Rush

[riley]

Since we've establsihed without question and all here are in agreement that Rush is the greatest Canadian band ever, it seems appropriate for them to have their own thread.

Alternative subject titles considered:

"Riley and Doc Drum talk about Rush"

[riley]

I had this one on yesterday, and I'm not sure I realized how badly and unfairly I had placed it in the shadows of Moving PIctures. I love being blown away by a disc I've been listening to for 20 years.

Not everything they did in the 70's holds up perfectly. Not everything they did in the 80's has their standard poise.

Signals as I listened to it yesterday, could almost be considered their most contemporary work if placed alongside some of the interesting stuff of the last 5 years. A bit more song focused than prog influenced.

[Dr. Drum]

Hey, great Riley! We should have done this a long time ago. ;D

I place Moving Pictures among the greatest rock and roll albums of all time, so in that sense everything else they've ever done sits in its shadow. Signals is a very worthy follow-up, though. They found new ways to write in a complex manner (The Weapon, Digital Man) while at the same time learning the value of simplicity (The Analog Kid) and recording their first ever true pop song (New World Man). Solid, solid album, I really like almost everything on it. The only thing I can't handle is the overwrought, reverential, kitschy tone of "Countdown".

[riley]

I think "Countdown" would be a much better song without all the control tower T minus sample nonsense. The lyrics are a touch cheesey, but the two main hooks (pre-chorus bridge and closing sequence) are absolutely infectious.

I had kind of fallen off the "Subdivisions" fan club too, but clearly that was from too much overplay and not on my terms. The drum fills in that song sit nicely alongside any of Peart's best from Moving Pictures, which I concur is one of the greatest albums of all time.

[Dr. Drum]

I wouldn't disagree about those two hooks in "Countdown", Riley, but all I can hear when I listen to that song is the cheese. Worst Rush song of the last 25 years... Although the lyrics to "Mission" make me wince a fair bit, too.

"Subdivisions", I agree, is right up there with the band's all time best.

***
Totally unrelated bit of trivia: I was reading a piece on the four Pixies the other day and it turns out that Dave Lovering has always been a major, major Neil Peart/Rush fanatic. Now, who knew, eh? Guess his one remaining ambition in life is to tour with Rush... a Rush/Pixies double bill – you can see it, right?

[riley]

Nice new Avatar. We'll talk.

I think a Pixies/Rush tour would be brilliant because it doesn't make any sense at all. I think there are a lot of Rush fans out there in bands you would never expect to be fans. I mean most of these cool post rock instrumental bands like GYBE!, the Do Makes, Explosions in The Sky all owe something to Rush without consciously realizing it.

Doc, do you have the Live In Rio dvd? I hear I should have that.

[Dr. Drum]

rileydog said:

Nice new Avatar. We'll talk.

Thanks, Riley. Thought it was about time to change my t-shirt. Pop Explosion's starting to shape up nicely this year, eh?

I have the Live in Rio 3-cd set but I never got around to picking up the dvd. Which I always meant to do, too. Probably worth it for the band/audience interaction alone.

[Dr. Drum]

A good excuse to revive this board....

How They See It: Closer to the Heart with a Rock Legend

Geddy Lee's Caption: The Pain of Politics

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but which words depends on who's looking. Every month, Evan Solomon sends an unidentified image to someone in the public eye along with a challenge: give it a title and share the ideas and experiences it evokes. Today, Rush's iconic front man submits to the photographic Rorschach test

Evan Solomon
May 26, 2007

Evan Solomon: Geddy, when I sent you this photo, what caption came to mind?

Geddy Lee: Being me, I over-thought the thing a million times. But since I think the photograph is dealing with North and South Korea, the caption that struck me was, "The pain of politics."

Why "the pain of politics"?

I look at this photo and I see this suffering woman saying goodbye to a family member of some sort - perhaps her husband or her father, I can't tell - and he's reaching out to her. Korea is still, essentially, at war, 54 years after the ceasefire. This photo reminds me of the limited visits that North and South Koreans are allowed to have in order to reconnect families that have been torn apart. The Korean War is kind of a forgotten war and this picture really provoked me to think about that time and how little has really changed in terms of the division of life for family members in Korea.

You're right about the picture. It does show some South Koreans crossing that heavily armed border this week to be reunited with North Korean relatives that they haven't seen since 1953. But, of course, after the short visit, they each have to go back to their own countries.

I can't imagine that - family members that you have no access to. They can't phone each other. They don't have Internet contact with each other. Unfortunately the kind of comic presence of Kim Jong-il has made us look at North Korea in a slightly ridiculous fashion, but we forget they are half of a state that is divided and still at war. I was thinking about the Cold War that we all grew up through and this is a "cold war" of a different kind - it's totally out of our mindset as North Americans, but in that part of the world it is very real and it's an ongoing thing and you look at this picture and you see that.

Geddy, earlier you said that in typical fashion you over-thought this caption. What do you mean by that?

Oh well, give me a project and I'll think about it six ways to Sunday. I tried to think of a caption that would be revealing.

At one point, I thought "Not Enough Time" would be good. Because these two people, as they're feeling this pain, they're thinking we don't have enough time together. So that was one feeling I got from this photograph as well.

So much of your life - in a very different way - has been about not enough time. You are always on tour, making connections and leaving. How did you handle that with your own loved ones, as a father raising a family, always saying goodbye?

Well, that's an interesting question. When I was younger, it was easier for me because I was so enthralled with the dream. The dream of chasing my career. So I justified the leaving and the pain I caused my wife and my children by saying this is the job I'm meant to do and I have to follow my dream.

But it's never that simple. Life got much more difficult. There were many times with my relationship with my wife and my kids where it was a very painful thing to have to leave. You know, things go on in your life that require your presence and the older I got the more I felt the damage from my continual departures, the divisions were growing. When you are not present in a marriage and not present in a parenting situation, there's going to be damage and there's going to be alienation.

So I realized at a certain point in my life I had make a stronger effort to be present, to tour less and to come home more and to make sure I keep my family together. I always tell my friends that marriage is the toughest job you will ever have and keeping a family together is tougher than any job in the real world.

Did you almost lose your family?

I will say my wife and I, we teetered on the brink at one stage in our relationship many, many years ago, but we both wanted to make sure that didn't happen. This was when my son was very young and I was touring at that point - oh my god, I don't know, almost 250, 300 shows a year.

That is the rock-star life, isn't it?

It wasn't so much the rock-star life as trying to be a rock star. When you are trying to get there, you don't say no to anything. We would stay on the road for months at a time without coming home and obviously all of us experienced damage to our home lives.

And that's when we started to institute some pretty strong rules. We wouldn't go away for more than three weeks without coming home for a week and we began turning opportunities down in order to preserve our family lives.

I think that was the smartest decision we've ever made.

The Korean photograph also has to do with loss and how people try to cope with it. How has loss affected your life?

I experienced a massive loss very early in life. I lost my Dad when I was 12. And that was a terrible disruption and a terrible thing for a 12-year-old boy to handle.

How did he pass away?

Complications from the war. My parents were Holocaust survivors. My father was never 100 per cent healthy and his heart was not healthy from his labour during the war. And one night, his heart just gave out.

Was he in a concentration camp?

Yes. Most of my family was in camps. My mother and my father were both in Auschwitz and they then got transferred to different concentration camps. My mother was liberated in Bergen-Belsen and my father spent some time in Dachau as well before he was liberated.

Was living with a sense of tragedy and loss, and even the guilt of survival, a shadow in your family?

My mom is an amazing woman and she very openly talked about [her] experiences. I know other children of Holocaust survivors tell different stories - how their parents won't speak of it, they won't discuss that pain - so I feel very fortunate that I had a tough mother who had a good sense of humour, who embraced life and handed it off to us too. It really helped me get over the loss of my father. I lost a friend a couple of years ago to cancer and that was a very tough moment for me. Witnessing what Neil has gone through with the death of his wife and his daughter was another difficult time. But somehow or another I feel like my mother prepped me for all of this...

Your father died so long ago. He never saw you succeed, or raise a family. I wonder, does the ache ever really go away?

Not really, no. I think about that. I think about how great it would be to have him around to see my kids. More than my success, that's what I wish he was here to enjoy - my children and my wife and all that. But what can you do? Life throws you curve balls and you got to do your best to handle them.

You and the band are about to tour for your new album. Do you still get a kick out of playing older hits - or do you want to move on to the latest material?

One of the reasons we tour without an opening act is so we can have 2½ to three hours to indulge everything - play the old stuff and play a good amount of new stuff. But for me to walk out on stage and after, what, 33 years of touring, see people who still want to hear something I've written 25 years ago... Well, I'm very happy to play that for them.

Some people say that when rock musicians get older, they lose their creativity. Do you still feel creative?

Absolutely. We've been through a lot in the last couple of years on the personal side, but now I feel like we're acting like a band again. We're still having fun with it, so the spirit of rock and roll is back with us.

Is that the caption for Geddy Lee right now?

Maybe. It could well be.

[wayved]

Im gonna buy tickets. Rush is gonna be in Phoenix Jul 27th. Ive missed so many shows (Dylan, GBV) due to crazy shit. If anything goes wrong that day Im gonna turn into that burnout dude from Taxi for a day--if anyone has bad news or asks me a question--my answer is gonna be "eeaaahh" then I will run my fingers through my hair. Selfish? Yes. Horrible? Yes.

I talkeed to a friend of mine yesterday that I have known since 1988-who got me into Rush. Hopefully he will be able to make it here. My better half refuses to go to the Rush show with me. I can understand, but it makes me sad. 10 years of marriage--"I can't stand them!" I knew that--cos all the road trips we have taken I tried to sneak some Farewell to Kings on up in the deck and she was not having it.....

5 bands I cant play during a road trip with my better half:
1. Rush
2. Yes
3. Big Star (once i threw on Sister/Lovers and she asked whats wrong with this guy? I was WOUNDED. BUT she heard "Jesus Christ" and it was alright..)
4. Can
5. I give up. 80 percent of the stuff I love. She doesnt complain but I know it annoys the shit out of her. Van Der Graff, Blood Brothers and Mars Volta get no play. You know what? I understand.

[riley]

I'm rarely permitted to play Rush in my wife's presence. She's come a long way mind you. Geddy toning down his wail over the years helps. "Xanadu" came on the CBC when we were in the car, and I was quickly remided that there's still much work to be done. When the part with the coconut style percussion kicked in I think all that was said was "embarassing".

The nuances of songs like that aren't lost on long time Rush fans, but all of us have to admit with the benefit of retrospect that there are some really silly passages in their early through mid 70's stuff. I still respect and enjoy the ambition and the chops of that period, but in isolation, running stream and little dancing pigmy sound effects don't quite hold up like one might expect.

[Dr. Drum]

Rock n' roll is in part completely fucking ridiculous. One of the reasons I love Muse is that, with them, that sense of the absurd is just implicit. And in my mind, one of the main sources they're taking that from is early to mid-period Rush.

Yeah, there's some pretty whacked out stuff on mid-70s Rush records and, at the time, they were more often than not putting it out there without irony or any kind of distancing at all (a song like "La Villa Strangiato" would probably be an exception). It doesn't hold up – but then, in another way, it kinda does, ya know?

Still love "Xanadu", btw. And I am allowed to play Rush on road trips with my wife.

[skvorisdeadsorta]

"Fly by night the Mountain Dew!"

I totally love Rush and are a must on any roadtrip of mine. As well as Santana, Yes, and ZZ Top.

[Kensterberg]

skvorisdeadsorta said:

"Fly by night the Mountain Dew!"

I totally love Rush and are a must on any roadtrip of mine. As well as Santana, Yes, and ZZ Top.

Makes mental note to never accompany Skvor on any road trips.

[skvorisdeadsorta]

Oh come on, man! It would be fun.........I always throw "Born to Run" on my mix tapes as well as lots of weird post punk stuff on there. It wouldn't all be bad.

At least (and believe me I'm not implying that you would be into this band) I don't listen to Styx. There are alot worse bands out there.

[Kensterberg]

Dr. Drum: How can "New World Man" be Rush's first "true pop single" when it was like four years or so after "Spirit of Radio" -- their best pop single?

Just wondering ...