Limelight: Rush in the '80s, page 26
And the fans are so dedicated. Eventually they even created RushCon.
“Well, Kiss, Star Trek and Rush — those are conventioneers, right?” figures Ged. “I don’t know, I can’t think about that either. It just blows my mind. I don’t know how it came to be like that for them. There was a magazine in England called The Spirit of Rush. They talked about all kinds of stuff, and every time we came to England, they gave us copies. I think the guy who originally started it passed away — nice fellow. But they used it as a means of collecting all these like-minded people, and then they talked about other music and other bands and other things these people might like. It was like a coming together. I guess the internet has made that obsolete now, but it was like bringing a community together.”
The Spirit of Rush was first published in the summer of 1987 and ran sixty-four issues, closing shop in the spring of 2003. Its founder, Mick Burnett, died of a heart attack in July of 2002. The band sent a bouquet of flowers to his funeral.
“It goes back to that whole sense of comfort,” continues Lee, “and offering some optimism at a time in their lives where they need it. Everybody needs that, and you get it from wherever you can. You get it from your friends, you get it from your family, you get it from the books you read, you get it from films. I mean, film has a powerful effect on me. And I think for these fans, our music has that effect on them. I think if it were a poem, it would be less effective, but in the right surrounding, and if we’ve done our job properly in constructing the music to go along with Neil’s lyrics, then we’re delivering this message in a more emotional fashion.
“Some magazine — is there a magazine called Paste or something? — said that a Geddycorn is a semi-mythical creature, usually or always female, that comes to a Rush concert, sings all the lyrics, without a significant male other. And I was telling the story about how I saw a guy holding up a sign saying, ‘My wife is a Geddycorn, and she doesn’t use earplugs,’ which I thought was great. But that’s a new trend now — we’re getting more Geddycorns.”
Back to the business of 1989 and A Show of Hands. “Our productions got incredibly complicated at that point,” explains Geddy, reiterating the band’s intense reliance on technology, as can be heard all over this slick live spread.
“It was the beginning of the nightmare years for me. We started bringing in banks of samplers and sequencers to try to reproduce all these things we had now put on our records. So you take a record where maybe the biggest difference was that there was an extra guitar in a song or a little bit of keyboard here and there, and now we had orchestras and choirs. How do you go onstage and reproduce that? Play that song suddenly without the orchestra and choir? So we had to figure out a way to do all that. And the only way to do that was to bring in these sequencers and samplers. And at that point, they weren’t like they are now. Now you can hold down a cluster of keys and you can play the whole fucking song — it goes forever. In those days there was only a certain amount of sample time you had per piece.
“To avoid having to play to a click track and just automate the whole thing — we didn’t want to do that; we wanted it to be performance-based — we would have these sequences assigned for each note or each chord part of the song, and in order to play them live and still play them as a band would play them, I would have to play them in time. That meant playing bass pedals to keep the bottom end there, not playing bass in a particular part of the song and triggering either the chord pattern or the sequence, whatever it was. And in a lot of those songs, there were layers, so you’re playing a string part, and you’re adding a little accent on the other hand. It was very complex and required a lot of technology and required us to have somebody offstage loading a separate bank of sequencers and samplers for each song.
“And we had to design a fail safe too,” continues Ged. “What happens if the sampler goes out? It’s electronic technology; it’s very buggy. At that stage, computer technology also was very buggy. So we designed this whole system that was literally duplicated. Every song was loaded twice, and we had this giant switch that if one bank of sequencers went down, Tony Geranios, who does my keyboards, could hit this switch and instantly it would switch to the other bank of samplers. And some of it was just too much for me to handle, so we would split some off to Alex and he would trigger some stuff. And then we’d split some off even to Neil, because he was using electronic drums, although he had his own sampling nightmare going on back there. But sometimes if we had an extra sample that none of us could trigger, we’d give it to him, and he’d stick it on his [laughs]. So we became really trapped in this complex arrangement of keyboards.”
The video version of A Show of Hands (VHS and LaserDisc, with DVD to follow in 2006) would include a number of selections not on the double LP album or single CD, namely “Prime Mover,” “Territories,” “The Spirit of Radio,” “Tom Sawyer” and the “2112”/“La Villa Strangiato”/“In the Mood” medley used as an encore. “Lock and Key” showed up on first pressings of the U.S.-issued LaserDisc.
“A Show of Hands to me is a very fine album,” says Geddy, despite the computer-borne challenges. “That style of recording a live album, basically taking a handful of shows and choosing the best you’ve got, is a very good representation of that kind of live album. In terms of the construction of it, I think it was down to Paul Northfield and myself mostly.”
You can hear the band’s cartoony intro music (including “Three Blind Mice”) before the vista-wide entrance of “The Big Money,” which closes in less grand fashion, using the heavy metal riff from Cheech & Chong’s “Earache My Eye.” Offering value for the money, the album contained only two pre-Signals selections, “Closer to the Heart” (included because of its explosive climactic finish) and Moving Pictures deep track “Witch Hunt,” which appeared on a live album for the first time. Neil’s drum solo, which had begun going by the name “The Rhythm Method” on the Hold Your Fire tour, was not supposed to fit but did after all, even if it is presented in abbreviated form, with the edits decided by Peart himself.
Though Geddy was involved with nearly every aspect of the band and tour, he might have been driven nuts if he didn’t have non-rock things to do on the road to keep him sane. Inquisitive as he is — as all three of them are — falling deep into their hobbies came naturally.
“Yes, baseball became a way of distracting me during a tour,” explains Lee. “I would get up midday after getting in at four or five in the morning on the road, and I’d order my breakfast, after arguing with the room service person as to why they should still serve me breakfast at one in the afternoon. I’d turn on the tube as I’m eating my breakfast and in that time period, there was nothing on except for soap operas — and the Cubs. So I used to look forward to watching the Cubs during breakfast every day.
“And the more I watched them, I got hooked. Always have a fondness for the Cubs for that reason, even though I’m a local fan. But I guess that was the late ’70s, early ’80s. And so as soon as I came home after that tour, I got myself Blue Jays tickets and I was off as a baseball nut. It became a way of keeping my mind off of what I’m doing, off of the seriousness. You know, you can make yourself believe that what you’re doing is so important that you become this obnoxious creature. I don’t like to do that. I don’t want to think that what I do is so important. I’m just a musician. I’d much rather get excited about something else. It’s a survival mechanism for me. So baseball is great, and now that I’m a complete freak for rotisserie baseball and fantasy baseball, it’s never-ending and it’s wonderful. So I can hide in a room full of people and I can escape from whatever the band has to do by just pondering my fantasy team.
“The more hobbies you have, I believe, the more interesting life is. Art became an interest, as did photography. Wine is interesting stuff; it’s interesting to know how it’s made, it’s interesting to learn about where it comes from. I’m more interested in European wine, particularly French wine, and that has taken me to spend my summers overseas more, bring the family and summer in the south of France whenever I can and investigate different parts of the world. And that suits me, and it suits my wife. She loves to travel, I love to travel, and I like my kids to be well traveled because I want them to feel they can live anywhere in the world. I think I love everything that my wine collecting has brought me more than I love the wine itself. I’ve learned a lot about a lot of places, I’ve met some great people, and that’s what that passion is kind of all about.
“And art goes on forever. I mean, you can never learn enough, or get tired enough. I think in my secret heart of hearts, I wish I had that to do as my expression more than music; I think that’s my deep secret. Because it’s solitary and I really admire the solitary artist. I think it’s wonderful. And I’m sure if you talk to a solitary artist, he’ll tell you the exact opposite. But I love the fact that he doesn’t need any partners — studio, committee, production manager — to do what he needs to do. He just needs some available light and his technology, which is paint. It’s a fantasy. We always want to be someone else, I believe. I haven’t met anyone who’s so satisfied with their moment that they haven’t imagined being something else — I always do.”
And Geddy has other dreams to add to this list. “I wanted to be a major league pitcher for a couple of years there,” he says. “And I fantasized about that, but that wasn’t going to happen. Baseball’s so interesting; so many games within the game. And I love that it’s an eighteenth-century sport. That’s why people can’t watch it now, because it’s a complete anachronism. I mean, it is out of time; it has no business being played in the twenty-first century. But that’s what I love about it. I love that no two games are the same, I love what’s going on between the pitcher and the catcher, I love that whole game of outfoxing the hitter. I love the fact they’re all trying to steal each other’s signs. I love that there’s a different defensive alignment for every pitch and that every player on the field is thinking about what to do when the ball comes to him.
“But yet when it’s orchestrated and it’s all working in a great team, it’s such a beautiful ballet of athleticism. It’s just endlessly fascinating to me and the whole side of me that loves numbers. Baseball is a great game for number crunchers — it’s just so full of ridiculous numbers. Plus I love to collect things, and I love to find undiscovered things in all my various hobbies. And fantasy baseball is like that, finding the player that no one else has gotten hip to yet, finding a photograph in an auction that nobody else has found, unearthing the diamond in the rough.”
Chapter 9: Presto
“The six right answers.”
Not that you’d know it from the recorded evidence, but 1988 was a year of transition for Rush, symbolized by their break with Mercury Records. Strongly branded, with considerable control, through their unique situation on their own label at home, Anthem Records, Rush nonetheless had commitments and deadlines when it came to their American situation. Having felt Mercury was no longer working hard for them, Ray and Rush made a break, moving over to Atlantic. The live album and this business rending allowed the band to take an unprecedented six months off as they planned their next set of songs and a sound to go with them. The band had actually finished the record before inking a deal with Atlantic’s Doug Morris, who for years had wanted to sign the band. He wasn’t going to let them get away without an attractive package.
“We were changing wonderfully, and I choose the word carefully,” reflects Neil, on the making of what was to become Presto. “That was a wonderful decade for us, all the changes we went through, and then we changed again coming into the ’90s with Presto. It’s a really different kind of record, and the one that all of us would like to do again, because we don’t think it reached the potential it had.
“There’s a funny distinction among us and the way we think about the work. I’m very much instant gratification — my favorite part of recording is the demos. Because we work on the lyrics and we go back and forth, and the other guys will suggest things, and I’ll get excited because that means they like it enough to suggest ideas. So I go back and work on the lyrics some more and then the song develops and then I’ll work on a drum part. Then one day you hear a brand-new song for the first time, and that, for me, that’s the end. The rest of it is just making it true, making it real.
“Whereas Geddy refers to mixing, the last process of making a record, the final mix, as the death of hope. Because he kept thinking, ‘Oh, this is going to be better.’ There is that striving and you can’t know at the time. We’re always doing our best. We’re always totally heartfelt, making the best record we possibly can, with all of those influences and all of our progressions along the way, all that we’ve learned and all that we want to do and our ambitions. That remains constant. But you can’t predict the result in something you know as transitory, as a period of time and a piece of music. Presto was a bizarre one.”
After two records with Peter Collins, Rush would change things up again with respect to production. Feeling a strong urge toward self-production, they decided nonetheless that having that outside opinion would be valuable. In that role would be yet another Englishman — every Rush producer to this point had been English — Rupert Hine. Prog enough in his (obscure) credits through the ’70s, Hine would work with the likes of Howard Jones, Thompson Twins, Bob Geldof and the Fixx in the ’80s, along with baby Rush band Saga, on two of that band’s bigger records. His last collaboration before Rush would be with Stevie Nicks on her record The Other Side of the Mirror.
Rush had a history with Hine, having wanted to work with him back at Grace Under Pressure. “That’s true,” begins Hine. “It didn’t really compute to me that they would want someone like me, who was doing synth pop records at that moment in time. Not that that was a conscious thought for me, but Thompson Twins, Howard Jones, the Fixx . . . these were rather electro-oriented pop bands. I really didn’t see the connection. So it was a puzzling request to me. I mean, I was far too busy at that time to do it, so it didn’t manifest until much later. It came through management and record companies. It wasn’t a very direct request. I found out later, of course, why they asked me, but I didn’t know at the time.”
It turns out, Hine explains, that Rush wanted someone with a “different background. And I wasn’t really up to speed. I hadn’t realized they’d already transgressed from the obvious heavier rock side into this new thing. When I did listen, I suddenly realized they were more like the Police than a heavy rock band. And I thought, ‘Good Lord, that’s not what I thought Rush was.’ But that was a bit later, after the first request, maybe a year or two later.”
Also part of the connection, much to Rupert’s surprise, was his solo work. “It was very much Neil’s liking of my own solo albums as opposed to my productions, which is the last thing I thought would be true. My own albums were relatively successful in northern Europe, and to some extent England, a little bit in Canada, but nothing in America. I just didn’t imagine he would have even known I made records on my own. It was interesting to me later on when I found out that was the connection for him. He thought, ‘Well, if Rupert can make those sorts of records, and write those kinds of songs, and do those kind of arrangements and play pretty much everything himself, that’s the kind of influence I’d like to see rattling around inside the Rush machine.’”
With Hine on board, or at least willing to entertain working with the band, it was time to roll up the sleeves and get down to work.
“I was invited up to a rehearsal space that was maybe an hour or an hour and a half outside of Toronto. It was a studio in itself, but they were treating it as a rehearsal room, and they could stay up there if they wanted to. It was leisurely, which I later realized is very much a Rush modus operandi — you move into a place and take it over and are free to move around with no time constraints. But it was ostensibly a rehearsal space.
“I’d said yes in principle but thought we should at least get to grips with whatever it is they’re hoping to do on the album and talk about and listen to it. As I’m always saying to people, I can’t say yes on the basis of your history. I can only say yes on the basis of what it is you’re hoping to do now. And a lot of big acts think that’s a bit insulting. They sort of think, ‘Look, I’m just asking you to make my next record — we’ll figure out what it is later.’ And what if I didn’t like the songs? What would be the point of me sitting there recording, arranging songs I don’t like?
“I distinctly remember on the first day hearing Rush playing for me. It was this extraordinary band playing me their songs, already sort of brilliantly arranged, in immense detail, this very Rush-like detail, and I sat listening to it. Normally this would be sketches of songs, maybe finished songs, but with no or little attention to detail at that point; that would usually come later. It felt sort of so already done. And they would say to me, ‘What do you think of that?’ And I said, ‘Well, excellent, it sounds just like Rush. What do you want me to do?’
“I was used to arranging records I work on a lot of the time and sometimes, as with the Tina Turners, you know, writing the songs too. Mostly I work with writer/artists, but never do they come so completely worked out. So I said, ‘I’m not sure. It seems to me like you want more just a purely sound guy here. You know, how am I going to adjust Rush songs? Rush songs do what Rush songs do — that’s why people love them. I would feel forced to make changes to make my presence worthwhile.’
“We listened to the songs and had that kind of dialogue. And then Neil reminded me of the kind of atmospheric tones and qualities of my own albums, this trilogy I did for A&M Records between 1980 and 1983; he particularly liked those. And I realized it was going to go far beyond just commenting about arrangements and details and songs and text. It was going to be more conceptual. And of course, that is immediately ten times more interesting to me as well. And the conceptual stuff, you know, originates certainly with Neil.”
