Rush: Classic or Dud?

I can’t help thinking he’s chuckling somewhere knowing hundreds of bands with gigs tonight are trying to figure out “an easy Rush song.”

— Jon Wurster (@jonwurster) January 10, 2020

That's a great pic btw

I’ve probably told this story elsewhere on this thread. But there was some Rush Night on VH-1 a gazillion years ago in which they showed two documentaries on the band – at least one of which I showed my wife, who like so many women, hated Rush.

I wouldn’t say she ended up loving Rush but she did respect the hell out of them after that. Peart’s story (including the part with him riding a motorcycle across North America after his daughter and wife (partner?) passed away) was a big part of that.

I can't believe I'm tearing up, but here we are. My favorite high school band; my first concert and first drink.

One of a handful of bands your first instinct is to air drum instead of air guitar.

Like Naive Teen Idol said above, he was a very fine lyricist, pithy at times. "The Spirit of Radio" is one of best songs about a listener's relationship to music, yet it is not all doe-eyed enthusiasm, but knowing realism in the face of cynicism. And I don't care what anyone says, I love the allusions to "The Sound of Silence." "Subdivisions" one of the best songs about teen disaffection: "Any escape might help to smooth the unattractive truth/But the suburbs have no charm to soothe the restless dreams of youth" is up there with "Hope I die before I get old."

In the early 90s to early 00s I didn't listen to them much, but got back into them again and found them a wiser, more human band than I remembered.

A some-time poet-warrior who brought phat beatz. RIP Neil. My life would be poorer without you.

Master of Treacle at 5:09 10 Jan 20

I feel unfortunately there’s going to be a few songs that’ll be hard to listen to for a while...Time Stand Still, the Garden, Losing It...

my mind went to "Afterimage"

I can’t really process this yet. But once again I’m glad I made the effort to go see Rush one more time on their last UK tour. The solos were as awesome as ever. But as someone else said upthread, every song included a unique drum idea. RIP Neil.

Glad that he live to see the band get some kind of critical acceptance. Not sure he was bothered either way. Seeing obits in major newspapers seems jarring (in a nice way) for someone who was the drummer of a cult band (sort of).

Very interesting interview from 1986. I'll quote a summary from a friend on FB:

Neil held a surprising amount of respect for artists like Peter Gabriel and even Thomas Dolby for working rhythmic ideas into their song craft. But in terms of some of his favorite (then contemporary) drummers: he name drops Stewart Copeland of The Police, Warren Cann of Ultravox, and Steve Jansen of Japan. And goes into very candid detail about the flexibility and compositional wellspring electronics such as drum machines have in terms of music.

Three years earlier in another interview for Modern Drumming detailing the compositional background of 'Moving Pictures': Neil confesses that the song 'Vital Signs' was deliberately influenced by Warren Cann's metronomic machine precision like style among other things. Some hyper critical Rush fans may write off their eighties output as a 'dark' period, but clearly not Neil given he absorbed the output of the era like a sponge.

There's also the story that they wanted Mission of Burma as an opener.

yeah I remember that from the Burma doc, so crazy

I knew they were broad-minded but Japan definitely surprised me!

Imagine playing at this level in your 60s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kb8UWieKnk

I went to lunch, car radio was on local classic rock station & the dj talking about Rush and i half heard him say of Neil Peart “he was one of the best drummers alive” and i yelled IS to to no-one as i was & then dj says something about brain cancer & i froze, like nononono & checked my phone and saw the awful news

i am so gutted

I was a latecomer - didnt fully lock in until 2008 or so, but was able to see them live & they made my every musical wish come true in that show. Neil as a drummer was often more than my brain could process, and how you build music around his drumming is really an art in itself...but lyrically i found him so fascinating & endearing. The spongelike quality of his lyrucs, taking in so many books & ideas & story fragments that seem on paper like they could never be songs ... I think of Steve Harris in the same way, there’s something very innocent & boyish about the desire to turn all these things into songs ... it fills me with joy that Neil was so open.

Also, that he & his loved ones preserved the privacy of his illness & even his death is so perfectly Neil Peart. all on his own terms. it softens the blow just a fraction.

I'm at the theatre with my kids, about to watch Mean Girls, which starts in a few minutes, and I swear to God I just caught the drummer in the pit quietly warming up with "Subdivisions!"

The fact that I could recognize it just by the drums says a lot (about me, yes, but also Peart).

Did Neil ever explain in an interview why he stopped being interested in electronic drums? I know that sometimes they were brought along on tour for older songs, but AFAIK they were not used in any new songs after the mid-1980s. Interesting contrast to, say, Danny Carey for whom electronic drums became a perennial feature of his style.

just heard the news. when i was learning how to play drums, he was an untouchable god in modern drummer magazine. i got really into 2112 shortly thereafter, of course. i loved reading his interviews - obviously a guy who thought hard about his craft and was always looking to improve.

RIP Neil Peart.

more people should rep
how well neil's lyrics color
their intricate jams

Rush embodied Rock & Roll in a way that transcended whether you were a fan or not-they did exactly what they wanted to do-exactly the way they wanted to do it. NO COMPROMISE.
Love them - or not. RESPECT is totally due.
Neil Peart fused Heart.Mind.Body. To a seamless whole.
R.I.P.

— Vernon Reid (@vurnt22) January 11, 2020

xpost Peart is triggering lots of stuff, even when it doesn't sound electronic. But towards the end they started to downplay the electronics, synths, etc.

Also, xpost, Reid quotes a Lifeson solo in the title track from "Times Up.'

Especially in the UK they were seen by the music press as a joke

This wasn't limited to the UK press btw, until fairly recently. Like, it's sort of nice of RS to do this but it also seems almost laughably hollow from Wenner's magazine. (I did buy the issue when they put Rush on the cover in 2015.)

"Time Stand Still," "The Weapon" and "Losing It" are each even more poignant than normal…

Really feeling your post VG

<3

xp yeah same

this is pretty hackneyed but

when i was nine (in the early 80s) i nerdily qualified to go to a nerd olympics in eagle rock, georgia. i was assigned to the back seat of a greyhound bus as we drove through the night and i was already v. homesick -- it was the first time i'd been away

wedged between the bus seats was someone's c60 cassette, adorned with someone's ballpoint pen rendition of

https://i.pinimg.com/236x/66/1a/bb/661abb949d5256fd1c46eb7134a7bf1c--tour.jpg

i guess i had a walkman? the cassette was taped off the radio, and the first song was the exit stage left version of 'the trees', and then the second song was 'working man'

not even sure what, if anything, was after that, but i listened to those two songs again and again that week, and here we are almost 40 years later. i can't say they were ever my favorite band, but i always loved them for their unparalleled combination of being totally \m/ and not too serious and just totally decent. which is pretty much how i (more hackneyed) feel about canada too, stereotypes notwithstanding. what's better than good people making good music?

otm

https://i.redd.it/gke1ov58l1a41.png

That’s awesome.

Just read that the Spirit of Radio riff is a sped up version of Grieg’s Morning Mood (referenced in the opening verse). Had never noticed this before.

#NeilPeart4Ever

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjbvZJaxcbw

That dinner is the best. Neil is laughing at everything the other two say

On a personal/human level, it sucks that NP had to deal with this shit so soon after the final tour when he obviously desired to spend it with his family in presumed good health. Everyone deserves that, but it’s hard not to also think of what happened to him 20 years ago and his obvious request for privacy. The man deserved better.

I took Ghost Rider on holiday years back, not a massive Rush fan but certainly interested in them. There are a couple of passages in there that completely broke my heart, it's a good book but not an easy read as you might expect. It's kinda dry in places and hard for me to relate to having never visited North America, but it's well written and candid. The act of unpacking and structuring the pain of loss and directionless grief is to be admired for sure, a lot of the book is in letter for to a friend, and (paraphrasing very heavily, so forgive me) he writes, in relation to his wife and daughter and probably himself too, about how he once thought that being a decent person and trying to make your way through life as best as one can somehow meant that no real harm would come to you, "but sadly, t'aint so" That broke me. Rest In Peace man.

OMG, I've never seen that Dinner with Rush video. What a bunch of mentches.

I would be interested in sund4r or some others presently in Canada can tell us what the response is there. My wife knows the big hits but has no conception of the personas, so I was suggesting that it might be like if Springsteen, a musician dominant in public life in a particular country, died, but I'm not sure…did his death lead the evening news? Is it above the fold in like the national post? in the U.S., he would only speak to the drum press and his obit in the NYT (Pareles) is below that of a crisis management PR guy…

The last few years have been hard on Canadian rock music fans, Gord Downie, John Mann, now Peart.

I'm not sure if it led the news anywhere, since Flight 752 is dominating this news cycle in Canada, but yeah, it's getting plenty of notice. Trudeau did a tweet. However, here too, I feel like the big Rush songs are a lot more famous than Peart himself. I wouldn't say he's exactly a household name on the level of Springsteen in Canada.

I'm trying to find a figure on their Canadian album sales. 25 million albums sold in the US, and 40 million internationally - my sense is that they owe their popularity just as much to some US and international markets as to Canada.

beyond the lighted stage is one of the most charming rock docs ever made btw. i’m gonna try to set aside some time to watch it this weekend

xpost You want to see a crazy international reception, watch that Rio show the band released, which might be the first time they played Brazil. Those fans are nuts, anyway, but they go craaaazy. Check out the way they react to "YYZ:"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eSlvoO3Vw8

Peart's been so private the last couple of decades I don't think his profile (Canadian or otherwise) made him much of a public figure. Per that privacy, I'm really impressed how quiet everyone kept this, out of respect. Obviously Geddy and Alex knew, but while they've constantly been asked about Rush performing again over the past couple of years they stayed totally mum (and kept it together). But I just saw an interview with Mike Portnoy, for example, and *he* knew, too, so I assume a bunch of people knew but respected Peart's wishes for privacy. Even the gentle suggestion of donating to cancer charities was on the down-low; nothing specific named, no pressure (I've seen a lot of people posting donations in the value of $21.12).

Jmm OTM, also JiC re: Peart's desire for privacy (made clear as early as "Limelight"). This is definitely getting coverage but Downie was probably closer to a Canadian Springsteen-like figure. I believe it was Midwestern US radio that first broke Rush? Cleveland iirc??

Yeah, Cleveland.

I was just talking to someone (on ILX?) about the importance of regional fan bases for certain '70s acts. For example, Bob Seger, obviously big in Detroit, was also big in Boston, so could always zip there to make some money during the lean years. And Springsteen, obviously OK in New Jersey and New York, had big fan bases in Phoenix and Richmond, VA (for some reason), so could travel there for a paycheck. I'm sure the same was true for other future rock superstars with no real airplay, like, say, Metallica. That era has long since past.

Passed.

“I would be interested in sund4r or some others presently in Canada can tell us what the response is there”

Well, after the news broke yesterday, Rush music was blasting from several garages and back yards in our neighbourhood. In January.

"Per that privacy, I'm really impressed how quiet everyone kept this, out of respect."

Neil attracted a stalker some years ago, as a result of which he had to have a bodyguard with him on his travels and at concerts. The delay in announcing his death may also have been due to that.

Good article by Annie Zaleski here; includes quotes from Donna Halper, who, w/r/t the discussion above re Cleveland breaking Rush in the US, was the music director who added them to rotation in the city, kickstarting it all.

https://www.npr.org/2020/01/11/795555335/remembering-neil-peart-a-monster-drummer-with-a-poets-heart

Meantime, Hank Shteamer with some deep (and very good) music nerdery.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/neil-peart-rush-drumming-tribute-936430/

was thinking about the "middlebrow" tag of Peart, and while yes in one sense that is true, watching the documentary again I realized that, of course, the guy didn't have an education beyond high school and working at his dad's farm store. then he joined the circus and left for the rest of his life....but despite that he really tried, he read books on tour, he educated himself and evolved and grew as he got older.

how many people in his position do that? a lot of old rock stars are basically giant fucking idiots when asked to step outside of their own mythology or musical history. Peart cared, he wanted to be a grown up and stake out some kind of normal life that wasn't dependent on being the drummer for Rush

Springsteen did very much the same, I think. Self-educated, but made an effort to self-educate more.

That RS appreciation of his composition prowess is exactly what I was alluding to earlier, particularly "Subdivisions" (which could be the band's best song). This line particularly:

But it was in the early Eighties, as Rush started to master more concise song forms, that the full extent of Peart’s mastery really became apparent.

I didn't know many Rush fans growing up, and was never a fan myself. And btw I grew up in Willowdale, the Toronto suburb where Rush was formed. But everyone was in awe of Peart. How could you not appreciate the skill, even the athleticism in what he was doing. RIP to a true wizard.