Rush: Classic or Dud?

"Cinderella Man" is a slight track for this album but that riff still gets in my head all the time.

I stumbled on it the other day, and now I can't find it, but I read something by Neil about how the political discussion with Barry Miles took place at the hotel bar after the main interview with the rest of the band, and Neil assumed it was just a casual off-the-record conversation.

And more to the point he was deliberately taking a contrary view, as you do in debating society which is probably the kind of thing he would have been involved in at college. iirc after that they were persona non grata at the NME, due to being "fascists" even though Geddy's parents were concentration camp survivors.

Vocalist Geddy Lee has an interesting voice: very high-pitched and not unlike David Surkamp of Pavlov's Dog (as he's no doubt sick of hearing).

Surkamp was way more quavery and emo

Malkmus was a fan of Beyond the Lighted Stage and side 1 of Fly by Night: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/stephen-malkmus-on-why-everyone-wants-to-be-a-nineties-kid-242150/

but, damn, Peart really was a right-winger as a young man, wasn't he?

he just sounds sophomoric, like someone who's read about three books.

Malkmus is completely wrong about side 2 of Fly By Night...he must have been thinking of Caress of Steel, which totally lays an egg on the back nine.

Peart was very up-front in his later years that he was naive as a youth and dove headlong into these Randian ideas that he only had a sliver of knowledge on. I think he identified as a "compassionate Libertarian" in later years and admitted when he got older that he'd dispensed of a lot of it.

I think I respect people who espouse those sorts of views when they are young and become more liberal when they get older more than the people who start out more liberal and grow more conservative the older they get. Sort of underscores that those views are ignorant/immature.

I mean I liked Rand's "Anthem" when I was in high school but I also liked a song by Jimmie's Chicken Shack so I probably should have been killed

In that 2015 RS piece:

In the Seventies, Peart rankled the rock press with an affinity for libertarian hero Ayn Rand — he cited her “genius” in liner notes, and critics promptly labeled Rush fascists. Rush’s breakthrough mini-rock opera, 1976’s 2112, is, in part, a riff on Rand’s sci-fi novel Anthem. There’s nothing wildly controversial about 2112‘s pro-individuality message: It’s hard to imagine anyone siding with the bad guys who want to dictate “the words you read/The songs you sing/The pictures that give pleasure to your eyes.” But Rush’s earlier musical take on Rand, 1975’s unimaginatively titled “Anthem,” is more problematic, railing against the kind of generosity that Peart now routinely practices: “Begging hands and bleeding hearts will/Only cry out for more.” And “The Trees,” an allegorical power ballad about maples dooming a forest by agitating for “equal rights” with lofty oaks, was strident enough to convince a young Rand Paul that he had finally found a right-wing rock band.

Peart outgrew his Ayn Rand phase years ago, and now describes himself as a “bleeding-heart libertarian,” citing his trips to Africa as transformative. He claims to stand by the message of “The Trees,” but other than that, his bleeding-heart side seems dominant. Peart just became a U.S. citizen, and he is unlikely to vote for Rand Paul, or any Republican. Peart says that it’s “very obvious” that Paul “hates women and brown people” — and Rush sent a cease-and-desist order to get Paul to stop quoting “The Trees” in his speeches.

“For a person of my sensibility, you’re only left with the Democratic party,” says Peart, who also calls George W. Bush “an instrument of evil.” “If you’re a compassionate person at all. The whole health-care thing — denying mercy to suffering people? What? This is Christian?”

Peart himself is not a Christian, having doubted the existence of God since he was a small child: “I sang the hymns and I read the Bible stories, but I was always perplexed, like, ‘Really? Jesus wants you for a sunbeam? For a what?’ ” In explicitly atheistic songs like “Freewill,” he mocked those who “choose a ready guide in some celestial voice.” And 1991’s “Roll the Bones” posits a chillingly random cosmos, where unlucky children are “born only to suffer”: “We go out in the world and take our chances/Fate is just the weight of circumstances. . . . Why are we here?/Because we’re here/Roll the bones.”

Peart has softened on his unblinkered rationalism in the past couple of decades, especially in the face of unbearable twin tragedies. On August 10th, 1997, Peart’s 19-year-old daughter, Selena, died in a single-car accident on the long drive to her university in Toronto. Just five months later, Selena’s mother — his common-law wife, Jackie — was diagnosed with terminal cancer, quickly succumbing. “Jackie received the news almost gratefully,” Peart wrote in his harrowing memoir of that time, Ghost Rider. Peart told his bandmates to consider him retired, and he embarked on a solitary motorcycle trip across the United States, seeking meaning and solace.

Peart remarried in 2000 and reunited with Rush by 2001. But “Roll the Bones” came to mind more than once in his years of darkness. “God, that song,” he says, over dinner at a Brazilian steakhouse near his home – he drove us there in another, far newer, Aston Martin. “What it came to represent. I mean, ‘Why does it happen?’ When something really shitty happens, of course immediately you look to why. I went all supernatural: ‘Somebody must have put a curse on me, I must have done something really horrible, God must be mad at me.’ I had to sift through all of that shit again looking for meaning.”

But he still prefers the “because it happens” explanation to the one where fate’s horrors are all part of some divine plan. “Do yourself a favor,” he says. “Don’t ever say to me, ‘Everything happens for a reason.’ ‘Cause you’ll be dead.”

Peart suddenly remembers that he was going to repay me the 20 bucks from earlier. I wave him off, saying I’d rather keep the karma. “Yeah, right, ha ha, karma,” he says. “Again, that’s something I used to believe in. Every Christmas I had pages of charities that I contributed to, and I would show my daughter who we’re giving to and why, as a karma thing.” He looks me in the eye. “Until I found out it didn’t work.

“Finding generosity again was a huge gift,” he adds. “Because I had a time where I was like, ‘I hate everybody. Why are you still alive? You should be dead.’ And then I said, ‘If I’m gonna live, I’m not gonna be that guy.’ ”

I stumbled on it the other day, and now I can't find it, but I read something by Neil about how the political discussion with Barry Miles took place at the hotel bar after the main interview with the rest of the band, and Neil assumed it was just a casual off-the-record conversation.

― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Tuesday, January 14, 2020 7:43 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Found it:

https://rushvault.com/2011/08/29/excerpt-may-5-1979-nme-interview-with-neil/

[Neil:] “Hell, what did you expect to meet after reading that? You must have been expecting to be introduced to a bunch of Nazis (the thought had crossed my mind). What Miles said in that interview was that basically we are a bunch of nice-guy Nazis—which of course, is not true.”

You feel you were misrepresented?

“Oh, absolutely. That was a very dishonest article. I was under the impression that Miles and I had gotten on very well. I even gave him my address in New York and told him to stop by any time he was in the neighbourhood. All that so-called political dialogue took place after the interview had finished; we were just chatting, really amenably, I thought, and he twisted it all round. I just feel that it was basically dishonest.”

But surely if you actually said the things that Miles quoted you as saying, and you sincerely believed them to be true, you have no right to be upset or surprised to see them in print.

“Oh, you’re absolutely right. When you’re in this position you have to be prepared to be on trial all the time.

“My argument is that he misrepresented the things that were said; took it all out of context. As far as I was concerned all I was doing was taking up a contrary stance in what I considered to be an essentially philosophical argument—and he made it appear to be political dogma.

“He represented us as fascist fanatics . . . and if that were the case we would have the world’s first Jewish Nazi Bass Player (laugh). It’s ludicrous. We’re not fascists. We’re not racists. I was very upset when I read that article. In America when you call someone a fascist it’s the worst, y’know? It’s the pits. But over here, I now realize, that in certain quarters anyone who isn’t a socialist is, by definition, a fascist. (Laughs).”

Ha, that's incredibly scummy if it happened the way Peart said. The James O'Keefe of rock journalism.

It had surprised me when I read it since, in recent things I've seen and read, I mostly got the sense that Peart was saying that even at the time, he was more interested in Randian individualism wrt things like creative freedom and atheism and was actually reacting against the top-down pressure of their record company.

regardless of his stances at the time his lyrics show a significant shift toward the humanistic and empathetic with Signals (along with an abandonment of any fantastical elements, at least until Clockwork Angels). Grace Under Pressure is an anti-war album.

And as I've observed before, in the '80s there are as many references to John Dos Passos as there were to Rand in the '70s.

The earlier Dos Passos, one hopes, as opposed to:

In the 1960s, he actively campaigned for conservative presidential candidates Barry Goldwater and Richard M. Nixon, and became associated with the group Young Americans for Freedom.

I presume. C. USA Trilogy. Says wiki:

Beyond his writing, Dos Passos is known for his shift in political views. Following his experiences in World War I, he became interested in socialism and pacifism, which also influenced his early work. In 1928, he traveled to the Soviet Union, curious about its social and political experiment, though left with mixed impressions. His experiences during the Spanish Civil War disillusioned him with left-wing politics while also severing his relationship with fellow writer Ernest Hemingway. By the 1950s, his political views had changed dramatically, and he had become more conservative. In the 1960s, he campaigned for presidential candidates Barry Goldwater and Richard M. Nixon.

The stuff Peart references is from the early 1930s. "The Big Money," "The Camera Eye."

yeah he used several things from Dos Passos as song titles.

I think "Power Windows" is peak humanist Rush.

So much poison in power, the principles get left out
So much mind on the matter, the spirit gets forgotten about
Like a righteous inspiration overlooked in haste
Like a teardrop in the ocean, a diamond in the waste
Some world-views are spacious
And some are merely spaced

Also, "Territories," "Manhattan Project," etc.

listened to Clockwork Angels today, they really did go out with their best album in many years

i think it's just straight up my favorite rush album

Clockwork Angels might be the most hard-rocking of all their return to hard rock records. It's got a great heft to it.

agreed but it also has great songs and doesn't feel like it's trying to hard to be "heavy" like Vapor Trails

I prefer Vapor Trails, at least the remixed version. Clockwork Angels has some filler and some embarassing bits to it, IMO, and steampunk makes me cringe.

I spent a lot of time with most of the Rush albums over the past week and have come to the conclusion that Power Windows is my favorite one. It's got the most synths on it and the whole thing has a murky, dark, mysterious and foreboding air about it. If I think of a rush song, two songs immediately come to mind: Tom Sawyer, and the intro to Big Money.

albums I still can't get into at all: Snakes and Arrows, Test for Echo, most of Roll the Bones. Surprises while revising: how good Presto is. I basically got off the Rush train after Hold your Fire because my tastes went elsewhere and as a result I didn't hear Presto until it's been out for a decade already. It's really good! I love the poppy bits in the Pass.

Power Windows is their most exuberant album. It's like they are just all going for it all at once through the whole thing.

I also noticed that were really into ending songs on that album. Lots if fade outside and extra codas and ending jams.

It's extra cool how so many songs shift back and forth from these really atmospheric, bottomless reverb parts to gritty rock riffing. And every guitar solo is a cinematic, multi segment composition.

yeah it's so well done. the one criticism against it could be that the songs are rather samey (which could also be said of Grace) but it's the kind of samey I like so I don't care that much. To me, sonically, it really perfects that lush, thick, heft that started with Tom Sawyer.

Not samey, cohesive!

I think Grace Under Pressure is far darker than Power Windows. Power Windows is more day glo, state of the world, while Grace has a dystopian, android feel to it. Very 1984, though this might be the year and Red Sector A talking. I probably like Power Windows better: more distinctive non-single songs. Senior year of high school I did an art project with the lyrics to Manhattan Project.

Presto was the first Rush album I bought in stores when it came out. I still think it's a great album, perhaps hampered only by that thin, crystalline guitar sound.

Turn around and walk the razors edge, motherfuckers.

yeah Power Windows is great but "Red Sector A" kinda swings it in favor of GUP

in terms of darkness

Power Windows might be Peart's best lyrics.

Presto tour was when I first saw them live, I have a lot of affection for that album

kind of a transitional album maybe why it gets ignored

really wish I'd been into Rush earlier and subsequently seen them sooner. I didn't make my first mad dig into Rush beyond, say, 2112 until 2010. I like a lot of the later 80s stuff too even Hold Your Fire

PW could only have been released in 1985/86 IMO to my ears...that bright, crystalline sheen to the production and how the synths integrate w/ the guitars

plus power windows were realy popular

Does anyone else feel like "Snakes and Arrows" and "Clockwork Angels" have too much of an assembled-in-the studio quality to them? All their career long, the three guys went to the studio together for a few weeks to record, and though they laid down their parts separately at least for the later albums, the results still sounded like a band in perfect sync, "live" in a way. But the last two albums, to my ears, have a spliced-together quality about them typical of rock acts whose members are no longer friends or even not on speaking terms with one another.

Presto tour was when I first saw them live, I have a lot of affection for that album

same, but yeah i wish it didn't sound so thin

Presto tour was when I first saw them live, I have a lot of affection for that album

Same here and first concert ever for me! 4/24/90 at the Spectrum in Philly. First time I ever got drunk (vodka and Pepsi). I was sheltered.

two xposts but that may be my issue with those albums. clockwork angels is mostly fine while I listen to it but it's not very memorable to me. I guess I like Rush when they have really strong hooks.

dud

Power Windows is when the synth presets match the ambitions of those kids with Middletown dreams imo

Ok, I realized Power Windows has no filler.

A (former?) denizen of these parts weighs in

http://dominiqueleone.com/2020/01/14/rip-neil-peart/

Great read. The graphic showing Peart's drums landing perfectly on the 16th note repeatedly was fantastic

Same here and first concert ever for me! 4/24/90 at the Spectrum in Philly.

I was at the same show (probably)! Mr. Big opened. They played a song called "Addicted to that Rush."

Power Windows is when the synth presets

I'll try to dig up this list of tech they used on tour for this album. Downright ... progressive.

Here a 1997 one, I'll keep digging. Still interesting!

http://www.2112.net/powerwindows/transcripts/19970700eq.htm