|
Rush in the '90s and 'In the End' Rush Across the Decades, Book 3 by Martin Popoff April 27th, 2021 |
In the conclusion to the trilogy of authoritative books on what is unarguably Canada's most beloved and successful rock institution ever, Martin Popoff takes us through the arc of
three decades in the lives of Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson and Neil Peart. Driven is ultimately about life at the top, from a decade that begins with the brisk-selling Roll the Bones album to the throngs of fans who took in Rush shows during their last twenty-five years.
But there is also unimaginable tragedy along the way, with one of the world's greatest drummers, Neil Peart, losing his daughter and his common law wife within the space of ten months, and then himself suc-cumbing to cancer four years after the band's retirement — his shocking, unexpected passing resulted in amendments to this work long after it had already been completed. In between, however, there is a gorgeous and heartbreaking album of reflection and bereavement, as well as a conquering trip to Brazil, a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction and — some say surprisingly — the band's first full-blown concept album to close an immense career marked by integrity and idealism.
• "Die-hard Rush fans will devour this fascinating deep-dive into the band's musically controversial decade." — PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
• "Popoff continues to demonstrate a vast understanding of the band." — SPILL MAGAZINE
• "Knowing the band's music inside and out, he gets to what a real fan wants to know." — VINTAGE ROCK
• "A treasure trove of enlightening and entertaining glimpses into the workings of three complex individuals." — LIBRARY JOURNAL
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
Chapter 1: Roll the Bones
Chapter 2: Counterparts
Chapter 3: Test for Echo
Chapter 4: Different Stages
Chapter 5: Vapor Trails
Chapter 6: Rush in Rio
Chapter 7: Snakes & Arrows
Chapter 8: Clockwork Angels
Chapter 9: “In the End”
Discography
Credits
About the Author
Martin Popoff — A Complete Bibliography
INTRODUCTION
The book you now hold in your hands marks the conclusion
of a trilogy, a long journey down the path of progressive
metal greatness. It started with Anthem: Rush in the ’70s and
was perpetuated and provoked by Limelight: Rush in the ’80s, and
it concludes now, beyond bittersweet, after the death of Neil
Peart from brain cancer on January 7, 2020.
The dark news came to light near the end of the production
process for Anthem and Limelight, so in those books Neil remains
forever alive and disseminating his wisdoms as “the Professor.”
But the tragic end to one of rock’s towering greats can’t be
avoided any longer, and so it is part of this story.
For now, however, some background for you, on the subject
of this book. If you are wondering why — or indeed how — this
book exists, let me explain, quoting more or less verbatim from
the intro of the first book from way, way back, Anthem, if I may.
There I wrote:
As you may be aware, this is my fourth Rush book, following Contents Under Pressure: 30 Years of Rush at Home & Away, Rush: The Illustrated History and Rush: Album by Album. And since those, there have been a number of interesting developments that made me want to write this one.Now, to the present tome, what to make of Rush in the ’90s and “in the end,” so to speak, the 2000s and the 2010s, right up until the band’s retirement in 2015 and the great loss to family and friends resulting from Neil’s being taken from us in 2020? Obviously, we’ll get to that, but this is the place for a spot of personal reflection, so here goes. As an angry metalhead more excited by what Pantera was doing to music now that they had Phil and a major label deal, the twee tones of Roll the Bones had me casting that record aside pretty quick. Sure, there’s always excitement around a Rush album, and this one for some reason generated a bit more than usual, but still, I wasn’t happy. When Counterparts launched, to my mind, Rush was back — the music was full-bodied, the writing not appreciably different, but it wasn’t hobbled by a lightness that brought the already underpopulated trio down to what seemed like 2.5 or 2.25 members. I loved the record, loved the resonance of the bass, the boom of the drums, the authority howling out of the guitars. Test for Echo left me cold, like the album cover, and then right after, we all had to deal with the shock of the horror that was Neil’s personal life after the death of his daughter, Selena, and then his common-law wife, Jackie. Maybe it was the end of Rush: Alex and Geddy both had solo albums (that sounded like Rush in the ’90s), and there were a hundred other flavors. Yes, maybe this was the end.
To start, only one of those three books, Contents, was a traditional biography — an authorized one at that — but it was quite short, and given that it came out in 2004 before Rush was officially retired, it was in need of an update. I thought about it, but I wasn’t feeling it, not without some vigorous additions.
That, fortunately, took care of itself. In the early 2010s, I found myself working with Sam Dunn and Scot McFadyen at Banger Films on the award-winning documentary Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage. Anybody who works in docs will tell you that between the different speakers and non-talk footage that has to get into what might end up a ninety- minute film, only a tiny percentage of the interview footage ever gets used, the rest just sits in archive, rarely seen or heard by anyone. Long and short of it, I arranged to use that archive, along with more interviews I’d done over the years, plus the odd quote from the available press, to get this book to the point where I felt it was bringing something new and significant to the table of Rush books.
So there you have it, thanks in large part to those guys — as well as the kind consent of Pegi Cecconi at the Rush office — the book you hold in your hands more than ably supplants Contents Under Pressure and stands as the most strident and detailed analysis of the Rush catalogue in existence.
Fortunately, it was not to be. Neil mended as best as could be expected under the circumstances, and the band returned with a masterful new record, Vapor Trails. I don’t know what it is about this record, but putting aside the dark wisdom of its lyrics, it’s arguably the best of a top-shelf canon thus far. I felt like this was the first time since Grace Under Pressure that the band had created a whole new style of music, and it was art at the same time. I loved the record — still do — old mix, remix. I’ve always got time for Vapor Trails.
So then a weird thing happens. I do the Contents Under Pressure book and then work at Banger on the movie. Add another couple of Rush books later on, get interviewed for a couple of Rush docs, and suddenly, Rush reminds me of work. I imagine that’s where I am any time I even think to put a Rush record on (this reticence fades, fortunately). But yes, here I am living in Toronto, and it’s all Rush all the time and I’m full up. But then — God love the guys — Snakes & Arrows is issued, and it’s all fresh again. Something has shifted since Vapor Trails. Whether it’s new producer Nick Raskulinecz or just the band’s typical rapid growth, suddenly there’s a new sound, if I can generalize, one characterized by warmth along with acoustic guitars massaged in with electrics.
Next came Clockwork Angels and little did we know it would be the last. Not only was this a record that lived lively like its predecessor, but there was an additional heaviness due to the subtraction of the acoustics. What’s more, Rush delivered their first concept album proper after stopping at a full side in the past. Here they barreled on through a somewhat befuddling plot, but one brimming with rich imagery with the addition of steampunk to the stew, which was stressed more through the stage sets of the tour.
Then it was all over with a languid goodbye, the band touring the record proper and then embarking on something called R40, a fortieth anniversary tour that found the band playing songs from their catalogue in reverse chronological order, making progressively modest their stage set in tandem, until there they were, three kids rocking songs from 1974.
Four years and five months after the band’s last show, the shocking news reverberated through the rock community that Neil had died, and it was horribly clear to all that the soft retirement of Rush was final. More, unfortunately, on this later, but there you go. That’s where Rush ends and that’s where we can end this set of three books, this particular tome celebrating the biggest expanse of years and the worst news imaginable, but on the happy side, there is a raft of records similar to those covered in both Anthem and Limelight. In any event, thanks for reading along. Whether you parachuted in here with modern Rush or have been following the bouncing ball since the first book, I’m glad to share my deep appreciation of Rush with you. Without further ado, in the immortal words of the Professor, “Why are we here? Because we’re here. Roll the bones.”
-Martin Popoff
CHAPTER 1: ROLL THE BONES
“We keep looking for the better version of Rush.”
Here’s how the ’90s started for Rush.
One week after Geddy, Alex and Neil would propose
an austere something-or-other called Roll the Bones, Guns
N’ Roses would drop two near-double albums, Use Your Illusion
I and Use Your Illusion II.
Another week goes by and on September 24, 1991, Nirvana
offered for your consideration their second album, Nevermind,
led by a little something called “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”
Roll the Bones did not sound like Guns N’ Roses or Nirvana,
nor did it sound like really anything out there (and that’s not
necessarily a good thing), other than Presto, Rush’s similarly thin,
mild and modest record from two years previous when the band
was facing the same realities: hair metal, grunge and thrash at
the fore, Rush’s brand of progressive bonsai tree and origami pop
— a curious thing — but let’s go see Rush anyway.
But credit to the guys in one sense: they were believing in the
stark and odd and oddball evolutionary path they were on and
damn the torpedoes. Rupert Hine returned as producer, signifying
that they thought they got it right on Presto. Rupert was
in a sort of fourth member role in the Rush cabal, which helps
underscore the identity of any given project.
“We felt we were missing something,” figures Geddy, on the
importance of these strong outside voices. “We felt we weren’t
learning enough. It’s like going into a fantastic restaurant and
seeing all these great dishes and wanting to try all of them; that’s
how we were. We felt like we had this great start. We had this
great upbringing, and we learned a hell of a lot about making
records. We were born into this rock world, and we had some
tools and we wanted to refine those tools. And the only way to
do that was to work with more people, different people.
“Because of the style of music we played, there was a real bias
against kind of progressive heavy metal, and we found it difficult
to work with all the producers we wanted to work with. And
so every time out, we had a new list of people. We came into
this whole mode of unearthing producers that maybe would be
unlikely people for us to work with, but we felt had some real
heart as producers. And that started the whole thing. It’s like,
when it’s time to make a record, let’s dig up the names, let’s pick
up the lists. Who can we find? Who is out there? Who is just
coming into his own as a producer? And can we grab some of
that excitement?
“In the early days of doing that, it was experience we were
after. I think now, and especially with Nick, it’s youthful energy
and a different attitude toward making records, and that’s a way
for us to stay current. We can’t help being who we are, and we’re
not going to work with anybody else. There’s the three of us, and
we’re dedicated to that, so what’s the easiest thing to change?
It’s the people around you when you make a record. That’s the
easiest way — and for me the smartest way — of bringing new
energy, new ideas, into an old idea — Rush — you know? A
forty-year-old idea.”
Reflects Rupert: “At the time, because of the urge to keep
things fresh, you are looking for all kinds of ways of moving
the parts around, and some input, some random input. That just
marks them as wanting to stay in the world of making records
together, because they could have split up, they could have
formed three independent bands based on each other and done a
million things with the kind of fan base they had, and still had a
pretty good living. But they were never tempted to do that, and
the odd solo record is always very much a sidebar project.
“There’s the absolute will to stay together and find out just
how far these three people in each other’s pockets can travel. And
I don’t think it’s ever a scramble, I don’t think it’s ever desperate,
I think it’s always willful, it’s always thought about in advance,
it’s always to a degree calculated, in terms of the moment they
ask this random input to come into their world. It’s a calculated
decision about a point that’s been well thought out by them.
They’re in masterful control of their lives and the band’s direction.
That in itself is so unique — it’s one of the many truly
unique things about this band.”
Typical of the civilized men of letters that they were, Rush
went on a writing retreat in advance of making the new record,
holing up at Chalet Studio in Claremont, Ontario, for two and
a half months to write, each in their longstanding roles. When
not birdwatching and repairing birdfeeders, Geddy and Alex
would put music to Alex’s rudimentary drum machine patterns,
the two convening with Neil in the evening to see what they
could cook up together. As with Presto, writing centered around
guitar, bass and drums and not keyboards, with a heavy emphasis
on vocal melodies as well — common parlance would eventually
position the Rupert Hine years as the singing era, where
Geddy would shift the attention he was placing on keyboards
over to the making of memorable vocal melodies, or melodies
that played a stronger role in the song, almost as a fourth instrumental
narrative.
“It felt to me very much like a part two,” agrees Rupert. “But
the second part built on how they felt about part one, meaning
Geddy liked that his voice was in these different registers.
He understood why I thought it had made a difference, and he
liked it. And I think they were encouraged by the three-piece
idea again and minimalizing the keyboards. We carried on doing
that, and so there’s probably even less keyboards on that record,
and there weren’t many on Presto, certainly not compared with
the previous two albums.
“But I find it hard not to think of them as one piece. I’m not
sure I went into the second album with anything like the objectives
we had for the first because it had seemed like the objectives
had made sufficient change — and the band had themselves
compounded on that change. I would say things were amplified.
There was no real ‘Well, the one thing we got wrong with
Presto was blah, blah, blah, so this time we’ll try this.’ I think
everything was compounded, which was encouraging from my
perspective. It seemed to be starting off with an enthusiastic kick
up the bum.”
In other words, the guys were happy with what they had done
on Presto. Even if there were less keyboards, no one at this time
was concerned with heavy, rocking Rush. Alex was exploring
texture, color, atmosphere, funk and acoustic guitar, and all five
of those descriptives tend to put the guitar in a supportive role.
In support of what? Well, vocals, and thus almost automatically,
lyrics. Bass would and could be moderately busy in that wee and
twee box, drums slightly less so, pretty much on par with guitar.
All of this adds up to a hermetically sealed bubble of Rush’s own
making, a contrivance even, albeit one that moves along an evolutionary
path. Forget what’s happening with surging wider tidal
musical gyres; there’s this thing we are doing, and we’d like you
to hear it.
“I don’t recall ever having a discussion with individual Rush
members about any other band or music,” muses Rupert. “Of
course I was only too happy to keep any sonic interference out of
the way and just look at the purity of what the band can do. That’s
not strictly true, because you’ve just rung a bell: I do remember
talking to Neil about Living Colour, but I imagine with respect
to some relatively ideological stance, nothing directly affecting
the band. I mean, I delighted in the fact that not once did Alex
ever say to me, ‘You know for this track, I sort of thought the
sound of the guitar could be a bit like . . .’ Never went there.
“And almost every band, it’s like, ‘You know that sound of
that part on so-and-so’s track? When they do that?’ And you
work from there. I always love the idea that you have an absolutely
blank page for everything, for every song, for every album,
for every part. You just start with, ‘Well, I wonder what we could
do to make this part really sing, really work, you know?’ And
not to jump outside of any frame of reference, other than your
own, so you can dig into some mad little demo that you did on a
matchbox ten years ago and say, ‘Here, look, I love this’ and, ‘Oh,
yeah, let’s take that.’ That will just be more intensely them. Just
borrow from your own oeuvre.
“I can’t say that Roll the Bones is part of the era when the
Seattle sound was out. It feels to me like we were in absolute
isolation of it, but I wouldn’t really encourage them in any other
way than to be aware. You can’t not be aware if you’re musical.
I’m not suggesting people go and live on an island and listen
to nothing — you’ve got to soak in the musicality of the planet
without a doubt — but you’re going to do that anyway, if your
eyes are open and you’re musical.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever known where Rush is in the musical
landscape, to be quite honest,” chuckles Geddy. “I don’t think
any of us do. And that’s a blessing because we go in and do what
we think is fun to do and what is cool to do. Yeah, we listen to
other things and we try to bring new things in. At that time, it
was kind of the beginning of rap and hip-hop and all this, and
Neil wrote this really funny kind of piss-take on this whole thing,
and we thought, why don’t we throw that in the song? And that’s
how that whole middle section of ‘Roll the Bones’ came to be.
It was just us having fun playing this goofy background kind of
rhythmic track and then rapping on it.
“So we basically have no plan. I think a lot of bands do have
a grand plan, master plan, and we don’t really have that. At the
start of a record, we just don’t know what’s going to happen. We
just let it happen. Certainly, I wanted to improve the songwriting
on the Roll the Bones album, because I had that feeling we were
more style than content on Presto. That was kind of the residue
that was left with me from Presto. ‘The Pass’ was really strong,
but a lot of the other songs on that album didn’t really stay with
me from a song resonance point of view. And so we really focused
on the songwriting, and I think we nailed that. I think a lot of the
songs on Roll the Bones are really strong.
“But we’re always experimenting,” continues Geddy. “I mean,
just because we got successful doesn’t mean we’re going to
stop. That’s the way I look at it. We could’ve gone in and done
Moving Pictures all over again, but we’re not really well built for
that. We’re too curious; we’re too dissatisfied with where we’re
at, so we feel we have to keep moving. We have to find the better
Rush, you know. We keep looking for the better version of Rush.
“And even though we’ve got this great success — oh, that’s
great, we’ve got success, we can do headline shows, we can spend
more money on productions — it afforded us a hell of a lot of
latitude, but it didn’t change that feeling when we get together to
work on our music: ‘Okay, what will make us better? What will
make us better writers, better producers, better players?’ That’s
the motivation. Maybe it seems like we just started experimenting
after that time, but if you look at the first Rush album and
then listen to Fly by Night, they’re completely different records.
What does ‘By-Tor & the Snow Dog’ have to do with ‘Finding
My Way’? Worlds apart. That’s when the experimenting started.
And then look at Caress of Steel. That’s an experiment in hash oil!
We’ve always experimented.
“We’ve also always been pigeonholed and categorized. Most
bands are, I guess. But I felt there was always more to us than the
labels that were attached to us. I felt there was more going on,
and we were easily written off as a three-piece metal band, or a
prog band, or a sword-and-sorcery band. Maybe that’s a motivator
for us, in a way. Keep trying to shuffle those labels off of us,
you know? At the end of the day though, we’re a hard rock band
— I’ve said that many times. I identify with that, and I think we
would all agree about that — if we had to be labeled anything, it
would be a hard rock band.”
The guys were so prepared coming out of the writing sessions
for Roll the Bones that the performances and arrangements on
the demos were referenced quite closely, with Neil nailing his
meticulously mapped drum parts with ruthless efficiency. The
album was recorded between February and May of ’91, using
the idyllic and storied Le Studio in Morin Heights as well as
McClear Place back home in Toronto. Thanks in the album’s
liner notes would go to the birds, reflecting Geddy’s new hobby,
and CNN, which the guys watched a lot, staying abreast of the
news. Things went so smoothly — drums and bass put down in
four days, guitars in eight — the guys finished two months early,
moving the release date three months forward from the initially
proposed January of 1992.
“We sort of do that,” mused Alex, on using Rupert Hine for
a second time. “We like to give a producer a couple of chances.
The experience was positive, everything seemed to go well, the
album did well, and I don’t think we had any fears of working
with him again. We thought that would be a good thing, so we
just continued. Rupert has a great sense of musicality, arrangement,
songwriting. That’s really what he brought to the whole
project. We’re pretty set in our ways. We know what we want to
achieve. It’s nice that we have somebody there to guide it along
and make some of the decisions that we don’t wanna make. And
I think that record got a little more meat on it. It was a little
heavier, or harder. Good songs and some good arrangements.
“But it’s a funny thing with us, working with producers at least
a couple of times. Maybe once you haven’t realized the depth of
the relationship and how far you can go. I mean, we always learn
from everybody we work with — that’s always key. I wonder
now if we should just do it once and move on and go with the
unknown. That’s exciting and challenging. With Terry, during
those first few years, we were recording two albums a year, so it
was a different environment. We hadn’t reached the stage where
we incorporated other instruments; the band was simpler in its
form and very comfortable with Terry. But after nine records, it
was really time for us to move on and work with other people.
“You don’t want to stay in the same place, ever,” continues
Lifeson. “It’s boring and you get itchy and antsy and you want
to move on. And that’s always been the thing with us. It’s easy to
do something over and over and over and over, like some current
bands that are very popular, that have a particular sound and a
very identifiable singer’s voice. They just create the same album
over and over. It’s a great success, and that’s fine, but eventually
that ends and it’s over and there is no growth, there’s no development.
You can look back and say, well, I made a lot of money,
and that’s all fine and good, but really what does it do for you?
It’s always been key for us to change and to move forward. We
experimented a lot. We’ve taken some chances and we tried some
things, and we haven’t always been successful. And our fans have
been vocal about those things, what they like and what they don’t
like. And I’m kind of proud of the stuff I don’t like, because we
learned from it, and we’re always moving forward. We’re always
thinking about how to approach something in a different way.
“Well, not albums,” laughs Alex, not willing to say whole
records failed. “Some songs are certainly weaker. And of course,
you feel this once you get more distance from the album. They
can’t be helped. We never started with twenty songs and burned
it down to the best twelve. We always work on those twelve,
and that’s all you get. So it’s do them all one hundred percent.
Invariably there are some weaker songs than others. There’s a lot
of information, a lot of music to work on. That’s why we have
producers, someone to bounce ideas off of and help you feel a
little more focused. There are some arrangements that haven’t
worked, some songs that haven’t worked, sounds at times, little
things that just don’t get me to one hundred percent satisfaction.”
That restlessness, again, is something Rupert Hine greatly
appreciated in the band. He recalls: “I do remember having a
chat — mainly with Neil, although the whole band were there
— about how much we admired David Bowie for being the
finest example of an artist who will risk losing half his fans —
and he often did — on each new album. But he always picked
up the same amount of fans who’d never bought a record of his
before, album after album after album, all the way through the
’70s and half of the ’80s, at least. I would speak to so many people
who said, ‘I’ve never liked a David Bowie record before, but this
new one’s fantastic — I actually went out and bought it.’ And
you know there’s one just like him who’s not bought it for the
first time. And Bowie would continue this process, which kept
him fresh and at the absolute top of his game for like fifteen to
eighteen years.
“Neil loved that idea,” continues Rupert. “With a band, it’s
much, much harder to do, some would say almost impossible,
certainly to do it to the degree that David Bowie did it. Rush
have done it, I think, probably more than any other band, in
trying that idea out, to keep themselves fresh. To make their
writing have new purpose. Neil particularly, who after all is the
textual voice of the band. He’s the one the responsibility falls on
each time to make sense of each individual song and the whole
album. It’s a contextual and very much textual parallel route.
“I’m not saying that Geddy and Alex haven’t contributed to
a lyric, but Neil often writes these completed lyrics, and they’re
presented to the band as a complete idea, which in and of itself
is unusual and really good. From a producer’s point of view, that
is the best, because right from the get-go you know exactly what
you’re trying to do with this song, what’s being communicated.
I hate when you’re working with a band that haven’t gotten the
lyrics together yet — ‘We’ve got a line and the chorus, which is
going to go blah, blah, blah.’ So we’re recording arbitrary parts to
a song that’s not yet saying anything.”
Given his bond with Neil over lyrics, Rupert figures it might
have been Peart who wanted him as the band’s producer more
than anybody else.
“Thinking about it now, yes. I know the idea originated with
Neil. Often the most conceptual discussions about the album
and its music — as opposed to its arrangement and production
— would always come from Neil. I would assume that’s because
he’s the man in charge of the words that come out of Geddy’s
mouth. The voice piece of Rush — the horn if you like — is
Geddy’s voice, but the motor is Neil. I feel that he is often driving
the band, the band’s ideology. It’s collective of course; sooner or
later, it’s collective. But I feel that the essences of change probably
start with Neil. They certainly felt like they did in the two albums
I worked on, but I’m imagining that’s probably always true.”
If Neil is the engine that drives the ideology of Rush, Hine
figures that “Geddy is the M.D. of the band, the musical director.
He’s involved in everything, even guitar solos and what have
you — always lovingly, never unpleasant or provocative in a bad
way. He would be the organizer, the equivalent of a tour manager.
That’s the pragmatic side. But to me it’s always, ‘What are
we trying to do with this record that I’ve been invited to be a
big part of? What’s the point of doing this record, apart from it
being #14 in your lifelong story? What are we going to do that’s
going to make this chapter really significant? What is it that you
guys want to say?’ And as soon as you use a word like say — and
I would all the time — you feel everyone’s looking toward Neil.
The voice of Rush is Neil. He was always at the epicenter.
“On the day-to-day stuff, it was Geddy, and Geddy is such a
lovely chap, a fantastic man to work with, bright-minded, sparkly,
very funny. I carry with me all the time his Jewish grandmother
voice, which is just to die for. And I’d say Alex has more fun
making a Rush record than the other two put together. He just
seems to be in the sandpit playing. That’s when he’s at his best. I
wanted to see him in the sandpit the whole time, you know, not
being watched over by his parents.”
The artwork Hugh Syme pulled off on the cover of Roll the
Bones is a stunner. It’s visually appealing, with the bold band name
front and center — as is tradition, no distinctive typography for
the band’s name is brought forward from the past, hence there’s
no attempt at establishing a logo. Still, Rush in mixed upper- and
lowercase letters built from black dice makes quite the impression.
Note also top to bottom, the dice get “darker” as the number
of white dots on each die decreases from six to two. This is set
within a wall of white dice, or “bones,” in slang parlance, named
because dice were originally made from ivory but also because of
their visual similarity to a skull. And, of course, there is a skull
on the cover: Hugh is always up for an extra joke for the eyes and
brain. The boy in Syme’s realist painting recalls young men pondering
their lot in life through Rush’s discography, including the
figure on the Power Windows cover and the protagonist in the
song (and video for) “Subdivisions” — as well as the vignettes
drawn up for “Tom Sawyer” and “New World Man.” Our young
Dennis the Menace type is booting a skull along a thin stretch
of sidewalk next to a waterway, which is rendered in the exact
same colors as the dice wall, reflective of it. The skull is one of
the most rollable bones, and it’s also the bone most laden with
meaning. It is in itself a memento mori, an object that serves as
a reminder of death, as is the entire scene, from the young boy
courageously flaunting death, to the weeds struggling to grow in
concrete, to the evocations of chance and randomness one can
derive from the dice.
Neil’s inspiration for the title was a Fritz Leiber sci-fi story
called “Gonna Roll the Bones,” which he had read back in the
’70s; there’s no direct influence of the story on Peart’s concept
or lyrics, but Neil had liked the phrase, so he jotted it down for
future reference.
Unsurprisingly, the opening track on Roll the Bones is one
of the album’s fastest rockers, and it’s quick to get rocking.
“Dreamline” also finds Neil almost immediately getting down
to the deep tissue and exploring the themes suggested in the
record’s title and cover art. He’s already leapt from the platform
and is examining the appeal of geographical exploration: the
road trip, the restlessness, the vitality slaked from getting out in
the world. Remarks about the fleeting nature of time and therefore
life are reinforced by Alex’s guitar picking, which sounds
like the ticking of a clock. Even Neil’s title, a made-up word, is
laden with enough meaning to serve as a microcosm for the song
as a whole, as well as the wider album.
“They have different satisfactions,” muses Peart. “‘Dreamline’
I really liked because I was able to write verses that were imagistic
and non-rhyming, freeing myself from my usual neatness
habits. Roll the Bones still remains really satisfying; it’s just a
good selection of songs.” The opening lines have Neil referencing
astronomy, which he was prompted to write about after
watching a PBS NOVA episode on satellite imagery after one
of his famed long stretches of cycling between gigs, this time
between Cincinnati and Columbus. The CD single artwork for
the song features three floating wishbones (one for each member
of the band?) over an ocean and sunset scene. So there’s bones,
a yearning, and a sense of the possibilities one gets from open
vistas. A wishbone is called that because two people are to grasp
the ends with their pinkies, make a wish and break it. Whoever
winds up with the largest piece gets his wish. Here again, there’s
the element of chance, rolling the dice.
“Dreamline” became a live favorite of the band’s for years to
come — the song was strong enough to serve as opener on the
Different Stages live album — as well as hitting #1 on the U.S.
Mainstream Rock Tracks charts. Indeed, even if Rush had no
ability to rock out at this juncture, “Dreamline” is built for live
execution, given its pause for the verses and attack come chorus
time. Again, even across this “heavy” part of the album, Alex’s
chords are behaved and tightly wound, Neil’s drums troubled
and trebly, and Geddy is playing a Wal bass. All three performers
are further emasculated by a similarly timid sound, that of
braying keyboard stabs, which, through lack of competition from
Rush, become the signature of the chorus, the highlight of the
song that is to be the highlight of Roll the Bones.
“‘Bravado’ is a song where I just loved how the music and the
words married,” says Neil of the record’s next track, a hypnotic
and measured dark pop song framed by Neil’s two-handed hi-hat
pattern. “That’s one of our more successful overall compositions
— arrangement, performance, all of that wedded together.”
Alex loves that his guitar solo on the track was a late-night
one-taker: laden with emotion, performed in solitude on his
Telecaster direct to tape, all the more perfect to go with Neil’s
serious lyric about people doing the right thing, personal heroism
from often unsung heroes, and Geddy’s steady and slow
delivery thereof.
Rupert thinks of this song with respect to the album’s sense of
emotion and fragility. “I suppose if you really are keeping things
as fresh as possible that means danger — it’s got to. I mean, to
be truly fresh is to go somewhere new and pushing that one foot
forward inch by inch or leaping a little in the way that Rush have
done, more than a little. So yes, there is a danger that probably
makes some of the moments have a certain fragility. I certainly
felt there was some emotional stuff that came out. I just referred
to the playing around in the sandpit side of Alex, which I found
quite emotional. There was a joy to that.
“People are a bit on the fence about Rush. They respect them
a lot, but they think they’re too technical, you know, not emotional
enough. And often Neil is somewhat narrative, with the
objective view rather than creating a cry from the inside. Those
aspects of Rush can keep them feeling like they’re a little distant
in the way they communicate. I thought we got through some of
that on ‘Bravado,’ which is still my favorite track of all the tracks
I did with them. It’s one of the least ‘Rush-like’ tracks. It’s sort
of a ballad, nothing terribly tricky. I get chills listening to that
track. I do. I love it; it’s gorgeously harmonic, melodic, expressive,
simple, but with meaningful text. That’s a set of skills that
perhaps showed some of that fragility.”
Hine was particularly impressed with Neil’s busy playing late
in the song, where he stretches out against yet another round of
the hypnotic, almost haunting chorus refrain.
“Yes, there were a couple of points, one in particular, where I
was listening in the control room. They were all playing together,
and Stephen Tayler, the engineer I was working with on both
those albums, I turned to him and said, ‘Are you checking out
what Neil’s playing? Can you figure out how many limbs he’s
got? Can you work out what’s playing what there? And it was
‘Bravado’ actually. It was impossible for just four limbs to play
this part if you check it out. My count was six limbs he needed,
not just five but six.
“So in the end we soloed everything to figure out how. Now
we’re not even checking out sounds or anything — we’re obsessed
by working out how on earth he was playing what he was playing.
And in the end, I had to get out . . . they were still playing, and I
had to go into the studio, I had to walk in front of him, I had to
stand in front of his drum kit and I had to watch. And I’m staring
at him, and that’s when I realized I still couldn’t tell. That’s only
happened once in my life — it was completely weird. It’s a trick.
He does these amazing, amazing trick things, that even when
you’re looking at him, it’s a sleight of hand, it’s magic.”
“I spent days on that drum part,” explained Neil, speaking with
Powerkick magazine. “Just over and over again. And that’s what
I’m saying about time being a luxury . . . we finished songwriting
and everything early, so I had time to rehearse my drum parts for
two weeks after that. I had a demo work tape that I would play a
song over and over until I was burnt out on it, and then I would
start on the next one. So I spent a couple of hours every day on
each song for like two weeks. ‘Bravado’ is a great example of that
because I orchestrated every section of it so carefully, but I also
left a lot of it free. A lot of the key things, a lot of the drum fills,
for instance, I didn’t allow myself to work out. Every time they
came, I just closed my eyes and let it happen. I didn’t want that
to become too big a part of the recording, because you can overrehearse,
and a part that’s played the same way too many times
can become stale. I wanted to leave a little bit of it feeling on edge.
“Over time, I think you learn that you want both, not just
a well-worked drum part and not just spontaneity, but both. It
shouldn’t be an either/or situation. I want to be both orchestrated
and improvised. It’s the way I start working on a song. I
think of everything that will fit in the song and try it out once,
and everything that I don’t like, gradually I will eliminate. And
then sometimes you do end up with less, because ultimately
that’s what the song requires and thus I’m satisfied by it.
“‘Bravado,’ for example, satisfies me to listen to and to play
as well,” continues Peart. “It’s deceptively simple perhaps to
someone who is not sitting down and trying to play it. It may
sound easy enough, but from my point of view on the level of
refinements — and the technical level too — it is demanding. To
juggle all those different approaches to verses and keep the tempo
smooth and all those other elements — including sequencers
when we play it live — makes it challenging. The consistency
of tempo during something like that becomes critical. Overall, I
don’t think it’s a question of ‘less is more’ but ‘better is more.’ You
keep searching for the best way to do it.”
Neil’s part was kept, but much else about the song was cut.
For this one, the guys had an embarrassment of riches, so many
quality parts, but in the end it was pared back to the sober and
resolute final product. Geddy calls “Bravado” one of his favorite
Rush songs ever, for its texture, for its emotion and for Neil’s
lyric, which he found poignant for its idea of paying the price
eventually, but in the present, not counting the cost.
-end excerpt
Driven: Rush in the '90s and 'In the End'