In those pre-internet days, I brought copies of my articles to Rush concerts and asked members of the road crew to pass them on to Peart. His voluminous prose output apparently included vast amounts of correspondence.
A friend of a friend gave me the chipped and pitted drumsticks Peart used during the encore of a June 10, show in New Orleans on the Time Machine Tour. Forty years of sustained excellence is a lot. The only time I ever saw Rush in the s? On Friday, May 22, , during the throwback second set of the enduring Canadian power trio's 40t….
That the cancer that killed him originated in his ever-active brain was a cruel irony akin to Popeyes Famous Fried Chicken founder Al Copeland dying of cancer of the salivary glands. The respective anatomical regions associated with their success were also the source of their demise. Long before his own diagnosis, Peart was all too familiar with both cancer and grief. His first daughter, Selena, died at age 19 in a car accident. Months later, his wife, Jackie, succumbed to cancer.
Shattered at the loss of his family, he withdrew from the limelight. He sought solace on a months-long motorcycle journey across North and Central America. Rush went on hiatus for several years. Eventually, Peart started anew. In , he married photographer Carrie Nuttall; their daughter, Olivia, was born nine years later. And he reunited with Rush for an especially fruitful late-career resurgence. Five years old at the time, she marveled that so many people had come to see her daddy and uncles Alex and Geddy.
For decades, he was more than willing to do the hard work to be great. He took pride in a job well done. And he certainly enjoyed the fruits of his labor. Rush and Judd were both managed by local friend Ray Danniels. Lee was replaced in Rush by bassist and vocalist Joe Perna, and at this point the name of the band was changed to Hadrian.
Lee had such terrific success with his newly formed band that Young made the decision to leave and join Judd, resulting in the final dissolution of Hadrian. However, in September, the members of Judd also disbanded allowing Lee, Lifeson, and Rutsey to reconvene as Rush once again.
In February , Mitch Bossi was recruited as rhythm guitarist, however, his tenure was extremely short-lived and he quit in May of the same year leaving behind the three members to carry on as a trio. To the chagrin of the band, the single did not generate the desired commercial reaction. Because numerous record companies refused to produce and distribute Rush's music, the band was forced to form their own record label, Moon Records.
However, despite these early setbacks, Lee, Lifeson, and Rutsey, with the aid of Danniels and newly enlisted engineer Terry Brown, released their first album in March , the self-titled Rush. Donna Halper, a DJ and station manager working at the time, selected the seven minute "Working Man" to be part of the regular play cycle. This song was the band's first release to garner commercial feedback. It resonated with hard rock fans in North America; being reminiscent of Led Zeppelin, with Lee sounding similar to Robert Plant, and Lifeson's guitar riffs modeled partly after Jimmy Page's style.
This popularity led the album to be redistributed by Mercury Records. Neil Peart in concert with Rush. Milan, Italy September 21, The same year, Rutsey resigned because of his affliction with diabetes and a distaste for touring. Rush held auditions for a replacement drummer before finally selecting Neil Peart on July 29, consequently ending his tenure in his previous band, Hush.
Before joining the band, Peart had recently traveled to London, England to further his musical career. Unfortunately, he became increasingly disillusioned with the music scene and emigrated back to Canada where he auditioned for Rush. Incidentally, Lifeson has remarked in interviews that his immediate impression of Peart was actually less than favorable in terms of personality , while Lee was much more accepting.
In the end, Lee managed to convince Lifeson to accept Peart. Peart's inclusion led the band to more progressive ethos over the course of the band's next few albums, Fly by Night , Caress of Steel , and He also became the band's principal lyricist since Lee and Lifeson had very little interest in writing, contributing to only a few songs over the rest of the band's career.
Instead, the two of them focused solely on the musical aspects of Rush. Although these early albums were still heavily entrenched in the blues-inspired hard rock that dominated their eponymous debut, more complex song structures and progressive rock arrangements became apparent. Fly By Night , Rush's first album after recruiting Peart, saw the inclusion of the band's first mini-epic tale "By-Tor and the Snow Dog", replete with complex arrangements and multi-section format. Lyrical themes also underwent dramatic changes after the addition of Peart because of his love for fantasy and science-fiction literature.
Following quick on the heels of Fly By Night , the band released Caress of Steel , a five track hard rock album featuring two extended multi-chapter songs, "The Necromancer" and "The Fountain of Lamneth". The latter was Rush's first full-fledged epic, with side two of the album entirely devoted to the song, while the former, a nod to J. Tolkien, was a more compact "mini-epic". Still, the lead-off track "Bastille Day" hearkened back to the previous album and became a fan favorite "rocker".
The song was consistently used as the opener for many of their live shows in the late '70s. Intended to be the band's first "break-through" album, Caress of Steel sold quite poorly, and the promotional tour consisted of small lackluster venues, which led to the moniker the "Down the Tubes Tour". In light of these events, Rush's record label pressured them into molding their next album in a more commercially friendly and accessible fashion. However, in spite of such urges, the band ignored these requests, and their next album, 's , was the band's first taste of commercial success and their first Canadian gold and platinum album.
After the success of , the band released a double live album entitled All the World's a Stage in to separate Rush's early work from their upcoming music. These albums saw the band pushing the prog rock envelope even further than before by expanding their use of progressive elements.
Trademarks such as increased synthesizer usage, extended length concept songs, and highly dynamic playing featuring complex time signature changes became a staple of Rush's compositions, while the addition of new instruments and playing styles contributed to the progressive character of Rush's sound. Lifeson began to experiment with twelve- and six-string acoustic and classical guitars, introducing yet another facet to the music.
Songs such as "A Farewell To Kings", "Closer to the Heart", and "The Trees" make use of finger picking, a common classical guitar technique, while the introduction to "La Villa Strangiato" featured flamenco Spanish guitar lines. Lee also began to assimilate different instrumentation, such as bass-pedal synthesizers and Mini-Moog, into Rush's songs to achieve a broader sound palette.
Likewise, Peart's percussion became diversified in the form of triangles, glockenspiel, wood blocks, cowbells, gong and chimes. Beyond instrument additions, the band kept in stride with the progressive rock movement by continuing to compose long atmospheric songs, usually conceptual in nature with science fiction and fantasy overtones. The two albums that followed after were linked by a two-part interconnected storyline. While Rush produced a few other multi-chapter songs over the rest of their career, "Cygnus X-1 Book II: Hemispheres" was their last side-spanning epic.
The lyrics of this time most of them written by Peart were heavily influenced by classical poetry, fantasy literature, science fiction and, in a few cases, the writings of novelist Ayn Rand, as exhibited most prominently by their song "Anthem" from Fly By Night and a specifically acknowledged derivation in 's As the new decade approached, Rush gradually began to dispose of their older styles of music in favor of shorter, and sometimes softer, arrangements. During an interview in , Lee stated that Rush felt they had taken the long-song format as far as they could or wanted.
Many of their early songs received limited airplay and commercial recognition because of their extended length in some cases exceeding ten minutes. This partially contributed to the band's apparent change in direction while recording Permanent Waves in Here, Rush began to opt for shorter songs that still retained their trademark musicianship and complexity. The album began the incorporation of styles such as reggae and new wave that would continue in the band's early s albums.
Also, although a hard rock style was still evident, more and more synthesizers were introduced. However, lengthy songs similar to the band's s output made a few final appearances in this period, such as "Jacob's Ladder" and "Natural Science".
The nine-minute track "Natural Science" is considered the band's last true multi-chapter song since it comprises three individual passages as explicitly stated in the liner notes. Yet, even after purposely forgoing the extended song format, many of the band's songs would continue to clock in at five or six minutes, still just outside of mainstream music convention. However, Permanent Waves was able to spawn two radio classics, "The Spirit of Radio" and "Freewill", songs which combined musical complexity with marketable accessibility that allowed Rush to emerge as a more radio friendly band.
Both songs continue to make appearances on classic rock radio stations in Canada and the United States to this day. Lyrical themes also changed markedly during this time, beginning to rely much less on science-fiction imagery. Instead, Neil's lyrics took on a more expository tone with subject matter that dwelled less upon fantastical or allegorical story-telling and more heavily on cerebral topics that explored humanitarian, social, emotional, and metaphysical elements.
Rush's popularity hit its zenith with the release of Moving Pictures in Moving Pictures essentially continued where Permanent Waves left off, extending the trend of highly accessible and commercially friendly pop-progressive rock that helped thrust them into the spotlight.
The lead track, "Tom Sawyer", is probably the band's best known song. In addition to "Tom Sawyer", "Limelight" also received satisfactory responses from listeners, and to this day along with "Tom Sawyer" still remains a relatively popular song on classic rock radio stations across North America.
Over 80, fans showed up to fly kites and watch a local band called Backdraft, Rush and headliner, the Charlie Daniels Band. The opening act was Max Webster, whose fifth and last album, Universal Juveniles, featured a guest appearance by Rush on the song "Battle Scar. Max Webster lyricist Pye Dubois offered the band lyrics to a song he had written.
The band accepted and the song, after reworking by Peart, it became the lead track on Moving Pictures, "Tom Sawyer.
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