Driven: Rush in the '90s and In the End , page 7
Music was a favorite hobby, just not the only hobby. And for indulging that hobby, it was back to Chalet Studio in rural Ontario for writing sessions, same demarcated duties, trucking home on the weekends for family visits, this time somewhat inspired by their fun times with Primus — pure creativity if not exactly functional — as well as the heavier sounds coming out of Seattle.
“We made that record at home,” says Geddy, “That was nice, because if you can make a record at home, you can go home every night. And some days you don’t have to come in and you get to be with your family. And that’s all good for keeping the family together.”
About the music, says Ged, “It was starting to move into a jazzier, softer tonal area that was less satisfying for me, because I’m a rocker in my heart and I want to make rock music. This was getting a bit soft and a bit . . . the wrong color, basically. That’s why Counterparts became such an important record because it was back to the past in a way. And also back to the future — a lot of that coincided with what was happening in Seattle at the time, where rock bands were thriving again. That was such a delicious thing to see happen, to suddenly go from such a weird period to rock bands all over the place. I loved it; it was great. Soundgarden and all these great bands were inspiring. That’s an example of listening to what’s around you and saying, you know, we’ve lost the plot a little bit here; we’re drifting off into this other color. I mean, we struggled to get any keyboards on that record.”
The two months in Claremont were plagued by technical hiccups, but they managed to get a decent amount of material down on eight-track, working digitally, using Cubase Audio to capture and manipulate their rehearsal ideas. The guys butted heads over the usual bugbear, keyboards, and struck an uneasy truce over the idea that guitar would be much more prominent in the mix. Meanwhile Neil was off writing lyrics, working not so conceptually this time. Though he soon discovered the theme of duality in some of the songs, which led to their naming the band’s fifteenth album Counterparts (but not until after the record was finished).
Given the premise, and given past patterns, it makes little sense that the band would go back to Peter Collins — man of the hour on Power Windows and Hold Your Fire — to produce the new record. But in his time away — and let’s not forget, the first time, Peter essentially fired himself — Collins had produced Alice Cooper’s Hey Stoopid (heavy hair metal), Gary Moore’s After the War (his last heavy one before going blues), and Queensryche’s platinum-selling prog metal masterpiece from 1988, Operation: Mindcrime. Collins also produced the band’s next record, Empire, which sold triple platinum, making Queensryche the first band to break commercially, building upon what Rush did back in the ’70s. They were more of a commercial juggernaut than the elders.
Even more impressive in terms of heaviness as well as unexpected street cred, Collins worked on Suicidal Tendencies’ most accessible and stadium-rocking record, 1992’s The Art of Rebellion, which continued the band’s improbable gold run. All of a sudden, “Mr. Big” was hot again, which was important to Collins, who was shaken that Hold Your Fire was the first Rush record in a long time to not make platinum.
The guys had stayed in touch with Collins, and a conversation proved that both camps were on the same page moving forward. Peter didn’t like the sonics of the band’s last couple of records, and he had put in place a procedure that would help make a difference, namely working with a new engineer, Kevin “Caveman” Shirley, who would be instrumental in helping the band and Collins work toward their stated mandate — not wuss out on it.
“All of our experiments have been riddled with failures,” admits Neil. “When can they not be? Things can go too far in one direction, and then we correct ourselves. Eventually you go whoa, we tried to go along this way, but it’s too much. And the guitar/keyboard thing became that, increasingly through the ’80s, first sonically, and then I would say textually and creatively, because Andy Richards and Peter Collins had some ideas, and all of us loved what that brought to our sound. I still really like those records for what they are, but I understand Alex too, coming back to reclaim the sound.
“Drummers suffer from that too, getting soaked up in a huge guitar sound. Add that to a huge keyboard sound and sonically it could make drums lack the intensity and dynamics that they have. Geddy and I always say when we do the basic tracks, just the bass and drums together, ‘They will never sound that good again.’ It’s something all of us have. And I remember there was one album in the ’90s, and we were going through the mixes and the assistant engineer just said to Alex and me, ‘I just want to get you boys two hats — more guitars and more drums.’ So everybody is jealous of their territory sonically. And it is just sonically. It’s not that your part should be louder, it’s just the nuances of the tom resonance and the ride cymbal that you hate to surrender.
“It’s not a massive ego thing that drums should be louder or guitar should be louder. It becomes that sonic loss, a sense of . . . guitarists like a guitar. I like drums! If I would be mixing an album, I would mix the drums loud because I love that. Not because it’s me but because it’s drums. I love drums that much. I love to hear the drums. And I love to hear a record where the drums are mixed loud. So that is all woven in it too. That’s why you had to be careful in a partnership, seeing what is genuine enthusiasm and what is ego and what is territory.
“What I’m trying to get at with all those anecdotes is that over the years those are little corrections you make to solve problems. So yes, that time existed, but it existed over several albums, and over several stages, all of which have their nice moments musically, I think. So that was inevitable and right, and it worked out at the right time the way it should. The guitars did become more predominant in the way Alex wanted them to. And the keyboards kept serving us in a MIDI sense, as background and as texture and enriching the sound.”
Neil sidesteps the issue when asked about Alex and Geddy butting heads over this. “Well sure, how could there be a creative partnership without disagreements? It’s how you handle those disagreements that matters. Everybody has creative differences. You can’t come at each other with rage, or outrage — ‘How dare you?’ There’s no way any partnership of any kind is going to survive. So of course there was friction and disagreements, and finding an acceptable solution to what everybody wants. That’s what the mix is after all, more drums, more guitar, more vocal! It’s a contest, in a sense. And there is competition involved and there will be friction involved. Part of what makes a relationship last is handling the friction.”
“I found it really, really difficult to work around the way the keyboards were developing, particularly with Power Windows and Hold Your Fire,” says Alex. “I mean, they were so layered on, and the keyboards were done before the guitars were done, so I had to find areas to poke in and out of, by separating the guitar parts. I was never comfortable with doing that. It almost felt like the guitar was becoming a secondary instrument to what all the keyboards were doing, and I think Geddy recognized that too.
“In Hold Your Fire we tried to tone the keyboards down quite a bit. I went for the much cleaner, wiry, trebly sound just to cut through the massive layers of keys that occupied the same frequencies as those thicker guitar tones. So it was very challenging, and I don’t know if it’s entirely satisfying. I have nothing against those records and how they sound. I think they sound great. And there are songs on those two records that are among my favorites that we’ve ever done, and I think from a production standpoint there’s a lot of interesting dynamics on those records. But when I see where we’ve gone and the kind of effort we made to go back to the core, it’s far more gratifying.”
When asked whether there was friction between him and Ged over the issue, Alex, like Neil, is reticent to go there, leaning toward the diplomatic answer. “I had my fill, really, by the end of the ’80s. It became like a weeding process, a little less with each consecutive record.”
Lifeson stresses that Geddy was also on board with the changes. “And Ged started to feel that way too. I don’t think he enjoyed much the pressure of playing keyboards, playing them live. He wanted to feel freer. Playing keyboards, playing the bass, singing, it’s a lot of work. And most of all, we just wanted to get that core sound back. We’d gone and done all this stuff, and now was sort of the time to regroup and come back to it. It was a natural thing for him. He had sort of turned off the keyboards, so it’s not even something he gave thought to.
“I slapped him around a little bit, and he got over it,” kids Alex, again downplaying the disagreement. “No, I think Ged realized I was unhappy. And it wasn’t that I was terribly unhappy; it was just frustrating more than anything. But you know what? At the end of the day, if you feel that way, you stand up and do something about it. And previously I don’t think I really did. I went with the flow rather than disrupt anything. And I just thought, well, I’ll learn to work around it.
“And you know, maybe that makes me the musician I am today. It was a greater challenge, to fit in with what I felt were all these obstacles at the time. It gave me more of a sense as a rhythm guitarist, certainly. And I think that’s a strength of mine. It’s an area in guitar playing that I’ve really worked on over the years. And perhaps without that attention, I don’t know if I would’ve gone to that place.
“I felt more confident with myself and with my playing through the ’90s, and I think I made a bolder statement for myself, within the context of the band, more recently. It’s a lot to do with trust and respect for each other. And both Ged and I have a great deal of respect and trust for each other, and we worked on that over the years, as you would in any relationship. I think now what we write, when we record, we feel a hundred percent sense of security in what’s happening with the album. We know we can leave the room and it’s all going to be great.
“For me, by that point, I heard guitar parts in my head that could’ve been keyboard parts in the past. Why not do that, instead of using keyboards? Because the technology had moved into the sample world. Why not write the part on guitar, play it, record it? If we want to play live, we can trigger that part while I’m playing the main part. Use it the same way we would be using a keyboard or sampler, but having the part organically recorded, more naturally. And later on, we really dove into that. And that helped Geddy and me develop this whole vocal and guitar relationship, in terms of replacing keyboard parts, over the years. That was really the key.
“It felt like enough,” continues Alex, on why the guys moved on from Rupert Hine. “I don’t think we felt we could learn any more from him, and that was no longer the direction we wanted to go in. We view those records as being a little softer than what we intended. They were entirely acceptable, and it seemed to work at the time, but we were definitely moving in a much heavier three-piece way. We really wanted to get back to those roots; that was a conscious effort at that time. And that was why we worked with Kevin, because he had a reputation of being quite a strong, heavy engineer. And Peter, we loved. Our experiences with Peter had always been great. We really wanted to bring him back at that point. Peter is always growing, and he always had such good basic instincts about music, coupled with Kevin, who was a little wild or rougher at the time. We thought we had a really good team.
“Peter is a very, very smart producer — and he feels it. It doesn’t matter if the song is a pop song or a metal song, he feels it, and he has great instincts. And he’s such a comfort and joy to work with. There is so much stability in his presence in the studio, in the control room. He’s always there, never touches a thing on the console, except to move his ashtray when he’s smoking his big cigars. It’s just great to have him there, very comforting. He’s on top of it, he keeps notes, he’s very organized, and that takes a lot of pressure off you when you are working.
“Quite different,” says Alex, comparing the nuts and bolts of recording Counterparts versus Roll the Bones. “Neil set his drums up in a big room and recorded, as he always does. Geddy might have an amp setup that is direct, but he’s sitting in the control room, and there is immediate contact and communication, and that’s a good way to work. Generally, I work the same way. I set up a rack in the control room, I sit behind the engineer, and I play all my parts, overdub my parts, from the control room, with a long cable going into the studio with all the amps.”
“Kevin wanted me to go in the studio and play in front of my amps, being in the room so the guitar would vibrate with the volume of the speakers. And it’s hard because it’s loud, and you just have these headphones on and you’re trying to really hear everything, to play precisely. And communication is difficult because you are in this room and you are looking through a little window in the distance. But you know, he was right. There’s a resonance in the guitar when you’re in there, and it adds to the sustain and to the character of the guitar sound. We didn’t do it all like that, but we did most of it with me in the studio. It was fun to get back in there and feel it and to be surrounded by these big sizzling and humming amplifiers.
“I do remember we had our differing opinions. I felt like Kevin came from a particular school, and perhaps it was a little narrower than where I came from, or the sort of things I heard. But because this record was going in a heavier direction, we deferred to him. I understood what he was getting at and he was right. We had a lot of drinks together and sorted it out. With Kevin, again, it was that time when all the recordings were bone dry. You’d gone through the ’80s when there were lots of reverbs and stuff happening, and I always loved a natural reverb, particularly on the guitar sound, if it suits the song. But Kevin was a no reverb sound on anything guy. He didn’t want any reverb on vocals, drums, nothing, and I like that little bit of sheen on the mix. But it was not a big deal. And he’s a very, very confident guy.”
As for Geddy, “Kevin wanted him to get an old Ampeg amp, and he managed to find one, in somebody’s garbage bin in the studio warehouse or something, and the thing was rattling and buzzing. But he wanted Geddy to use an amp as well, because Geddy had quite a bright, active sort of sound, very direct, less amp. And I know what Kevin was going through. He just wants that crunch out of the speakers, and that oomph, that air moving into the microphone, and he’s right. It’s just a question of taste. For the record, it was the right thing to do.
“This amp helped Geddy get more power out of the bottom end, but so did the fact that he used a Fender Jazz bass versus the Wal and worked with heavier strings. The amp rescued from the garbage was subject to some repairs, and it was used to drive Geddy’s Trace Elliot cabinets, with lots of overdrive. Sometimes it was this, sometimes it was back to direct, bypassing cabinets, using the Palmer Speaker Simulator the same way it had been done in the demo stages.”
“I got the call from Geddy, asking me if I would be interested in working with them again, and I said, ‘Absolutely,’” begins Peter “Mr. Big” Collins, on renewing his collaboration with Rush, one that would ultimately carry on into a fourth record, 1996’s Test for Echo. “And we talked about how rock music had changed, with Nirvana coming in, the Seattle sound. And while we were definitely not going to chase that sound, both he and I were interested in pursuing a more organic sound for the band. More natural sounds, less hyped-up sounds, less super-compressed snare drums, less reverb, thicker sounds, less multi-track guitars, which is perhaps a simpler sound, less layered. And to that end, we agreed to work together again and look for an engineer.
“I might have led the charge there a little bit. Because I felt looking at their last four records that it was time to move in that more organic direction, and Geddy was totally receptive to that. We talked about how that might be done, and it was definitely going to start with the engineer, and the engineering sensibility. I had heard a record produced by Mike Chapman, by the Baby Animals, an Australian band, and I really liked the sound. It had a woody sort of sound to it. And Kevin Shirley, I guess he heard that I liked the record. And he called me and I talked to him a little bit.”
Shirley, a South African, had begun his career in South Africa but then moved to Australia in 1986 and worked on all sorts of acts from there. Shirley engineered the self-titled debut from Baby Animals, which went eight times platinum in Australia, becoming the biggest-selling debut album ever by an Australian band until Jet’s Get Born album of 2003.
Continues Collins: “He was looking for work, and I told him how much I liked the record and I got his details. Then I went up to Toronto to talk to the band about engineers, and I said, ‘I spoke to this guy, Kevin Shirley, and I think he’s worth talking to.’ I played them the Baby Animals record and they liked it — they didn’t love it, but they kind of saw why I might like it. They agreed to fly him up to Toronto for a meeting. And I was there at the meeting, and we played some old Rush stuff, some of the stuff that I had done and Rupert had done. And he goes, ‘Well, the snare drum sounds very thin, and I don’t like all that reverb.’ You know, he was just saying what he didn’t like.
“And of course for any potential engineer or producer working with Rush, if you are being interviewed by Rush and you tell them you don’t like what they’ve done, you’re probably going to get the gig. Because they’re fascinated to know what it is you’re going to do differently, how it could be better. When I had met them, I said I think the vocals could be better, the whole sound of the record could be better, and I got the gig. Caveman got the gig by basically dissing Rush’s sound. And he also told Neil that he could get a drum sound from Neil in twenty minutes. Which, you know, the gauntlet had been thrown down, and Neil loved the idea of that possibility. And I think, in truth, it took him half an hour, forty minutes, to get a basic drum sound on Neil.”
