Portraits of Rush Featuring the Photographs of Fin Costello May 2023

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'Finding My Way' - Rush in the 1970s
Like many bands, in their formative years Rush saw a number of musicians come and go, but there are only two line-ups that matter: the one that recorded their first album, and the one that recorded everything else. Despite a rigorous touring schedule, from 1974 to the end of 1979 Rush recorded seven studio albums and issued their first live record. Furthermore, almost from the off the band implicitly expressed a desire not to repeat themselves and evolved with every release, and in doing so created some of the most enduring and iconic music of the decade.

Their roots can be traced back to a fledgling outfit formed in Toronto in 1968 and which included guitarist Alex Lifeson, bassist/vocalistJeff Jones and drummer John Rutsey. Jones was soon replaced by Geddy Lee, and then various configurations of the band appeared on the local scene (with Lee being ousted at one stage) but by March 1972 the Lee / Lifeson / Rutsey trio had emerged as the definitive line-up. With their manager they formed Moon Records in 1973 to release their debut single, a cover of 'Not Fade Away' backed by a Lee / Rutsey composition 'You Can't Fight It'. Apparently, the pressing ran to just 500 seven-inchers, and a mint copy won't leave you much change from €1,000. The single was followed in March 1974 by the band's self-titled debut. Featuring seven Lee/Lifeson songs and Lee's solo composition 'In The Mood', the self-produced Rush was recorded at Eastern Sound and Toronto Sound Studios, but as the band weren't happy with the results it was remixed (again at Toronto Sound Studios) by engineer Terry Brown. Rush is generally seen as a 'fairly solid debut', although Michael Oldfield, writing in Melody Maker, was much more enthusiastic, noting that "a thundering metal riff starts the opening cut 'Finding My Way' and they don't look back for the entire album. Giving Rush an all-round thumbs-up, he concluded with the opinion that it was "a more than promising debut..." How right he was.

Fate then also played a hand, as Donna Halper, a DJ at Cleveland, Ohio's WMMS radio station picked up on the song 'Working Man' and added it to her playlist. Pretty soon Mercury Records came knocking with a contract and chequebook, and Rush were on their way: the album peaked at No.86 on the Canadian chart and No. 105 on Billboard. However, John Rutsey had health issues and left the band, playing his last date on 25 July 1974. Having auditioned five drummers, Lee and Lifeson invited Neil Peart to fill the vacancy. He took his place on the drum stool four days later, and made his live debut on 14 August on the opening night of Rush's first US tour, where they provided support to uriah Heep and Manfred Mann's Earth Band at the Civic Arena, Pittsburgh. They remained on the road till the end of the year, finding time in December to return to Toronto Sound Studios to record their second album before heading straight back out on the road again in January. This time co-produced from the off by Terry Brown and dominated by the nine-minute epic iBy-Tor & The Snow Dog' Fly By Night appeared in the shops on 15 February 1975. With the exception of 'Best I Can' and 'In The End' (both of which had been played on their 1974 UIS tour) Neil Peart weighed in with the writing of the rest of the material, and would soon become their principal lyricist. The album hit No.9 in the band's homeland, and a respectable (if slightly lower than its predecessor) 1 13 on Billboard, and would eventually go on to be certified platinum in both countries for sales of 100,000 at home and 1,000,000 south of the border. They also picked up a Juno Award Canada's Grammys in 1975 for Most Promising Group.

Having spent the first half of 1975 opening for the likes of KISS and Aerosmith, and then returning for a headline Canadian tour, Lee, Lifeson and Peart went to Toronto Sound Studios in July and August to work up their third album, once again with Brown co-producing. But, this time around, somehow the magic just wasn't there and Caress Of Steel, released on 24 September, remains the band's most unloved LP although it's hard to see why. After a solid opener in Bastille Day' (a song which would go on to be the opening number of the band's live set), Peart's joyous autobiographical musings on 'Lakeside Park' and 'I Think I'm Going Bald' a nod to the KISS cut 'Coin' Blind' it then gives way to the two final tracks that dominate the album: the twelve- and-a-half minute The Necromancer' which completes side one, and The Fountain Of Lamneth' which takes up the whole of side two. The press in the LIK was generally quite positive Michael Oldfield's retrospective review in Melody Maker, for example, noted that 'The Fountain Of Lamneth' was 'ia well-rounded composition streets ahead of what most of their heavy metal competitors were doing", while Sounds' Geoff Barton claimed that "with the exception of two tracks, the endearing 'I Think I'm Going Bald' and 'Lakeside Park', Caress Of Steel boldly. went where no album had gone before." Maybe Neil Peart summed it up best when in a 1977 interview with Barton he said "I don't dislike Caress Of Steel...l still quite enjoy listening to it. But yes, it was over-ambitious at the time by the same token, however, I think it was necessary for us to take that giant step.. We owe Caress Of Steel a huge debt of gratitude, because without it, there'd have been no 21 12, But it is elementary school, I don't deny it."

It was the first to feature a sleeve designed by Hugh Syme, who went on to become the band's long-term collaborator. Gone was the bubblegum graffiti of the first album or Fly By Night's rather cartoonish owl; Caress Of Steel featured two evocative images, representative of the album's two lengthy compositions, framed within a green backdrop and spread over a luscious gatefold sleeve. But even that didn't go quite to plan, as the colouration should have been silver, to symbolize the steel of the album's title, but a printing error rendered the images more a bronzy-gold

Caress Of Steel didn't sell as well as its predecessors. In the Canadian album charts it ran out of steam at a lowly No. 60 and could only scrape to No. 148 on Billboard. Even today it remains the band's most overlooked album, although finally achieved Gold Record status in both territories for sales of 50,000 in Canada and 500,000 in America. The venues for the ensuing live shows were noticeably smaller though, and the band dubbed the slog the 'Down The Tubes' Tour. Although at one stage it seemed there was every chance that Mercury's offices would be filled with the sound of Rush's contract being fed into a shredder, the label relented and suggested that Lee, Lifeson and Peart come up with a more commercially acceptable, radio friendly album. Instead, they delivered 2112.

It's impossible to overstate the importance of Rush's fourth album. Recorded in February 1976, and released at the tail end of March, it turned the band into overnight sensations. Much later, in an interview with Philip Wilding in Classic Rock in February 2023, Lifeson would talk about the original plan to record a second live album after 1980's Permanent Waves, but a last minute change of heart resulted in them writing and recording Moving Pictures instead. "And it turned out to be the most important decision of our career," the guitarist pointed out. "Or the second-most important decision, the first one being 2112. Because without 2112 there would be no Rush.

Yet 2112 wasn't particularly radio-friendly, nor did it differ much from its relatively unloved predecessor Once again, an entire side was devoted to a concept piece, as the title track unveiled a story set in a dystopian future where every aspect of life is settled by the all-controlling priests of the Temples of Syrinx, and one person's discovery of a guitar and the ability to make music individually sees him not feted as he thinks he might be, but sent away: seeing how he feels life might but cannot be he commits suicide, before the Solar Federation of which Earth is a part is eventually swept away. Flipping over to side two revealed five shorter tracks, including the dope-fuelled 'A Passage To Bangkok' and the effervescent album closer 'Something For Nothing', both of which made the live set. The label though must have felt that Lifeson, Lee and Peart were onto something, as 2112 appeared once again in a classy gatefold sleeve, and the red star/naked man image would become synonymous with the band for years to come.

The album peaked at No.5 in Canada and would go on to be certified double platinum for 200,000 sales. South of the border it hit No.61 on Billboard and would clock up triple platinum (3,000,000 sales) status. The ensuing tour kept the band on the road from February 1976 until June 1977, with dates across Canada and the LIS, and then for the first time the UK and Sweden. Writing in Sounds, Geoff Barton described the band's first UK show, at Sheffield on I June 1977: "Uncertainties forgotten [pre-show the gig was apparently plagued with difficulties, including gear still being in Customs and the difference between Canadian and UK voltage] Rush exude onstage confidence. Lifeson, on the left, young and blond-haired, dressed in black, plays his guitar vigorously, viciously Drummer Neil Peart twirls his sticks with the same precision as his moustache and hits those skins hard. Geddy Lee's bass growls like a gorilla on heat... For a three-man band, Rush make a lot of noise. As a guitarist, Lifeson is everywhere, riffing, licking, soloing, plucking and strumming all within the space of scant seconds. Lee, as well as playing a mean, dirty sounding bass and singing, also contributes mini Moog passages, playing the instrument's floor- keyboard with his feet. Peart is a flashy, powerful drummer with an amazing amount of equipment at his disposal. It all amounts to, as I say, a lot of noise." It's perhaps worth noting that by this time a new song called Xanadu' had been introduced to the set.

Three sold-out dates at Massey Hall, Toronto on 11-13 June 1976 had been recorded, and the tapes were used to create the All The World's A Stage live album, released three months later on 29 September. The double album featured the full set played at that time, with just a slight change to the running order to accommodate the restrictions of vinyl: 'Lakeside Park' and the slimmed down fifteen-and-three-quarter minute version of '2112' would have been slotted in as the third and fourth songs of the evening. Peak chart positions of No.6 in Canada and No.40 in America showed the band were definitely on the up, and sales of 60,000 in the LIK were more than encouraging.

A piece of trivia from the tour arises from the photograph splashed across the inner gatefold sleeve of Rainbow's April 1978 Long Live Rock 'N' Roll LP, which shows fans in a packed auditorium proudly displaying a banner with the album title written across it. The photo see page 32/33 was actually taken at the McMorran Arena auditorium in Port Huron, USA, on 22 May 1977, and the banner originally proclaimed the fans' love of Rush, rather than Ritchie Blackmore's outfit.

Although Terry Brown had once again co-produced 2112, it would be the last time that Rush recorded at Toronto Sound. The bands fourth album had considerably widened their horizons, and it's Brown who gets the credit for suggesting they decamp to Rockfield Studios, a residential studio in Monmouthshire, Wales. By this time Rockfield's list of credits was already legendary, with Queen's multi-million selling A Night At The Opera being one of its most famous alumni. Aside from Xanadu' which, as mentioned above, had already become part of the band's live set, Closer To The Heart' was the first song to be written for the new album and was for a time in contention as the album's title track. In the end though that honour went to 'A Farewell To Kings', the album's six-minute opener. Instead of re-treading the same ideas that had made 2112 so successful though, Lee, Lifeson and Peart started moving in a different direction, bringing in new instruments ranging from tubular bells to Moog Taurus bass pedals. The album itself was structured around two lengthy ten-plus-minute compositions: the aforementioned 'Xanadu' described by Sounds' Geoff Barton as "Rush's most triumphantly exacting song" which wrapped up side one, and album closer Cygnus X-1', a song about a spaceship entering a black hole and which, tellingly, was listed on the lyric sheet as "to be continued". Three other, shorter, songs (Closer To The Heart', 'Cinderella Man' and 'Madrigal') made up the running order, and everything from the album but 'Madrigal' went straight into the live set which the band toured from August 1977 to June 1978.

With its almost surreal cover art featuring a puppet king surrounded by demolished buildings, on its release in September 1977 A Farewell To Kings became the first Rush album to chart in the UK, peaking at No.22. "A masterwork," Geoff Barton hailed it, in his five-star Sounds review. On Billboard it became their first album to break into the Top 40, hitting No. 33, and back home it stalled just outside the Top 10 at No. 11. It even broke into the Swedish charts, at No.41. 'Closer To The Heart' was released as a single (flipped by 'Madrigal') and alongside decent showings across the Atlantic it also became the band's first entry in the UK singles chart, making it to No.36.

In case there was any doubt, Rush were now a fully international rock phenomenon, and their final release of the Seventies merely emphasised the fact. At the end of the A Farewell To Kings tour the band found themselves back at Rockfield again, and at the end of October 1978 unveiled Hemispheres.

Initially, this time around the band entered the studio without any ideas at all as to the structure of or the songs for their sixth studio release. Sessions took place throughout June and July 1978 (with the vocals being recorded at Advision Studios, where A Farewell To Kings had been mixed) and resulted in another side-long epic title track followed by two shorter cuts (Circumstances', and the much better-known 'The Trees') and a nine-and-a-half minute song entitled 'La Villa Strangiato (An Exercise In Self-Indulgence)' a twelve-part instrumental which in itself apparently took longer to record than the Fly By Night album.

Backed up this time by a shorter touring cycle which ran from October 1978 to June 1979 Hemispheres perhaps disappointingly stalled three places below its predecessor in the Canadian charts, and only reached No. 47 in the States (although has since, over the years, been certified Platinum in both countries); in the UK album charts though it outstripped A Farewell To Kings, hitting No. 14.

Aside from Rush Through Time, a picture disc compilation released in 1979 (and later re-issued as a standard LP in 1982) Hemispheres was the band's last release of the Seventies, although dates in August and September witnessed the first airing of a couple of embryonic new songs entitled 'Freewill' and 'The Spirit Of Radio'. Lifeson had said in an interview in Sounds in May that "I'd imagine the next album will be made up of shorter songs. I think we've taken the concept piece as far as we can," and towards the end of September the band went into Quebec's Le Studio to work on their next album. Released two weeks into 1980 and accompanied by their 'greatest hit' single 'The Spirit Of Radio', Permanent Waves a Top Five album in Canada, The States and Britain marked the beginning of a new era for the band. Things would never be quite the same again.

-John Tucker - February 2023

Rush - A Canadian Rush
The Metal Marvels That Took The Rock World By Surprise

A subterranean voice growls across the phone wires, hesitates, and growls again -- this time more softly. Canadian telephone service might be different, but it's not supposed to be that foreign.

"No, no," she explains, "Robert Plant sounds like the first voice, Geddy Lee is so much smoother and more subdued." There's no denying a fan's word, but Circus Magazine caught up with the vocal chords in question in Spokane, Washington, to settle once and for all whether Rush wasn't just another "junior Led Zeppelin." And learn a little more about the growing success of All the World's a Stage (Mercury), the live double-record set of this Northern power outfit, Rush -- Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson and drummer Neil Peart.

"I don't acknowledge the resemblance the way most people do," said Geddy Lee, as he stretches out in an all too familiar hotel room. All The World's A Stage is not just a catchy title for Rush's most recent record, but a fact of life for the hardworking band who have relentlessly crisscrossed their native Canada and the States.

"Superficially, we are similar... yes," allowed the urbane bassist. "I have a very high voice, so does Robert Plant, but it's an entirely different voice. Both bands play at a pretty high volume, but the music is different. And when you look inside at what motivates the music, you see it's very different."

Geddy expounds on the Canadian identity which has produced a synthesis of musical genres -- the rock and roll hybrid that is Rush. Living in Canada, he explains, a rock musician will share many cultural reference points with his American counterparts. Thematic concerns like "driving around in your car" and high school proms are naturally foreign to Europeans. Rush enjoyed the best of both worlds.

"In Canada, you're influenced by American things, but you also absorb a great deal of the Commonwealth country's British background," Geddy continues.

Yet theirs is a debt common to all "Third Generation" rockers. Whereas bands such as the Stones and Led Zeppelin could transform rhythm and blues into a powerful new musical mode, the bands of the 70's must incorporate the rock heritage of their predecessors. And like their contemporaries Kiss and Aerosmith, Rush reveals utmost respect for their rock and roll roots, regardless of national origin.

"Our influences are still around -- that makes it a bit tougher We're still a young band... with us, we're still competing with some of our very influences."

It's easier to categorize new music in simple terms of what is already familiar. Yet Rush is quite capable of functioning in the face of such comparison. The band spent five grueling years playing in tiny provincial bars where patrons had no interest in a sneak preview of stardom." Mostly, they wanted a living jukebox.

"The worst was Northern Ontario," Geddy recalled, "They don't care what you do. They don't care if you do the greatest original material in the world if their ears haven't heard it before. They just want to get drunk and hear their favorite tunes."

When so many weaker characters would simply hang up their Flying V's, how did Rush survive the endless thankless 5 set nights that would barely pay for the equipment van's gasoline?

"It was just persistence," said Geddy, "We only did tunes that we liked, and we'd sneak in an original here and there. Eventually, we built up our own little following."

The determination and rugged individualism that developed so early in the band's career were essential when Rush finally took the leap into the recording studio. Their initial offering was rejected by record companies. Undaunted, they formed their own record label and released their first LP independently.

"We just kept ourselves going," Geddy remembered, "My family didn't understand what I was doing... until I started making money!"

But the long climb to the top was not without casualties. One who fell by the wayside was the band's original drummer, John Rutsey.

"Just before we were planning our first American tour," explained Geddy, "just before things really started happening, it was obvious that his heart wasn't into it. So we thought we'd better get it out in the open before things really started coming at us fast. He just wasn't thinking the way Alex and I were and he decided it would be better for himself and for us if he left. And it turned out for the best." Because, it was love at first sight for drummer Neil Peart and the surviving 2/3 of Rush.

"We had pretty definite ideas as to what we wanted," Geddy recalls, "and as soon as Neil came in and sat behind his kit, we just knew he was right. He was just doing things we'd always wanted to hear behind our music. And right from the beginning, he was very excited and took a very dominant role."

The debonair drummer also assumed responsibility for the band's lyrics, an unusual contribution for the average tub-thumper.

"Neil is our man of words," says Geddy, "but he also dismissed the notion that the remaining members of Rush are just strong silent types.

"The things I write about are real close to my heart," he admitted, "and I can only write if I'm personally motivated by something, whereas Neil is very literate and can just pull things out of the air." Neil's fertile imagination was invaluable in the creation of 2112, Rush's fourth, and concept album (Mercury), that was a daring project for the young band.

The pressures of touring can also cause the wells of inspiration to run dry, sometimes forcing a band to put out a live album for lack of new material. That, however, was not the case with All The World's A Stage.

"We always wanted to do a live album as a sort of historical thing," Geddy pointed out. "In fact, we wanted to do it as our fourth album, but we thought it might be too early so we did 2112 instead."

One criticism leveled at All the World's a Stage is the feet that its packaging, imitative of Kiss' incredibly successful Kiss Alive format, features what almost amounts to an advertisement for Rush's earlier LPs.

"We didn't want it to look like that!" sighed Geddy, "It wasn't supposed to look like a commercial. The record company did that. I guess from a business point of view it made sense but our original intention was to furnish a historical package, a discography. We wanted people to be able to tell where the songs came from."

"The next album," Geddy reveals, "will be recorded in England. It will be a natural progression, though not a major concept like 2112. We've always looked up to the English progressive bands and it's gonna be a good opportunity to go over there and try to capture the same sort of atmosphere. We're also expanding what we can play," he added "We're getting into more instruments, there will be more texture. We would never foresake our hard rock framework, though! We'll just update it," the bassist states emphatically. "A lot of bands underestimate their audience. But if you look at the very big bands with longevity, they've grown and progressed and their audiences have grown and progressed with them. We're not looking for immediate results, we're hoping to be around for years and years."

-Debra Frost, Circus Magazine, February 14, 1977

Rush: This Man Has Nightmares
He's also lead guitarist for RUSH and writes songs about the politics of oak trees, shapeless spirits and The Real Truth. Psychiatric care by Geoff Barton.

Determinedly striving for perfection, Canadian power trio Rush have been hard at work on their new album Hemispheres since June. And now, a couple of months later, with the mixing of the record half complete, the strain is showing.

As with their last disc A Farewell To Kings, Rush recorded the new LP at rural Rockfield Studios, Monmouthshire. The choice was a natural one — away from the stresses of city life in their home town of Toronto, the Welsh studio retreat gave the band a unique opportunity to sever all contacts with everyday life, regular rock routine, and just immerse themselves into the activity of laying down a seventh album.

However, unlike last time when ideas were well-defined and fairly concrete, on this occasion Rush started from scratch... and it's been an uphill struggle all the way. Or, as band guitarist Alex Lifeson puts it, 'This time around the troubles started from basics".

The two weeks prior to entering the studio were spent in intensive rehearsal, during which time ideas were developed and discarded, germinated and jettisoned. As I understand it the band started to retreat within themselves, get somewhat insular... and began to worry a little about the exact direction the new LP should take.

And maybe because of this undercurrent of (mild) panic, the single number to emerge from the 14 day period has turned out to be very, very odd indeed.

"It's called 'La Villa Strangiato'," Lifeson reveals. "It's a nine-and-a-half minute long, 12 part instrumental track... it's really peculiar, really off the wall and totally unlike anything we've ever done before."

'La Villa Strangiato'?

"That's right," Lifeson continues. "It's a — would you believe — musical recreation of some of my nightmares!"

The plot thickens.

"Yes, seriously," interjects drummer Neil Peart, noticing the look of incredulity that's suddenly spread across my face. "Alex has some of the most bizarre bad dreams, especially when we're away touring on the road. Sometimes, when we're all supposed to be fast asleep in our hotel rooms, he'll wake up either Geddy (Lee, the band's vocalist and bass player) or me with a phone call in the middle of the night and start telling us all about these terrible dreams he's been having. When you're barely conscious, some of the stories he comes up with can be quite mind-blowing."

As is 'La Villa Strangiato', too. The first couple of times I heard it (at London's Trident Studios, where Rush recently began putting the finishing touches to the LP) it struck me as being unconventional in the extreme and totally at odds with the band's usual sword and sorcery/heavy rock musical stance. Frantic jazzy passages collide headlong with mellow, acoustic-based interludes... and although all of the dozen aforementioned sections of the track have individual titles, some are shorter than even a Wire cut. Initially the number left me terribly confused and (gasp) even uncertain if I actually liked it or not. And even now that I've got hold of an advance tape of the LP and have had the opportunity to listen through ‘La Villa Strangiato’ a few more times, I still feel much the same way. Funnily enough, it keeps reminding me of ‘The Sabre Dance’. Is that a good or a bad thing?

Whatever. Accompanying ‘La Villa Strangiato' on one side of the album are two other tracks, ‘Trees’ and ‘Circumstances’, both short, snappy and concise, very much in the same spirit as ‘Closer To The Heart’.

‘Trees’ has an endearing, almost fairytale-type storyline, although it undoubtedly has deeper connotations.

"The song's about a forest full of maple and oak trees,” Peart explains. "The maples begin to get uptight because the oaks are growing too big and tall and are taking all the sunlight away from them... so they form a union, and endeavour to get the oaks chopped back down to a reasonable size."

The other side of the album is taken up by the ‘Fountain Of Lamneth/2112’-style, 20 minutes long title track ‘Hemispheres’. And, as expected, it's the conclusion to the story begun by the number ‘Cygnus X-1’ on the previous platter. If you remember, the ‘first episode’ ended with Our Hero plunging his spaceship the Rocinante through a Black Hole in the constellation of Cygnus... never to be seen again?

‘Hemispheres’ ties up the tale in totally unexpected fashion. Even though Peart, in his own words, racked his brain, but still had ‘no idea’ how to end the story even when the band started recording, I think you'll agree that he’s managed to concoct a convincing conclusion. And no, he hasn't copped out with any ‘matter transportation’ or ‘other dimension’ schtick... it's far more complicated than that.

I won't give too much away here and now as it'll spoil the enjoyment of you finding out for yourself, so for the moment suffice to say that Rush's full-blown ‘Hemispheres’ flight of fancy introduces two new characters into the scheme of things (Apollo, god of the mind; Dionysus, god of the heart), relates a battle between these two that brings a world to its knees and to the brink of Armageddon, and includes the appearance of a ‘shapeless spirit’ that emerges from a Black Hole to act as mediator. And, as ever, it's not all as cut-and-dried as it may seem at first.

"I hope that whoever buys the album will feel moved to delve beneath the basic storyline,” says Peart, “and find a real truth. It'll be worth the effort, believe me. I think it’s something worth bringing to people's attention’.

The album comes out in early October, so get delving.

Talking about more general matters, I was surprised when Peart revealed great admiration and respect for that ‘new British supergroup’ called U.K. Previously I'd dismissed them as ‘just another Hugh Fielder band’, but Peart seemed so enamoured with them (“Especially Bill Bruford's drumming,” he says. “He's flowered, improved vastly with this new outfit’) that maybe I'll start from scratch, acquire another copy of their album and listen to it with an open mind... not to say ears.

And as far as the next British tour goes, you'll be delighted to hear that Rush definitely (no messin’ around, as is always the case with Kiss) be playing this country in April and May of next year. Even now, at such an early stage, the band's date sheet is jam-packed with all of 30 shows, including several nights in London, Newcastle... just about every major city in Blighty, in fact.

Says Peart: "Despite the great receptions we enjoyed last time — when the Glasgow Apollo crowd started singing along to ‘Closer To The Heart’ it was magic, one of the best moments of my life — it was really difficult touring Britain in February, what with all the snow, ice and freezing cold dressing rooms...

“This time we're going to do it right.

-Geoff Barton, Sounds, 30th September 1978

end excerpt...

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Portraits of Rush: Featuring the Photographs of Fin Costello

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