Aftermath

When the first whispers of a new Rush tour reached my eager ears in 2014, I was perhaps more excited than I should have been but this was due primarily to the fact that I had been forced to miss the Clockwork Angels tour owing to my constant moving and traveling for work. The cruel hand of fate had set their tour in Georgia for after I was scheduled to move to Arizona for work and then again, the tour in Arizona was set for after I had moved to Seattle for the same reason. As my own bad luck would have it, I was unable to see the tour at all and I was disappointed and angry with myself for missing it. I really loved that album and was still inwardly seething about it when I heard about the R40 tour that was to come through Seattle in 2015. "Not again.", I told myself. I would see this tour come hell or high water because like most of the rest of the Rush faithful, I too, had heard the rumors that it was to be their last tour and that the possibility of the band retiring loomed large in the future. To be honest, it felt like the end of the road to me and I knew that missing the final tour would shatter me. The band had been recording and touring for 40 years and you didn't have to be Sherlock Holmes to see which way the wind was blowing.
The tour came and my wife and I wound up going to see the show in Portland because the Seattle date had sold out within minutes of going live. Portland was only a short drive down the road and it was Rush after all so it was no burden at all to make the drive south.
It was everything I had hoped it would be and more. The set changes through the course of the show added a nice touch as they cycled backwards through their catalog to the very beginning. A few personal high points for me were when the band busted into 'Animate', one of my all time favorites and when they played 'Jacob's Ladder' another of my holiest of holy's. The pinnacle, however, was when the double necks came out and they played Xanadu. I began screaming incoherently and so loudly that I frightened the woman to my right with my caterwauling. She just stared at me with a look of growing terror as I screamed and swayed to the music, gesticulating wildly and every drum break and fill.
The show ended and my wife and I filed out to find our car and make the 3 hour drive home. We talked excitedly about how good the show was and how many of our favorite songs they played.
What we didn't talk about because it was taboo, was the fact that this was the last time we would ever be able to see them live.
As the tour neared the end of it's run, I began to see items float across my Facebook feed that hinted that the band would retire when the tour ended. My suspicions had been verified and I began to steel myself for the official announcement which would come just a few scant weeks after the tour ended.
It was over. There would be no more new music or tours from the band that had become the beacon in my life from a very early age. Never again would I have the excitement and anticipation of a new album to fall in love with and spend hours learning on guitar.
The news processed quickly for me and while I did feel a sense of sadness at the passing of a legendary band who had filled my life with the most incredible music I had ever heard, I also felt a profound sense of gratitude for all they had given me.
The rigors of touring and meeting their own personal expectations as musicians had taken their toll and they were simply tired and ready to go back to being normal after spending so many years trapped in the unreal word of a touring act of their magnitude. They were also a good deal older than when I had first discovered them and age was beginning to takes it's toll as well.
Being the type of drummer that he was, Neil Peart's body began to vehemently reject the constant abuse he was putting it through every night to entertain the millions of people who came to see them. He was suffering physically and mentally and he was done. Imagine the realization he must have come to as he began to accept that the thing that had made him famous and universally accepted as one of the greatest living drummers of all time was also destroying him both body and mind.
Alex too, was suffering but from arthritis and the pain was starting to be more of a burden than he could bear.
They had all given so much to the medium they had wanted to conquer as teenagers and it was finally time to say goodbye after 40 long, grueling years.
Their final album, "Clockwork Angels", had proven to be both a critical and commercial success. They were going out on top and after so many years of being ignored, they had also finally made it into the Rock&Roll Hall of Fame, an honor that was way too many years in the making.
It had been a phenomenal run when you look back at the totality of it all. I still have all the music and the memories associated with it so in the end, it's not all bad. I suppose I will still miss the excitement of hearing a new album but in those instances I will just lean on my memory to remind me of all they've given me over the years. In my own way, I will hold the red star proudly, high in hand.

In comparison: Rush v. Journey

While it's true that Rush is my favorite band I can't in good conscience say they're all I ever listen to. My taste in music is actually quite varied and eclectic. I will listen to almost anything with a discernible vocal melody or strong instrumental players. I do have an affinity for what is generally termed "classic rock" but my tastes run the gamut from rock to classical and opera to jazz and blues. The point of this particular missive though, is to make a comparison between two of my favorites and show not only the differences between the two but my own perception of why one failed while the other continued to grow and garner more and more fans.
One of my other favorite bands is Journey because as I said before, I am a sucker for a good vocal melody and whether you believe it or not, Steve Perry is a magnificent singer when all is said and done. Add to this the fact that the other members are all wonderfully talented musicians and I was hooked almost instantly when I heard them. At first I was in awe of drummer Steve Smith's raw talent. When I first became aware of them, I was still a drummer and Smith seemed such a well rounded player that I couldn't help but become a fan. As the years passed and I began learning guitar, I fell in love with Neal Schon's playing as well. He was one of the most musical soloists I had ever heard for his ability to always leave me humming his solos after the music faded. The first album after Perry joined the band was a giant step in a new direction for the band having been just another jam band prior to the release of the first record with Perry, "Infinity". 
"Infinity" was an instant smash hit for many reasons but the most obvious was how different it was taken in the context of the day. It featured songs with catchy hooks and some of the best vocal harmonies ever produced on a rock record. The two vocal leads, Perry and Greg Rolie, were the perfect compliment to each other. Rolie and Schon had both come from Carlos Santana's band with Rolie's voice behind the hit 'Black Magic Woman'.
"Infinity" was released in 1978, two years after Rush released 2112 and during the time Rush was busy redefining the genre of prog rock.
Journey became an instant radio favorite with songs that first and foremost fit the radio paradigm of short songs and by appealing to the widest audience possible.
Rush, on the other hand, had charted a very different course of exploration and a belief that if they did what they loved the audience would come around to their way of thinking.
Journey wrote hit songs with mass appeal while Rush more interested in writing songs that would appeal to a much more sophisticated, intelligent audience.
Riding the wave of the success of "Infinity" Journey went back into the studio and produced what can only be called a sequel to the previous output in the album "Evolution" which is a misleading title at best because the album showed very little growth musically. The only change they made to their formula was the ouster of drummer Aynsley Dunbar in favor of Steve Smith.Ultimately, "Evolution" turned out to be more of the same with massive stacked harmonies and Schon's patented use of blistering leads and Perry's soaring vocals.
Rush, in the meantime had just released 'Hemispheres', what many of the prog rock faithful call the pinnacle of complex writing and musicianship not seen before.
The next few albums for each band would showcase the radical differences between the two with Journey taking the, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." approach to song writing so heavily favored and expected by record labels and radio stations alike, and Rush choosing instead to completely destroy the walls of confinement set in place by those entities.
Rush grew beyond what was expected, always favoring to grow as musicians while Journey never strayed from the box of "rock star" status they had garnered after writing hit after hit about love and all the ephemera that comes with it.
There they stayed album after album, locked into a musical prison of their own design, unable to break free.
The one defining characteristic of Rush' music has been the never ending desire, almost a burning need, to push themselves beyond what they thought they could do into territory never ventured into by the arena bands that had become so favored over the years. Bands like Journey, Styx and REO Speedwagon commanded huge concert audiences while Rush chugged along undeterred despite being ignored by radio stations and the wider rock press, building an enormous and wildly faithful following.
The appeal of Rush was ultimately due to the fact that they were so radically different than the vast majority of what was popular on radio at the time.
Radio stations spoon fed their audiences with music that was easy to digest in small three minute bites.
Record labels also promoted the idea of hit singles as a way to make more money on album sales because that's primarily where they made their money.
The incestuous relationship between radio and record labels served to stunt the growth of the music business as a whole and led to a great deal of schlock music being produced and heard on radio.
Rush stood against the tide and never faltered in their desire to do what made them happy as musicians, always taking chances with their music that other bands would never dream of doing. Free from the constraints placed on bands like Journey to always write hit singles that record labels and radio stations would approve of, Rush was able to do exactly as they pleased which ultimately pleased an ever growing, rabidly loyal fan base. Journey, on the other hand, was unable to meet the demands of labels and radio stations and eventually wound up in obscurity after the album, "Raised On Radio", an unfortunate title when you consider that it was radio that ultimately led to their demise.
A line from the Rush song, 'Freewill' springs to mind as I write this.
"I will choose a path that's clear, I will choose freewill."
There is no better way to describe the Rush formula for success. Ignore the path that seems to be laid out for you and choose instead to walk your own. It might be more difficult but it will definitely be much more enlightening and entertaining.

'Heresy' from "Roll The Bones" - dissected

I'm going to alter my usual format and spend a bit more time than usual to dissect one song in particular that I think deserves both scrutiny and praise for how well the lyrics evoked an emotional response, at least from me.
The song is called 'Heresy' and it's about the collapse of communism as witnessed by Peart and his telling is both chillingly accurate and heartbreaking to hear. This song affected me deeply as I listened to it a few times and began to take in the big picture that Peart had painted with his words. I'll reprint the lyrics in full and then examine them piece by piece.

All around that dull grey world

From Moscow to Berlin

People storm the barricades

Walls go tumbling in.

During the writing and recording of the album, the band had CNN on as they watched the fall of the Soviet Union and the destruction of the Berlin wall. It must have been hard for Peart, a well read man and keen observer of the human condition, not to be affected on a deeper level than most.

The counter-revolution

People smiling through their tears

Who can give them back their lives

And all those wasted years?

All those precious wasted years

Who will pay?

Who doesn't remember the video images of people, finally freed from the chains of the absolute domination of communism, celebrating their freedom? They danced and cheered in the streets alternately crying and laughing. Their celebrations would turn to sadness later as they came to realize that the glorious revolution nearly a hundred years ago had stolen all their lives. No one could give them that time back. As if frozen in amber, the entire nation had stood still against the march of modern times and the advance of technology.

All around that dull grey world

Of ideology

People storm the marketplace

And buy up fantasy

The counter-revolution

At the counter of a store

People buy the things they want

And borrow for a little more

Immediately following the collapse, people went on a frenzy of consumerism as imported goods finally began to flow into a nation where scarcity had been the norm for so long.

All those wasted years

All those precious wasted years

Who will pay?

The people at the top of the Soviet Government absconded with much of the nation's wealth as they began to see the impending collapse of Communism, leaving millions destitute and penniless to fend for themselves.

Do we have to be forgiving at last?

What else can we do?

Spoken from the view of the free world, we had to ask ourselves if it was possible to lay down our old hatred and fear of Communism and welcome these newly freed people openly into a world they scarcely knew.

Do we have to say goodbye to the past?

Yes I guess we do

Spoken from the view of the recently freed, they had to come to grips with a new life where they were ultimately responsible for themselves and their future.

All around this great big world

All the crap we had to take

Bombs and basement fallout shelters

All our lives at stake

These lines struck me hard as a child of the cold war. We lived on the brink of total annihilation for decades as we practiced our nuclear response drills, waiting for the inevitable warning siren that would signal the end of humanity as we knew it.

The bloody revolution

All the warheads in its wake

All the fear and suffering

All a big mistake

All those wasted years

All those precious wasted years

Who will pay?

It was these lines that slammed the final point home for me. The great and glorious communist revolution had been proven to be a lie, a big mistake, that no one would ever be able to rectify. Who will pay for all the lives lost and the untold suffering, degradation and humiliation after the fall? All those wasted years that would never, could never, be reclaimed or made right. The millions left in the wake had to question the entire revolution at that point and come to grips with the fact that the grand experiment had failed so spectacularly and there was no one left to blame or hold accountable. We in the west had to come to grips with the realization that even though we had been right about Communism all along, it gave hollow solace in the face of the suffering people with faces filled with both joy and anguish. Those people paid the ultimate price for a mistake and while we might outwardly rejoice in their freedom, inwardly we had to control our own tears at how many people had been left with nothing.

This was the feeling I was left with in the end, one of both joy at the lifting of the darkness but horror at what the new light had exposed. Human suffering on a scale I had never personally witnessed before.

Music Appreciation 101 Rush: "Roll The Bones"

The mid to late 80's were a time of experimentation and change for the band as they charted a course into heretofore unexplored waters with the addition and reliance on keyboards to reshape their sound. The album "Presto" was released in 1989 and had the band navigating their way back to familiar waters featuring a more stripped down sound and fewer keyboard textures. That album had some good moments but they had been away from their traditional sound for too long and there were times when they appeared to lose the thread of what they were trying to do and the album felt flat overall.
They cut the tour to support "Presto" short because as bassist Geddy Lee would later say, "It just didn't seem to be working the way we had envisioned it." The tour wound up being a positive experience despite being overcautious and having a shorter tour schedule than usual.
The tour ended, the band was still in the mood to play so they decided a break was in order before starting writing sessions for the next album. But they wound up cutting the break short as well because all three were ready to get back to work on the new record.
In the final analysis, it was this exuberance that would prove to be the magic ingredient that would make their next album a success.
Filled with a new sense of energy the band ensconced themselves in Chalet studios in Claremont, Ontario for two and a half months.
 As they had always done, Geddy and Alex went off to work on the music and Neil retreated to his cottage to write lyrics with a pile of notes surrounding him to work from, most just single lyric lines or phrases that he would later use to flesh out his new songs.
Following a precedent he had established earlier, he chose a lyrical theme that would run through the entire album. He chose the idea of chance as a force in everyone's life and how nearly every event could be traced back to random chance.
The album contained some of his strongest lyrics to date as he explored the way life can be a game of chance for us all.
Geddy and Alex meantime, set off to write the music using only guitar and bass, relying on Geddy's ability to write vocal melodies and using the music to accentuate them instead of the other way around as they had been doing previously.
The end result of this approach was a much more guitar and vocal driven collection of songs that brought them closer to their roots than they had been in quite a while.
I must take a moment and say that "Roll The Bones" is one of my favorite albums from them in case that fact isn't already painfully obvious yet. This album just worked on so many different levels that I fell in love with it almost immediately.
The songs were crisp and tight with guitar parts that were no longer buried under keyboards. Oh, there were still keyboards to be sure but they were used to add to a melodic line from Geddy or as an ethereal addition floating by almost unnoticed. As someone who was less than pleased with the previous few albums for their lack of good, solid guitar, this was a refreshing and welcome change and one that I felt was the perfect blend of both guitar and keyboards.
The decision by Geddy and Alex to use only guitar and bass as the primary vehicle for writing was evident in how strong the songs ultimately became.
Speaking of the songs, let's take a look at one of the best collections of songs Rush has ever produced. I say that because the songs compliment and define each other so well.
Producer Rupert Hine's influence can be heard in how cohesive and solid the songs are. He had produced their previous album which was a good album but not particularly great. This time around however, he had finally found his way to doing great production for a band with the legacy of Rush and he had a much better collection of tunes to work with and it showed.

The opening track, 'Dreamline' has Lifeson playing a staccato melody using his patented blend of fretted notes and open strings until the band pounds in full force to open the second half of the verse. Peart's lyrics are uncharacteristically more abstract than usual and he uses brief but wonderful phrases that call to mind the sometimes confusing state of mind that youth can experience.
"When we are young, wandering the face of the Earth,
Wondering what our dreams might be worth,
Learning that we're only immortal for a limited time."
He explores this theme with the vastness of the universe as the backdrop and the randomness of life as the ultimate catalyst for the young.
'Bravado' is a wonderful song that tells us that failure is not the end of success but the beginning. He uses the phrase, "We will pay the price but we will not count the cost." as way to say that giving up is never an option.
The next song, 'Roll The Bones' is perhaps the most interesting song on the album for all the different textures it contains. Peart uses his electronic kit to trigger keyboard stabs as punctuation and Has Lifeson playing both an acoustic guitar for the chorus and electric for the rest of the song which includes a very tasteful but perfect guitar solo. The verse has Lee playing one of the coolest bass grooves ever and he and Peart lock in together for a rhythmic structure that frequently accents the upbeats giving it a very strong syncopated feel.  It features a quirky rap section after the solo that is hilarious but it works. The rap section is interspersed with Hi-Q pulses by Peart and Lee's voice processed through a harmonizer to drop it down   more than an octave.
Song after song, the band makes a positive statement about the importance of guitar and bass. Lee's choice to focus on vocal melodies is apparent in how well each song sounds vocally and there are several instances where he adds vocal harmonies that strengthen his vocal lines even more.
My personal favorite track on the album is 'Ghost Of A Chance' a song featuring some of the most gorgeous guitar tones I've ever heard on any album by any band. He uses a slightly distorted guitar sound for the intro and verse riffs but reverts to a soft, lush clean tone with light effects for the chorus while highlighting a simple but beautiful melody to float over the top. His guitar solo is set up perfectly by Lee and Peart as the emotional element is turned up in the run up to the solo. For me, it's one of his best solos ever for how complete and expressive it is.
The rest of the album is strong as well with Peart exploring the concept of chance as the universal constant of life.
All in all, this is one of the most satisfying Rush albums in a long time for me after the exploratory years of the 80's.
I plan to dissect the song 'Heresy' in a separate blog to better explore both the song and my own personal reaction to it. I was affected most profoundly by the song and it forced me to analyze my own preconceived ideas about the future of the world.
"Roll The Bones" easily makes my top ten favorite Rush albums because of how solid it is and because it marked a change back to basics for the band that would carry on right up to their final album.

The "Best" Argument.

From their inception, Rush has always been a "fan's band". This simply means that the wider view of them by industry insiders and many critics was that they just didn't seem to understand what all the fuss was about when they released a new album. The faithful would wait patiently on line at their local record stores for the chance to be the first to possess what they knew would be an exploration into greatness and perfection. I did this several times myself and what I noticed first and foremost about the crowd was how polite everyone seemed to be. There was a jovial air of excitement as the disparate members of the mass talked about their favorite albums, songs and instruments the band played. It had an almost carnival atmosphere and you could see the joy on people's faces because they knew they would soon be holding the latest and potentially greatest thing the band had to offer. It was a bit like a concert without the rampant drug use. The idea that we would all "rush" home to drop the needle on this wondrous thing lent an air of anticipation to the whole event that was palpable. It was a physical presence that you could feel and when the doors opened it climaxed in a frenzy of excitement.
The camaraderie of Rush fans is legendary in the music business and they are often spoken of as the most loyal and dedicated fan base of all time. Speaking only for myself and a few close friends, I can say with no fear of reprisal that statement is unequivocally true.
Rush fans aren't merely loyal, they are rabid when it comes to the band. They will vociferously defend the band's place in the pantheon of the immortals of rock and never give an inch of ground. They may disagree about what the best album or song may be but they are united in the belief that Rush is the best band of all time. As for myself, I tend not to join that argument because I simply cannot choose a "best band" because music is more than something I listen to, it's something I am. All of the music I listen to is the "best" in one way or another. I love the sound of John Scofield playing jazz guitar and the opening strains of Grieg's "Peer Gynt Suites" as much as I love Rush, just for different reasons. The way I view it, the "best" music is whatever I happen to be listening to at the time because I love music so much. Music, to me, is the purest and most direct art form out there because it moves and touches me so deeply. Music is the salve of the soul. It heals the hurts and speeds recovery from the travails of life. I suppose that is what is best about music. No matter what ails you, there is a prescription available that will bring relief in minutes. There are times when only Rush will do but then there are also times when only Iron Maiden will do the job for me.
Music can not only evoke a mood, it can transform one. It can bring light into a dark day and bring solace and comfort to an aching heart.
I am a die hard fan of Rush but I am also a true believer when it comes to music itself.
For me, music is a religion and the songs that I love are the prayers that are spoken in sometimes hushed tones as a way to give thanks for the medium that has given me so much throughout the course of my life.
I can't quantify any one band or style as the best because they have all served to be the anchor and my own personal true north as I traversed the occasionally violent and storm ridden sea of my life. Being a musician as well gives me an even greater love and understanding for how powerful music can be. Playing my guitar is a form of worship to me and my own way of paying homage to the music I love and I will pour my heart and soul into a classical guitar piece just as much as I would if I were playing 'YYZ' by Rush.
Music is beyond important to me, it is the source of my joy and being able to play it is like possessing some sort of super power that only a privileged few ever get to experience.
The very act of classifying any band or style of music as the "best" is pointless at best and completely subjective according to the person listening to it.
In my own case, learning the music of Led Zeppelin gave me the confidence and skills needed to tackle a band as complex and demanding as Rush. In turn, learning Rush music gave me the ability and confidence to tackle the likes of Joe Satriani and Steve Vai.
What is a favorite for any one person is objective and unique to that person. What is best is also unique to the individual.

Music Appreciation 101: Rush "Power Windows"

Rush rolled out their eleventh studio album in 1985 with little fanfare. The album was the continuation of the area explored in Signals and Grace Under Pressure with more keyboard textures and a further softening of Alex Lifeson's guitar sound.
The opening tune, 'The Big Money' featured a great guitar riff and another of his patented screaming guitar solos but aficionados of heavy guitar would be sorely disappointed by most of the rest of the album.
Lifeson was struggling to remain relevant in the context of the band due to the omnipresent sound of synthesizers.
Peart's lyrical theme for the album was about power and the many forms it takes and he hits the mark time and again with his flowing use of imagery in his lyrics. Lyrically, this is one of the best Rush albums to listen to. Peart had perfected his voice as a writer and he was better able to evoke emotion quickly especially in the song, 'Manhattan Project'. He calls to mind the mad desire for men to possess the biggest stick on the playground in the quest for an atomic bomb. The lyrics are eerily haunting as the song starts,
"Imagine a time, when it all began.
In the dying days of a war, a weapon that would settle the score.
Whoever found it first would be sure to do their worst. They always had before."
He continues to draw stark imagery as he paints a picture of men so eager to learn if they could do this horrible thing they stopped wondering if they should do it.
This is my favorite track on the album because I think it is the most visceral and starkly real.
The music is heavily laden with keys but Lifeson does manage to shine in a few spots albeit in a greatly reduced capacity. His guitar solo is sparse, relying mostly on harmonic tones played as an audible punctuation mark. His guitar tones seemed to have softened to play better against Geddy's keyboards and the song does have a dramatic climax but the lack of a strong guitar line weakens it somewhat.
The following track, 'Marathon' has Lifeson back but the intro is still filled with keyboard melodies that again soften the effect of his melody line. The verse is filled with Lee playing a very cool bass part that relies on a doublet played on the downbeat the first time through and the upbeat on the second time through. Lee's playing is crisp and sharp while Lifeson seems relegated to the back seat for most of the album. The song features use of a full string section and a choir, things unheard of in their earlier albums. The trend towards softer music seems to have fully taken hold on the album. The chorus has Lifeson buried so far back in the mix that he virtually disappears again. He doesn't come back out of the shadows until his guitar solo which is all to brief. The ride out of the song is all Lee, strings and choir with Peart adding the rhythmic structure to carry the weight of it all.
'Territories' is Peart's lyrical take on the dangers of nationalism run amok and is filled with stabs of sound played on synth. Again, Lifeson is barely heard until the pre-chorus.
This was the net affect of the new direction the band had taken. Lifeson had been forced to become the "sprinkles" on the frosting and the keyboards were now carrying the bulk of the melodic structure.
I like this album but I don't love it like some die-hard Rush fans did. Being a guitar player first and foremost, I was disappointed at the lack of guitar parts that I could walk away singing.
The rest of the album is more of the same but a high point for me despite the increased use of keyboards is the song 'Mystic Rhythms'. It is a beautiful piece featuring Alex playing a captivating acoustic guitar part along to Peart's pulse on drums.
I felt that so many of the keyboard parts could have been done by Lifeson in his own inimitable style and given the album a more human touch that got lost quickly after "Grace Under Pressure".
The music sounded dry and unemotional and lacked much of the character of the early material. It was almost clinical in how impersonal it sounded.
The album was released when I was stationed in Germany with the US Army and I waited patiently to get it only to be puzzled once again at the lack of guitar it presented.
But being a fan means standing with them in good times and bad and I learned to appreciate the album to a greater degree after a few years and a few hundred times listening to it.
It's not my favorite to say the least and I can't even say it's in my top ten from them but it does stand out as a transition point in the creative life of the band.

Music Appreciation: Rush "Moving Pictures" (sort of)

There is not much more that can really be said about this album that hasn't been said. It has been analyzed, scrutinized and talked about for 30 years or more by this point. Well, side one has at least. It seems that side two has been almost overlooked due mostly to the strength and power of side one.
In all fairness, the slight of never hearing anyone extol the virtues of side two is completely understandable when you factor in what a musical earthquake the first side was when the album was released.
It yielded three singles that all but set the music world on fire and when you add to it the realization that they were three astounding singles from a band that had never really had a successful single in their entire career until the previous album, "Permanent Waves".
Rush was a band on a mission as they wrote and recorded what they wanted regardless of the rules that had been put in their path. They had been dismissed for years as a prog rock band with limited appeal except to the geeks and nerds who loved them. 
When "Moving Pictures" was released all that changed in an instant. Even Rolling Stone, who had denigrated, marginalized and outright ignored them for years, was finally forced to sit up and take notice.
The album exploded into the music scene with the force of an atom bomb. Suddenly, people who had never even heard of Rush, were blown away by the songs, the technical expertise of the band and how amazing the music was. The first three singles released were Tom Sawyer, Limelight and Vital signs but the latter got lost in the immediate appeal of the other two. Within weeks, you could hear the entire first side being played on radio including the brilliantly executed instrumental, 'YYZ', a song that ultimately netted them a Grammy nomination for best rock instrumental.
Rush was finally an overnight success and it only took eight albums to achieve it.
My intent with this missive is not to talk about side one though. I'd really like to take a few minutes and talk about what I think was more of the best prog rock ever recorded.
Side two opened with the beautiful and nearly orchestral, 'The Camera Eye', what would prove to be the last piece they would record longer than 10 minutes. It was a virtual clinic on how to write prog rock music containing so many elements from hypnotic keyboard textures and soaring guitar to Peart's always athletic drumming.
The song is about the unique qualities of two cities and is based on Peart's experiences in both cities, New York and London.
The next song is 'Witch Hunt' a dark and malevolent ode to the dangers of mob rule and features some of Peart's best lyrics to date. Peart made a change to how he recorded his drum parts by multi-tracking the verse to give the impression of a full percussion section. The song starts with a simple but broodingly dark melody filled with dissonance and the shouts of a mob in the background.The lyrics are so descriptive and the chord progression matches them so perfectly that it evokes a sense of foreboding. The best lyric on the entire album for me is during the last verse, "Quick to judge, quick to anger, slow to understand. Ignorance and prejudice and fear walk hand in hand."
The song climaxes with Geddy playing a hauntingly beautiful keyboard part while Alex and Neil flesh out the rest.
The final song, Vital Signs, is perhaps the quirkiest one on the album. Using an Oberheim OBX, Geddy sequences a keyboard melody that seems simple at first but then doubles the melody on bass making it even more interesting. The influence of reggae and The Police is evident with the way both Alex and Neil approach their parts. Neil plays a standard 4 pattern backwards, with the bass drum on 2 & 4 and the snare on 1 & 3, a common device in reggae music, and Alex accentuates the chords on the upbeat instead of the down giving the music a distinct reggae feel. The ride out builds slowly with Neil once again playing the drums more musically than most drummers do, accentuating the end of each time through with fills that once again defy reality for their speed and accuracy.
While everyone in the country was talking about how totally awesome side one was, I was a lone voice talking about side two being the better of the two. It featured one of their patented "mini-epics" and showcased how versatile the band truly was by allowing us to see hints of the music they were influenced by during writing and recording.
The reggae/Police influence was heard on the previous album on 'The Spirit Of Radio" but only briefly in the seconds before the guitar solo.
*Side note - I actually recorded myself playing along to every song on the album and even recorded videos of myself doing it, for the 30th anniversary of the album's release, and I can say with absolutely no hesitation that the hardest one to do was 'The Camera Eye' for it's many parts and mood shifts and the always demanding soloing of Lifeson. I will also say that the three songs on side two were my favorites to play simply because I hadn't been asked to play them at all when the subject of what Rush songs I knew came up occasionally. Invariably, everyone would ask me to play YYZ or Limelight but never once did anyone ask me to play The Camera Eye or Vital Signs.
Perhaps my continued love of side two is based on the fact that those songs were never popular on radio so they remain fresh to me. Whatever the reason, I am still completely enamored with the songs that no one seems to love but me and my fellow Rush fanatics.

Graciously Bitter (Hall of fame, my ass!)

This piece was originally written when I had first learned that Rush would be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2013. I had mixed emotions about it at the time as you can tell from the piece.
After 44 years of dedication to their craft, their ideals and their fans, Rush are due to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame on April 18th, 2013. Doing the honors will be Dave Grohl and Taylor Hawkins of The Foo Fighters, both extreme Rush fans who are said to be on cloud nine to have been selected to do the actual induction. They have been eligible for over 15 years for induction however, a small but powerful minority of the induction committee made it clear years ago that Rush would never get into the Hall Of Fame. Such is true for many of the progressive rock acts that defined an era during the 70’s. Bands like Yes, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, King Crimson and Genesis were passed over time and again because they simply weren’t mainstream enough to be included.

The politics of Rock & Roll has long been a bone of contention where the induction ceremony was concerned when one considers some of the acts already inducted. While acts like Madonna and The Beastie Boys have no doubt had an impact on popular music, it still seems a bit strange that an act like Rush, with their enormous virtuosity on their instruments, the forward themes in Neil Peart’s lyrics and the millions of albums sold to loyal and adoring fans, has been ignored for so long.

There is a great deal of crow being served to the induction committee by fans all over the world who think that the time has been long overdue. For myself, an ardent Rush fan for many years, I am split as to the decision to finally induct them. After having been ignored for so many years, the obvious question is - Why now? It’s not out of a sense of duty on the part of the committee nor can it be ascribed to a genuine sense of accomplishment.

They simply had no choice. In a fan poll conducted by Rolling Stone Magazine, the entity most responsible for keeping Rush out for so long, the band was selected overwhelmingly by fans for induction by a margin of 2 to 1 over any other act. Rush has never been more popular these days with concerts selling out and record sales of their new release, “Clockwork Angels” outpacing the newer acts that Rolling Stone sings the praises of in every issue.

Why now, indeed.

Over the past few years I have lent less and less credence to the Hall Of Fame not just because my favorite band couldn’t manage to get in but because the entire selection process seemed suspect in my mind. My own personal feelings aside, Rush has been together since 1969 and apart from a personnel change after the first album, the lineup has stayed the same. In those 44 years, Rush has led the way in achieving and maintaining their artistic integrity in the face of record companies that hated them, critics who despised them and a musical culture that glorified looks over ability. They’ve survived disco, the punk invasion, hair metal, grunge, death metal and the androgynous English acts that made the 80’s so unbearable. In those 44 years, they’ve managed to keep their core audience despite changes to their sound and expand their audience to new generations who recognize the band as an iconic legacy that will forever shape music and musicians.

In a cookie cutter industry where formula rules, they still show that if you do what you love, the audience will love it too. They prove that sticking to your ideals and principles has merit in a business where both can be so easily cast aside in order to get a deal. From their self titled debut album to the recent “Clockwork Angels” they’ve shown time and again that it’s the fans who decide what they like and those same fans don’t need some suit with a calculator to tell them what’s going to be the next “big thing”.

A friend asked me if I was excited that Rush were being inducted and while it’s true I feel it’s an honor that is way overdue, I find myself somewhat bitter about the whole thing. Rush has always been a fan’s band. They belong to us and you industry types never got what they were trying to do. You can’t have them. I almost wanted the band to do to the induction committee what it had done so many times.

Just ignore it. Ignore the induction altogether and continue to do what they do best. Thumb their noses at critics and the wizards of smart at the record labels and say, “Thanks but no thanks.” It would be so fitting to simply decline the award but Rush, showing the enormous class and grace that has been a hallmark of their career, have opted instead to accept. When interviewed about the induction, all three members have tread very lightly on the subject of being ignored for so long but I know in my heart that they’d all love to just say, “Where were you when we were selling out huge arenas and selling millions of albums? We’ve done just fine without you and we’ll continue to do so.”

They won’t say that though. They’re too classy for that despite what it ultimately took to get where they are. There’s a part of me that secretly hope that Neil delivers a speech that throws it right back at the committee and that Geddy and Alex will just raise their middle fingers in defiance though.

I can hope…right?

Music Appreciation Rush:"Grace Under Pressure"

Fresh off the heels of their tour to promote their last album, "Signals", the band once again took a short break before returning to the studio to start work on the next album. During the tour, the decision had been made to make a split with longtime producer Terry Brown and find someone new who could better present the new direction the band would be taking. This was a decision of monumental importance owing to the fact that Brown had produced each and every album from the beginning for the band and was considered the driving force for their epic 1976 release, "2112" and the incredible success of "Moving Pictures" in 1981.
The split was described as amicable by both sides. The members felt it was time to move on and Brown wasn't really comfortable with the direction the band was taking with more keyboard laden material so they went their separate ways on good terms.
They eventually selected Peter Henderson to produce the new record after a false start with another producer who was too busy to take on the project.
Writing sessions began before Henderson officially signed on so the band started writing without a clear idea of who would be producing the album and it gave them a sense of urgency to make the album as successful as they could despite this fact. Once recording began, Henderson's occasional indecisiveness left the band to make most of the creative decisions about the material themselves. In the end he shared a production credit with the band but it was they who ultimately had final say on both the arrangement and production the songs.
Unlike the previous album, "Signals", the new recordings were much more guitar driven as Lifeson once again was forced to reinvent both his guitar sound and his approach to playing to compliment the ever encroaching sound of keyboards.
The opening track, 'Distant Early Warning' featured a new Lifeson arpeggiating his chord structures and even his solo, which featured his use of simple chording during the solo to give it more depth and character. The fact that he was able to effectively change his approach to playing was his statement that even though he would be forced to share his sonic space with Geddy's keyboards, he was still going to leave his own particular mark on the music. The entire album, in fact, is filled with this new take on how he would present his guitar work and there are moments of truly inspired playing on his part. 'Red Sector A', a song about the horrors of prison camp life, featured Lifeson playing a chord progression that bordered on mystical for it's beauty and complexity. 'Kid Gloves' starts off with him playing a fairly simple melody mixed with a timed delay that let the notes repeat and add to each other.
This was a brand new Alex and he was determined not to let this new electronic voice spoil his fun.
Despite the growing addition of keyboards, this album is a tour de force of Alex Lifeson showing the band and the music world that he was a force to be reckoned with. Sadly, the next few albums would push him both farther back in the music and strain his relationship with long time writing partner, Lee.
The songs are much shorter than in previous years but the album is still strong in overall effect being perhaps the first time that the band had made the conscious decision to avoid the epics they had become famous for and choose instead to make their writing more compact and concise.
It worked. The problem, as we would later learn, was that it worked a bit too well as the band strayed further and further from their roots to pursue this new course.

Music Appreciation 101 "Permanent Waves"

By the time Rush released their seventh studio album, "Permanent Waves", they had all but secured their place in the pantheon of progressive rock deities. The three albums prior to it's release, 2112, A Farewell To Kings and Hemispheres had shown the music world that they were a band with exceptional abilities both in playing and writing and the prog rock faithful were finally coming around to Rush' way of thinking as they combined progressive writing with a heavier edge than had been heard before.
Rush was a guitar driven band as opposed to much of the material available at the time.
Bands like Genesis, Yes and King Crimson relied on heavy keyboard textures and lyrical content that bordered on "avant garde".
Rush, on the other hand, relied on scorching guitar from Alex Lifeson and the tag team of Geddy Lee on bass and Neil Peart on drums, both of whom could quite simply play their instruments better than any rhythm section out there.
They had pioneered a new segment of prog rock that could only be called "conceptual metal" for it's heavy use of distorted guitar and Geddy Lee's soaring vocals that defied understanding.
The album that immediately preceded "Permanent Waves" was "Hemispheres", an album of such technical virtuosity that even the members of the band thought their reach had finally exceeded their grasp during the recording process.
The recording of "Hemispheres" had been an exercise in futility once the music had been written and it came time to get it down on tape. The band found they couldn't actually play all the way through the song 'La Villa Strangiato' because it was just so damn hard to remember the whole thing. They wound up laying the song down in sections and then just splicing them together with producer Terry Brown playing the part of puzzle finisher.
Geddy struggled with the vocals on side one's epic opener, the Hemispheres suite because it was simply too high to do fluidly but managed to get it all down despite this fact.
He would later say that performing the song live took everything he had just to get through it.
The album wound up producing a hit for the band in the song 'The Trees' and 'La Villa Strangiato' became a perennial fan favorite and the benchmark by which all guitar players would be measured still to this day.
You weren't considered "worth your salt" as a guitarist unless you could play La Villa flawlessly which is no mean feat considering how technically demanding it is.
"Hemispheres" was a grueling experience for the band and the subsequent tour to support it left the band both physically and emotionally drained. It was that sense of exhaustion that prompted the band to take a short break before returning to the studio to record their next album.
When they finally did reconvene for writing sessions, they did so with a new goal in mind. They would leave the hyper extended epics behind in favor of songs that were more concise and focused. "Hemispheres" had taught them a valuable lesson about writing and they vowed to make the next record a bit less complicated but no less of a Rush album.
What the writing sessions produced was some of the most tightly packed prog rock that anyone had ever heard. They were Rush after all and they weren't about to start writing hit singles to appease the Gods of the record industry to whom they had given the musical equivalent of "the finger" many years ago. They were going to write Rush music but they would try to come up with something that wouldn't make them all crazy when it came time to put it on stage.
What they produced was an album of surpassing beauty but still filled with the technical brilliance they had become famous for.
The songs were more compact and concise than ever before but they still had two longer tracks that showed off their ability to write layered music that spoke of themes that were about more than just drinking, drugs and girls like so much of the music at the time.
From the opening song, 'Spirit Of Radio' it was clear that they had found a new way to present their music in a format that pleased not only themselves but also pleased radio stations as well. The mere fact that they could release a single that would rocket to the top of the charts almost immediately was proof that staying true to your principles and doing what you loved for long enough would bring the audience right to your door.
The song "The Spirit Of Radio' was actually a back handed compliment to a medium that had ignored them for years because they didn't fit a specific formula for radio play. The lyrics at the end of the song spoke right to the heart of what was wrong with radio as a business. Borrowing a snippet of the lyrical form of the Simon & Garfunkel hit 'The Sound Of Silence', Neil wrote of his frustrations with radio with the damming line. "For the words of the profits were written on the studio walls and concert halls and echo with the sound of salesman."
That was Neil pointing his finger right in the face of radio and saying essentially, "What is wrong with the music business is radio, not artists."
While on the surface, the song sounds like a love note to radio, the underlying message is one of disdain and condemnation for the greed and corruption that was still rampant in the radio business.
The next single released was "Freewill" featuring some of Neil Peart's best lyric writing and a bridge/solo section that starts with Lee playing an almost impossibly difficult riff as only he can while Peart lays down drumming that seems simple with a straight groove but gradually grows more complex as Lifeson plays one of his most blistering solos to date. Combining chord forms and his own particular brand of shredding, he once again sets the bar high for guitar solos.
The album contained two long pieces, 'Jacob's Ladder, a moody piece filled with dark imagery of storm clouds gathering and a resulting storm of intense ferocity reflected so well in the music that highlighted the lyrics and once again featured the bands sometimes bizarre but always captivating use of odd time signatures. The other extended piece, 'Natural Science', starts with a very compelling 12-string acoustic guitar intro that has Geddy singing wistfully about the tide pools one might see at the beach. It was a metaphor for how isolated we can all feel in life with the ocean of humanity just beyond our reach as we exist only in our own small tide pool. The song modulates rapidly as the band pounds into a blindingly fast 7/8 time signature. Two amazing guitar solos later and the band is coming to the climax of the tune, leaving the listener breathless. This was the net effect of more concise writing. They had managed to squeeze into one song what used to take the entire side of an album as they did on "2112" and "Hemispheres". It was the creation of what I like to call the "mini-epic", a process that had begun with 'Cygnus X-1' from "A Farewell To Kings" and had been perfected now on this new album.
There are other very high moments on an album that seemed to be all high moments.
This was a new Rush. A more compact but still virtually perfect Rush that appealed to radio stations everywhere as the first two singles blasted across the airwaves. It garnered both critical and commercial success and proved to be the way the band would approach all their future output. They could actually write singles for radio play and still remain true to their ideals of doing what they wanted to do the way they wanted to do it.
A casual conversation about what my favorite album was with my wife led me to realize that it was "Permanent Waves" despite my love of all the rest. It was the album where Rush became Rush to me. Although it was not a concept album, it's nevertheless one of only a few albums that requires me to listen to the whole thing every time because the songs just play so well against and with each other. It is an absolutely perfect album in every way for me containing so many different elements from scorching guitar to ethereal keyboard textures and as always, the wildest most precise drumming one could possibly hear. Geddy's voice, while still quite high, didn't have the screeching quality it did in his younger years. He had matured as a vocalist and found the "sweet spot" in his vocal range that allowed him to still be up high but with a much sweeter quality to his voice.
It was the best prog rock that has ever been produced as far as I am concerned, surpassing even the monster success of 2112.

Different Stages

I have always broken the Rush catalog into different periods as a way to help some of my friends who don’t really know them as well as I do to understand their evolution from a Zep clone band to the prog rock powerhouse they would eventually become and their evolution into what they eventually ended up being.

I break their catalog down thusly:

1. Finding Their Way

a.Rush

b.Fly By Night

c. Caress Of Steel

2. Inventing Conceptual Metal (a farewell to Zep)

a.2112

b.Farewell to Kings

c.Hemispheres

3. Sticking it to the “man”

a.Permanent Waves

b.Moving Pictures

4. Finding Their Way: The Sequel (That weird middle period)

a.Signals

b.Grace Under Pressure

c.Power Windows

d.Hold Your Fire

5.Getting Back To Basics

a.Presto

b.Roll The Bones

c.Counterparts

d.Test For Echo

6. The Phoenix Rises (Sticking it to the man: The sequel)

1. Vapor Trails
2. Snakes and Arrows
3. Clockwork Angels

I simply used my years of learning and studying their music as the basis for the different stages. Each stage represents a change of some kind in how they approached their writing and arranging over the years. You all may see it differently than I do and that’s fine.

Music Appreciation: Rush: "Counterparts"

There is a lot to like about the 1993 release of “Counterparts” and it’s eventual peak at #2 on the Billboard chart in the US, one of two highest ranked releases, not to mention the single “Stick It Out” staying at the #1 spot for four weeks is testament to that.
At a time when many critics and some fans were beginning to wonder if the Rush phenomenon had finally run its course, the band roared back to life with their heaviest album since “Moving Pictures in 1981.
The band had spent the latter part of the 80’s and the early 90’s quite literally buried under the omnipresent sound of synthesizers and slaves to a digital master known as a sequencer.
From the opening track, a straight ahead rock monster called “Animate”, it was clear that Alex Lifeson was once again firmly in the driver’s seat for the bulk of the upper end of the melodic spectrum. The song starts with Peart counting the band in and then proceeding to lay down a fairly straight groove that was still undeniably Peart. The song features keyboard textures but they’re used more as punctuation than form and the band weaves seamlessly through the verses to the chorus with all the fire and flash of the Rush we had all heard come blasting out of our speakers when “Tom Sawyer” dominated the airwaves.
The intervening years between then and “Counterparts” had been filled with albums that bordered on ‘synth-pop’ and had left a great many fans both perplexed and disappointed with the new direction the band had taken.
The first single released from “Counterparts” was the song “Stick It Out”, an anthem reminding us all never to accept failure or dismissal as a natural conclusion. The opening riff was the heaviest thing I had personally heard from Rush since the opening strains of ‘YYZ’. It featured Alex’ guitar tuned down to a drop D tuning. It was a very simple riff but the net effect was enormous in the context of the time. Using copious amounts of feedback and sonic dissonance as transitional elements, Lifeson was making a statement that Rush was first and foremost a guitar band. He was back and he was going to stake his claim for once and for all.
So went the rest of the album, song after song of driving guitar parts and Lee and Peart providing a solid bottom end as the foundation to the growl of Lifeson’s guitar.
One of the highlights for me was the guitar solo in ‘Cut To The Chase’, a virtual tour of Alex at his slippery best, sliding along the fret board, reminding everyone why he was one of the best guitarists of his generation.
I felt like this album was the equivalent of the Jews wandering the desert for 40 years and finally crossing the river Jordan. This was the promised land I had been waiting for. I had been patient and trusting during the synth years and there was a lot to like about that period but I’m a guitarist and my heart ached at the loss of Alex as the main voice.
Now he was back and things were going to change. And change they did, in more ways than even the band would realize.
The album was produced by Peter Collins, who had produced the “Hold Your Fire” album but he brought with him, Kevin “Caveman” Shirley to engineer.
“The Caveman” as he was called, was a no nonsense engineer who had cut his teeth at the desk for harder rock bands than what Rush had just transitioned from and he made his presence known by insisting that Alex and Geddy both use old amps cranked up loud with no effects whatsoever, a pronouncement that Lifeson balked at initially but The Caveman was adamant, finally winning the day.
The album is a testament to the impact of both Collins and Shirley in the booth because it is without a doubt the heaviest Rush album in years. The band was at it’s best on Animate and another gem featuring Peart’s always ethereal lyrics, ‘Alien Shore’
One of the sleeper hits for me is ‘Double Agent’. Peart draws a rhythmic straight line through the song as Geddy and Alex slash their way through it.
They also paid tribute to their penchant for writing instrumentals with the song ‘Leave That Thing Alone’ but unlike the instrumentals of the past this one was not a prog paen to odd time signatures and blazing virtuosity. Instead it featured a fairly normal song formula interspersed with a beautiful melody by Lifeson.
This was the album I had waited for. It was a much more basic approach to writing and performing and a stripped down sound that relied on Lee and Lifeson playing their instruments as they had in the old days.
The album rolled through with Peart’s lyrics and Lee and Lifeson’s fierce playing ruling the day.
Welcome back, boys. I've missed you.

Music Appreciation 101 Rush: Signals

I know what you’re all thinking right now. “Oh great, he’s going to talk about Rush again. Enough already! We get it!”
Well, yes. I am going to talk about Rush again but follow me along as I put a new spin on an old subject.
Following the wildly successful efforts of their album, “Moving Pictures”, a work of seminal importance to both their fan base and the wider rock audience, Rush embarked on a course that would ultimately alienate not only some of their more hardcore fans but also the rock critics as a whole.
Rush had already spent the bulk of their musical career thumbing their noses at both critics and industry insiders by choosing their own path and ignoring the tried and true formula for success that had been written in the big book of “What Not To Do” by the “wizards of smart” that seemed to control the music business.
Rush took that book and all the rules for musical success, poured gasoline on them and lit them on fire for their 4th album, “2112”.
I need not remind you of the phenomenal success of that particular album but it serves as the paradigm for all the risks they would take in their future output.
2112 was the Rush version of a big “Fuck you” to the geniuses in the halls of power in the music business and a pronouncement that they would henceforth do things their own way, rules be damned. In truth, after the failure of the previous album, “Caress Of Steel”, the band believed their musical career was at an end. That failure prompted them to adopt a scorched Earth policy towards what was their last contractual album.
Thinking they had nothing left to lose, they wound up making one of, if not the best, conceptual albums of all time. In essence, they used failure as the impetus for change.
Following the incredible and rightful success of “Moving Pictures”, they once again took the opportunity to implement a sea change in how their next album would sound but this time, they would use success as the impetus for change.
“Moving Pictures”, both the album and the subsequent tour to promote it, were both so popular that it made the band pretty much bullet proof against the critics who had maligned them for years.
Even if the band had broken up at the moment “Moving Pictures” was released, they would still have been placed in the pantheon of rock gods. Never a band to rest on its laurels, they chose instead to do the unthinkable. They went back into the studio after an exhausting tour schedule that would have killed most other bands and proceeded to once again redefine both their own sound and their value to the rock world in general.
The result of that redefining was the album, “Signals”, an album that put Geddy Lee’s keyboard work firmly out front and fan expectations in limbo.
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” is an industry maxim that has always been the standard by which all bands are measured but Rush decided long ago to take a big, steamy dump right on top of every “standard” they ever ran up against.
Fans, critics and industry insiders all believed the next Rush album would essentially be a sequel to “Moving Pictures” because the music business is run on formulas and unshakable rules. Fans expected a sequel simply because that’s what the industry had been putting out for years. The critics expected it because they too were used to the rules.
But Rush was not a band that used formulas or rules because they believed their fans were smart enough to follow along as they changed the face of rock music forever.
It was that very belief in the intelligence of their audience that rankled music industry “big wigs” and critics alike. Neither of those two entities wanted smart audiences, they wanted audiences who would faithfully do as they were told because that’s what made them rich and powerful.
Let me pause and explain that when I use the word “critics”, I mean primarily “Rolling Stone” which had for years used a lot of ink and column space to try to convince everyone to hate Rush because they did. The smaller, independent critics liked Rush because they understood what the band was trying to do just as the fans did. “Rolling Stone”, on the other hand, had decided that Rush was a joke and did all they could to marginalize if not ignore them completely. But I digress…
The 1982 release of “Signals” was met with puzzlement from the fans, condemnation by the critics and outward hostility by the purists.
Despite all that, it was an album of significant change and value to the Rush catalog as whole. It yielded 2 singles in “Subdivisions” and “New World Man”, both of which were met with excitement by the fans because they would once again be able to hear their favorite band on the radio, something that was altogether new even in the wake of “Moving Pictures”, an album that had netted them a permanent spot on AOR radio for all time.
The album was a mosh of keyboard laden almost “euro-pop” with only occasional allusions to Alex Lifeson’s always brilliant guitar work.
Having called on their long time producer, Terry Brown, to run the recording desk, the band broke new ground in a variety of areas. Gone were the long, prog-rock epics and totally undanceable and sometimes confusing time signature changes of the past. Several of the songs on this album bordered on being “dance tunes” for the simple fact of their straight 4/4 time and pulsing bass drum. This was completely unheard of in the shadow of Neil Peart’s amazing and always inspired drumming.
Many serious critics laid some of the confusion of the album at the feet of producer Terry brown because he had made his mark producing their concept albums and was the guiding force behind the success of “Moving Pictures” and seemed out of his element producing an album filled with layered keyboard tracks and a guitar sound that would occasionally get lost in the mix due to the omnipresent texture of Geddy’s new keyboard rig.
Geddy is at his bass playing best on the song “Digital Man" as is Neil with his penchant for always doing more than the average drummer would do.
Immediate sales were quite good but as word spread of the new direction the band was taking, those sales cooled rather quickly despite another grueling but successful tour to promote the album.
There were times on the album where it seemed Alex was struggling with this new voice that was invading the sonic space that had once been the sole domain of his guitar and was barely able to find his new place in the grand scheme of things.
Where once keyboards were used as the icing on the cake, they were now the cake itself and Alex became the icing instead.
Don’t get me wrong, Alex has moments of true brilliance in his soloing and some of his accompanying rhythm guitar work but it was unusual to hear such preeminent key textures on a Rush album.
As a fan myself, it was hard to know how to feel about this album when taken in context of the last one. The last album was a work of singular genius and inspiration in the annals of rock history but the new one seemed almost schizophrenic in how much keyboard work it had.
After the first time listening to the whole album my only thought was, “What the HELL was that? What did I just hear? Where the hell did Alex go?”
After hearing it for the first time, I pictured Alex tied up in a closet during the making of the album and being let out now and then to add the occasional solo and to play second fiddle to this new electronic interloper.
The Rush faithful let their feelings be known with an almost hostile and sometimes angry posture. Sadly, I was one of those.
I just didn’t get it at first. Where once I was treated routinely to some of the most inventive and complex guitar solos of all time, I was now subjected to hearing keyboard solos and (gasp) a violin solo. “The Analog Kid” proved to be one of only a few moments of the old Alex I was used to and the solo was breathtaking to behold.
I listened to the album again and was still left with a feeling of emptiness at the lack of guitar virtuosity I had grown accustomed to. When the tour came to Texas, there was no question that I would go. They would be headlining the “Texas Jam” that included both .38 Special and Ozzy Osbourne in support of his “Bark At The Moon” album. That show would be capped off by seeing my favorite band playing music from an album that, at the time, I didn’t really much care for.
It wouldn’t be until years later that I managed to put my disappointment in “Signals” aside and learn to appreciate it for what it truly was. This was simply Rush being Rush. It was, in actual point of fact, the thing that had drawn me to their music to begin with. They were outside the mainstream. They had a “stream” of their own and they charted their own way along it year after year.
I look back on “Signals” now and realize that it is actually one of my favorites for how different it was.
There are moments of real beauty, the song “Losing It” for instance, about having something that defines you as a human slowly taken away through age, the voice of Hemingway being sung by Geddy.
Like the character in “Losing It”, Rush would not go gently into that good night though. They would rage on until the fans caught up with them.
We eventually did catch up with what “Signals” was but it proved to be a harbinger of things to come with their next few albums.
But that is a story for another day...