Limelight: Rush in the '80s, page 12
“And when they came into the studio, Terry had taken the time to be with his family and just take a break from the intensity of making records all the time. I think he needed time to get up to speed and get back in tune with the whole process. I don’t think they had so much patience for that. Because they were like, ‘Okay, we want decisions, we need what you think, we need to do this, we need to do that.’ That was where I first sensed a departure between their ideas of what they each wanted to do. Previously they had never been that way.
“At this point the band were feeling their own strength and vision,” continues Paul, “and their success was an affirmation of what they wanted to do. Terry was not in the same headspace as them, and so consequently there was tension. Frequently they wanted a clear, concise, ‘Okay, we need to do this’ or ‘Okay, why? What’s wrong with that take? Be specific.’ And sometimes Terry would be not as specific as they wanted. But we got through it.
“So the tensions and the difficulties in making Signals were there, although it was an evolution. They were with Terry for a very long time, and they were very loyal guys, to a fault. To their own detriment they would be loyal to people, and I think they were suddenly starting to be in a situation where they wanted to branch out and be challenged. Their relationship with Terry had reached a point where they knew what he was going to say before he said it, and that was no longer what they were looking for.”
Diving into the technology, Paul says, “As the arrangements got more textured, particularly in the ’80s, keyboard sounds drove the interesting kind of creativity in the music scene. We went through a whole period where everybody was waiting for the next keyboard. Whether it was an Oberheim, a Prophet, a PPG, a Fairlight, the Jupiter 8 — all these new sonic textures coming in that nobody had heard before. They were fascinating and interesting, and so suddenly the guys, all of them together, went, ‘We love this stuff, we want that to be part of the palette.’
“And so then it fell to Geddy, who had a love/hate relationship with it. It was exciting sonically but it became more complicated. There was a lot more to think about. How are you gonna play full chordal parts and not play bass? If you’re using both hands on the keyboard, you can’t play bass anymore. And a lot of stuff ended up being written with cool riffs and cool sounds on keyboards. Suddenly you realize that half the songs for the record have been written using keyboards, not guitar.”
Through all that, indeed, the band persevered and eventually got a record made. Signals would arrive in stores September 9, 1982, wrapped in another austere, classy cover that placed Rush farther away from their heavy metal roots than ever: a pastel greenish-grey frame surrounding a Deborah Samuel photo of a Dalmatian sniffing a fire hydrant. Samuel took the shot on a piece of Astroturf on the roof atop her studio, with a fire hydrant rented from the city and painted bright red. To get the dog to sniff, she put dog biscuits underneath the hydrant. Hugh had only the title of the album to work with and was stymied about what to do with it, deciding at the end to inject into the concept a sense of humor very much adjacent to the band’s. The back cover is a tribute to flagship song “Subdivisions.” Featured is a fictional map with subdivisions centered around Warren Cromartie Secondary School. Cromartie was a Montreal Expo, a nod to Geddy’s love of baseball.
Noted Alex on the baseball connection, speaking with Ted Veneman of Harmonix: “There’s a bar called The Commons. It’s in an old hotel in Morin Heights and it is really the only bar in town. It’s a crazy raging place and in the number of years we’ve recorded up there, we’ve gotten to know the people who work at the bar. They have a girls’ softball team, so when we got up there, they challenged us to a game. Everybody got baseball gloves — we got all set up for this game. We had a bit of field practice and we played them a game and we beat them. Then the guys’ team offered to play us. All of a sudden, we got a little too busy. So it started there and then when we were doing the credits, we thought let’s put in everybody’s position from that game, and that’s exactly what we did. And Warren Cromartie, oddly enough, was really into the band and through some friends in Montreal called and asked if we’d mind much if he came up to the studio while we were recording. So he came up and we met him. He was really into the band and we were really into the Expos. Geddy’s a baseball nut and he was well aware of Warren. He’s a pretty good drummer. Neil, of course, is a great influence. He came out on the road with us for a few days in Chicago and St. Louis and we’ve become good friends.”
Signals opens with a whoosh of foreboding post-punk synthesizers, dark, Mancunian, perhaps toward Magazine or Joy Division. Notes Alex: “That keyboard has a very distinctive sound. When you hear those chords being played, you know it’s that song right away. It’s very recognizable. Catchy. It’s hooky.” In response, Geddy cracks, “Hooks is for fish.”
As it progresses, “Subdivisions” brightens, darkens, brightens and then darkens again, yet always remains propulsive and oppressive, as Neil tells the timeless story of restless teen alienation. At the same time, Peart derides the conformity of suburban living and how it magnifies the politics of what goes on in high school. Like a good writer, he offers hope, specifically in an escape to the adjacent city. For all those Rush fans in small towns and medium-sized cities painted across the rust belt — Rush’s home away from home — glamorous urban escape might be a longer bus trip away, but the message is the same. Universal.
Alex could definitely relate. “I remember living as a teenager in the suburbs. The glamour of going downtown on a Friday night, hanging around with much older people, being part of the scene that we weren’t really a part of. All of the insecurities of being a teenager in the suburbs, school, all of that stuff. I can very clearly relate to it. Lyrically it was one of those songs that, when I read it, there was an immediate connection. There’s a lot of work that gets done on lyrics, obviously, in Rush. But every so often we get presented with a set of lyrics that really nails it, and that was one of those songs.”
“Absolutely, it was all about where we came from, and what we escaped,” seconds Geddy. “That’s the strength of the song, and what gives it enduring resonance for so many people in so many different countries. There are so many people who came out of the suburbs and know that feeling, know what that kind of cultural wasteland looks like and smells like, and that song really hit it for them. It wasn’t the first song of Neil’s that resonated with me. Being the guy who sings his lyrics, there’s a lot of stuff before that time I could get behind. But it was a shift, because it was the first one that spoke more directly about where we all come from. And for that reason it is quite different. It’s a song about alienation. When you are a teenager growing up, wherever you’re growing up, you are experiencing some sort of alienation. You can’t relate to anybody; you can’t relate to the world around you. And I think in ‘Subdivisions’ it’s very specific: cause and effect. Living in a bland, uninspiring environment is something to rebel against. And I think a lot of people can identify with those same feelings, that enclosed feeling of being trapped in a bland environment.”
And fans can immerse themselves in this song and know they are experiencing the same yearning together, across state lines.
“I think it makes them feel better that they aren’t the only ones who have that feeling,” Geddy continues. “It’s validation: I feel like this. It happens to me when I listen to music. When there’s something that rings true to my life, you bond with that song. And obviously I came from a suburb, so when we’re singing about that, we’re not making it up. We lived it and we’re talking about it. It has an authentic resonance. But it took some time for us to realize that song was kind of a touchstone for a lot of people.”
“Every generation has that,” adds Lifeson. “The Who with ‘My Generation’ and ‘Teenage Wasteland,’ the whole grunge decade. You become the carriers of the banner, I guess, and everybody kind of relates to you.”
On the musical front, Neil explains that “Alex and I are the rhythm section in a lot of the parts of that song; that was a great role for us to play when Geddy’s doing those keyboard parts. That’s the first song where Alex and I locked in. When he’s playing the rhythm, it’s basically a bass part, and the bass pedals take the bass frequencies. But he’s playing his guitar part, following the drums. So the two of us interlocked as a rhythm section that we hadn’t been able to do before. Little things like that can carry you through. You learn from them. So often with specific songs I can trace a lineage: okay, we tried that experiment there and the next time we took it this way and it got a little better, and this time we really made it work.”
Geddy recalls a dustup with Terry on the recording of the song. “He wanted to get a particular vocal sound, to play around with the mic, with the compression on it, and he had me in the studio singing it over and over and over and over again. And I just remember thinking this is not good for my performance, in the end, because by the time he has the sound that he wants, I’m going to be burned out on the song and need a break. Or my voice will be burned out. It was just a way of doing things that I didn’t necessarily agree with, and there were a few different conceptual discussions, where we didn’t see eye to eye. And it started increasing, happening more regularly. It wasn’t a bad vibe thing, more a conflict of ideas. Those things happen in close quarters. If you are passionate about your ideas, you’re going to insist on them a little bit. And if you get shot down, so be it. But everybody has to be all on board. We either all agree or we don’t agree. And if we don’t agree, we move on, try something else.”
“I do remember this being a bit of a bone of contention,” seconds Terry. “In ‘Subdivisions’ there’s a vocal sound in there. And instead of doing it all in post — in other words, instead of waiting until I had the performance — I put Ged through about two hours of setup so that when we did the vocal, it sounded the way it sounds on the record, as he sang it. He wasn’t very happy about that. I wanted to create the vibe in the chorus, and Geddy was like, ‘Well, why don’t you just do it later? Because I don’t want to stand here and sing over and over again.’
“And I kept saying, ‘Well, just bear with me, because we’re really close; it’s going to pay off in the end. It’s an important thing.’ I thought it was important to sing how he does there, as opposed to just singing a dry vocal, for instance, with a bigger reverb on it or whatever. So yeah, that was an issue. I’m glad we went through it, because it’s an important part of that song; it gives it a color that is important, and I didn’t want to be experimenting later. I wanted it to sound like a high school hall. So we did it. He put himself through it and it paid off — it’s a great chorus. I would probably create that in post now, but whether it would have the same drama to it is something that could be debated for many hours.
“But we did that with a lot of different things,” continues Terry. “Wah-wah or the delays on the guitar. Like, solos would have the right delay, and if wah was needed, it would be there. We wouldn’t add it later, and sort of make something with something else. It was made the way it was supposed to be. Which I think is very, very important. When you are trying to create dynamics and flow in a solo or a vocal part, you need to be hearing what it is you are singing with, especially if there are dramatic effects on it. And I think that’s very dramatic, the chorus in ‘Subdivisions.’”
Terry is referring here to Geddy’s dovetailed sort of response to the robotic, lower-voiced “Subdivisions,” which is a great hook and a memorable part of a memorable song. This had widely been credited to Toronto broadcast personality Mark Dailey, whom folks around the metro area always mimicked because of his super bassy “City TV — everywhere” tagline. In fact, it is Neil who says this part.
Other than this vocal issue, Terry was on board with the prominent role keyboards played. This wasn’t always the case, but in this song, no problem. “It’s built around a keyboard riff, but it worked because I made sure. I love guitars and I love drums. So drums, bass and guitars were the forefront for me. And the fact that keyboards took up a lot of space on that record was something I had no control over. But it works for that tune. Without it, it wouldn’t work.
“But later on, if the keyboards did take on a big role, sometimes the guitars slip back. And if you listen to all their records, you’ll notice there’s a difference in the perspective from one to another. I love ‘Subdivisions’ though. I remember driving down Kingston Road one day, in some beat-up old Toyota, and it came on and it sounded incredible. It still jumps out of the speakers — it’s a very exciting tune.”
“Well, you know, hindsight is twenty-twenty,” laughs Alex, on whether he was happy with his role in the song. “I remember when we were mixing ‘Subdivisions,’ I kept pushing the faders up on the guitars. Because throughout the whole mix, it sounded low to me. But that was the nature of the way that song was developed. And that song sort of announces itself out in the choruses and bridges and takes on a different shift from all the instruments. But at the time, I found it difficult.”
“It was hard for him,” says Geddy, in support. “He had been the lead, rhythm. All the texture created came from Alex’s guitar, and all of a sudden there is this other guy in the room, this electronic synth guy, filling up a lot of those roles. So he had to continually redefine his approach. It put him in a tough spot, and he always rose to the occasion. Sometimes after the record was finished, he would feel a little, ‘Well, I don’t know if I really got the sound that I like,’ as a guitarist. So it was a constant comparison to the past, kind of his desire to have a super sound. When you’re making records, you’re always looking for that super sound; you’re always looking for that album that sounds better than anything you’ve ever done. The nature of our collaboration is to adjust.
“Because you go in with an idea of what you think a Rush album should be. I have my Rush album sound in my head, Alex has his Rush album sound and Neil has the same thing. And when you bring it to the table and you start listening to everybody’s idea, you have to shift. There’s compromise, there’s adaptation, and you end up with something that none of us expected. Because you can’t possibly know what is being thrown at you by the guys in the room, and a producer. It’s constantly changing. The reason Rush works is that we allow ourselves that moment to adapt to someone’s idea. I know it’s a corny comparison, but in sports, say you’re a batter. You come onto the scene and you’re hitting everything, and then the pitcher adjusts to you and you have to adjust back. And it’s kind of the same thing we go through with each other. We constantly are allowing each other latitude, and then we have to react to those new ideas and let that new adjustment take us to wherever we’re going to go.”
Baseball is never far from Geddy’s mind. The band credits on the inner sleeve of Signals list Alex as first base, Neil as third base and Geddy as pitcher, which is a bit telling, as Geddy had been increasingly calling the shots across these records, becoming essentially co-producer as time went on. Other positions on the field are littered throughout the remaining credits, with Terry taking left field.
“I recall being totally into it, as we all were,” continues Alex, who goes on to make a curious point. “But what would happen was there would be a one album delayed reaction. You know, you get into making a record, and like with Signals, you make the record — we were all on board, we loved it, we finished it, we’re proud of it. Time goes by, you tour it, things start bugging you about it and you save those things that got to you until the next record. And if you go to the next record, and you smell it’s going in the same direction, that’s where you butt heads. You go, ‘In retrospect, I wasn’t happy about that particular thing. I don’t want to go there.’ And over the course of those synth-period records, it became increasingly an issue at the start of our writing sessions. What role were the synths going to play? And eventually they took a smaller and smaller role, as we found ourselves kind of drowning inside the possibilities.”
“Yeah, it did kind of get like that,” says Geddy, who says eventually it all became formulaic. “It just became the same suffocating feeling we had when we were doing those really long pieces. It was like, ‘This has become a formula. This is wrong and it’s got to stop.’ And that’s when we started looking for more inventive ways of using keys. Eventually we said, ‘Hey, it’s time to get rid of them.’ So they slowly came into our lives, they swallowed us and then they slowly departed. And now they are always there if we need that noise, that sound, that melody, but I think we’re happy going back to a three-piece world.”
Adds Paul Northfield on this conundrum: “I do remember very specifically that on ‘Subdivisions’ it was hard work getting the guitar to sit. Because the whole of ‘Subdivisions’ is driven by a keyboard part, and so the role of the guitar is a supporting role, not the fundamental role. That was obviously a difficult one for Alex, because it’s like, ‘Okay, how do I fit around this huge keyboard sound?’ It was kind of like hunting for a type of guitar part that would fit against the keyboard part, and I think that is something he never had to deal with before. If you took out the keyboard and tried to do that song with guitar, would it be that song? I remember us all struggling, and me too, in making suggestions about the way to approach a guitar part that might sit well and have a serious presence on the song, and at the same time allowing that keyboard part to be what it was.”
And what did the team come up with? Well, Alex is in there pretty much constantly, but two things: he is mixed low, and it’s almost as if his parts are reacting to the synth parts, in meek deference to them. Sometimes he is in direct back-and-forth dialogue with them and sometimes he is strumming behind them. It’s a moot point, but in response to the hypothetical Paul conjures, if you took away the synth part and raised the faders on the guitar, “Subdivisions” kind of would be the same song. There are myriad ways to turn the song into a straight guitar/bass/drums configuration, as there are with any synthesizer-dominated song. But indeed, in the case of this one, Alex is already all over it, just not particularly loud — or inventive. One assumes the idea was to leave the inventing cap at home on this one and let the synthesizers ring out.
