perceived. In 2008, the band performed on The Colbert Report. The following year, RUSH was a key element in the comedy I Love You, Man. Then in April, 2010, the documentary RUSH: Beyond the Lighted Stage pushed the band fully into the spotlight.
Alex Lifeson: There’s a whole perception about the band that’s different now. But to my mind, I don’t think we’ve done anything different. It’s all external stuff that’s taken us there.
Geddy Lee: We decided to take the George Costanza approach to our career: Do the opposite of whatever our instincts would naturally tell us. “Do you want to be in a movie?” “Yes.” “Do you want to play The Colbert Report?” “Yes.” And it’s kind of worked for us.
Alex Lifeson: I think we are part of the mainstream now.
Geddy Lee: Suddenly we became a staple on classic rock radio. So we went from the band that hardly ever got heard on radio to kind of a mainstay of classic rock. Our profile was just rising. Neil Peart: But it hasn’t changed our 40-odd years of evolution. We’ve been lucky enough to always do what we want to
do and have an audience for it.
Geddy Lee: What I guess transpired is all these RUSH fans had had time to grow up and get jobs and wanted to pay us back and wanted to fly their RUSH flag wherever they possibly could.
Matt Stone (friend/co-creator of South Park): There’s a generation of guys like me and Paul Rudd and the comedy guys who are coming out of the closet and are unabashed about the band. RUSH was never quite cool in the way MTV wanted them to be. So now there’s this generation of people like me who are successful and will just give it up publicly as a RUSH fan.
Geddy Lee: The I Love You, Man movie is a prime example. (Director) John Hamburg said, “There is no Plan B. I’m doing this movie with RUSH or we’re not doing this movie.” I remember the guy from DreamWorks coming into the room when we were filming our part and he said, “Look, I gotta tell you. I kept asking John if RUSH does not do this, what’s the other band?’ And he said, ‘There is no other band. It has to be RUSH.”
John Hamburg (director): There are great bands out there. But if it’s, say, Journey, the story just doesn’t work. I think a certain type of person gravitates toward the band. And for whatever reason, a few of us have been able to put work out there that gets into the mainstream popular culture. Frankly, once you get beyond some of the prog rock clichés, the fact is they are great songwriters and great musicians.
Meg Symsyk (SRO/Anthem management): I see it every night on the tour. There are always picturesque moments snapped in my mind: seeing a guy with his wife and 3-yearold daughter rocking out to “The Spirit of Radio” or a father introducing his 12-year-old son to RUSH. The lesson is never lost on me that part of my role is to ensure we figure out the best way to introduce the legacy of this great career of music and integrity to the next generation.
Ray Danniels: We went from less than 10 per cent of our average house being female to suddenly it was 30 per cent. That came from women watching the documentary with their boyfriends or husbands and connecting it all. They were like, “Oh, I know that song and that song and that song.” They actually knew five, six, seven RUSH songs but hadn’t connected that they were RUSH.
Allan Weinrib (Geddy’s brother): They’ve never really lost fans. People may go, but then they come back again. It’s the style of music that they play and the level of musicianship that they bring.
Neil Peart: When people ask me what’s your favourite RUSH album, I would hate to have to say it was something from 30 years ago. That would be awful. I know I’m playing better. I’m writing better. Everything about Clockwork
Angels I love. There’s no doubt in my mind that it’s the best album we have ever made in every way. That’s a great feeling to have.
Nick Raskulinecz (producer): We’re on our fifth single. RUSH has never in the history of their band put out five singles off one album. Man, they could have stopped 10 years ago. But they are possessed with music.
Andy Curran (SRO/Anthem management): During the recording of Clockwork Angels, the band invited David Campbell to the iconic Oceanway Studios in L.A. to add a string arrangement to the song “The Garden.” That song already held a special place in the band’s heart, but when the strings were recorded and we listened to the first playback I turned around to the band and Nick and there wasn’t a dry eye in the room, including mine. Geddy, Alex and Neil continue to one-up themselves, it was a pinch-me moment for sure.
Ray Danniels: I think the record they just made is the best record that any band has ever made for people who are that far into their career. To be in your late 50s, to make a 20th record that is as good as the rest of the body of your work, can you think of anyone else who does that? It’s unheard of.
Pegi Cecconi: In terms of longevity, I also think they are all humbled by the fact that they are family men. None of these guys are rock stars when they get home.
Alex Lifeson: Whenever we came home it wasn’t to chop up lines of cocaine and party for two weeks before going back on the road. We came back home to do the grocery shopping and take the kids to school and do the same stuff that everyone else does.
Geddy Lee: We spent an ungodly amount of time on the road. I was away from home for months on end. But somewhere in that touring schedule in ’76, there was time to get married.
Nancy Young (Geddy’s wife): Getting married was a commitment that a lot of people were not making at that time. There was no need for marriage. And yet we chose at a very young age to move forward and get married and I really think that helped our life together — that silly commitment and that ceremony with our friends helped us through a lot of times. He was on the road right after. They all had their blue polyester suits on that night. They were looking good!
Charlene Zivojinovich (Alex’s wife): I think the fact they were fathers and husbands when they came home really grounded the guys. When they did come home, they didn’t want to go out and go to restaurants and bars. We really had that together time as families that really solidified everybody’s relationships as couples.
On April 18, 2013, bringing an end to what many RUSH fans believe is a crime against humanity, the band will finally be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Alex Lifeson: I was at home when I heard. We had just come home at the end of the tour in December. I got a call from the office saying you guys are in. I must have gotten 300 emails within a couple of hours that day from people who were really excited.
Geddy Lee: It’s a nod to our place in the world that we have chosen to spend the last 40 years. It’s saying to us that our music has meant something. That’s more than I ever expected to get out of it. You can be as snide and as clever as you want about it, but at the end of the day you can’t ignore that it’s a huge accolade and I’m very appreciative of having it.
Neil Peart: We have long said when people said there was some animus against us by the Hall of Fame and why aren’t you in there and all that, well, it doesn’t matter to us so much as to our fans. They should feel part of something that matters. That’s the key to it, right? It’s like being a sports fan. You want your team to win the Stanley Cup or the World Series or whatever. So this puts a cap on a career for everybody involved, not just the three of us.
The full eRead, available for sale April 18, gives even further insight into this iconic band. Granted unprecedented access, Star journalist Vinay Menon sat down with Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson and Neil Peart, as well as their family, friends and colleagues, to discuss the band’s years together, the trappings of fame, their need to innovate, their near disbandment and what they consider their secret to success. This is RUSH in their own words. To get your copy, subscribe for only $1/week at StarDispatches.com or purchase for $2.99 at iTunes.com/stardispatches