Chapter 5
As Rush prepared to head into the studio, they received some welcome news. Circus magazine readers picked the band as the second best new group for 1975, a confidence builder which would help to bolster the trio's growing sense that they would stand or fall on their own terms.

The biggest lesson the band had learned from 'Caress' was that if they were going to try more ambitious material, they would need more than a week or two of recording time. With the new songs they had spent a six-month period intermittently writing while on the road and they wanted the finished product to reflect their intense involvement in the piece. So a full month was set aside to record and mix the album with Broon at Toronto Sound.

There were several other important decisions made about the album. Since Rush were above all a touring band, they wanted to be able to reproduce the new songs live. At the same time they wanted to explore the full range of possibilities available to them in the studio. The trio decided they would use as few overdubs as possible on most of the record, but they would set one track aside for some studio research where they could create like crazy, without worrying about having to reproduce it live. The recording went well. Both Broon and the band were happy with the initial results. But Terry later admitted he had no idea how well the album would do. "I wasn't really sure where '2112' would go in so far as overall (commercial) success," said Terry. "I find it very hard to make a judgement. If you had asked me then, I would have said that 'Caress Of Steel' and '2112' were very much in the same area as far as success ratings go."

On the title track, two bits of studio magic helped to give the band some extra gloss. Hugh Syme and Geddy played an ARP synthesizer at the start of the piece. The effect was achieved in one take creating feedback with an envelope generator. Terry then treated it with echo and reverb.

The eerie voice that closes out 'Grand Finale' by assuming control was actually created long before the '2112' session. "It was at the end of 'Caress Of Steel' when we got a digital delay unit in the studio," remembered Terry. "This little black box kept us entertained for a whole night (laughs) and we recorded about two rolls of tape. Much of it was the four of us being very silly. We came up with a lot of good ideas, and also found out exactly how this thing worked, and what its potential was. One thing we came up with was the voice for the finale. So we saved the tape, and pulled it out when we did '2112'."

Hugh Syme's contributions to the album were not limited to a synthesizer effect. He once again made an important graphic contribution to the band's image and played on the album, the first time an outsider played on a Rush record. He worked on the studio production 'Tears'. On the song he filled up three tracks with Mellotron parts, mimicking strings, a French horn and flutes.

Hugh's cover design would actually serve as the group's trademark for many years to come. He began to devise the concept for the artwork even before the record was finished, getting a copy of the lyrics and some of the music and talking with the trio about the general direction of the album. He then went to work.

The front cover features a painting of the galaxy with the band's name and title on it. Underneath the title is a red star inside a circle. The jacket has a gatefold design. When the cover is opened, the right side reveals the album's lyrics in red. The left side has a drawing of a naked man holding his hands out in front of him to ward off the star. This image intrigued the band and it eventually became their logo for almost a decade.

In later years, some foolish people tried to attach a satanic meaning to the design because of the red colour, the pentagram-like shape of the star, and circle.

Hugh explained to Creem magazine that, "This man is the hero of the story. That he is nude is just a classical tradition... the pureness of his person and creativity without the trappings of other elements such as clothing. The red star is the evil red star of the federation, which was one of Neil's symbols. We basically based that cover around that red star and the hero." The result according to Geddy was something that "to us came to stand for individualism or man against the masses."

That symbol perfectly represented what Rush were trying to achieve on '2112'. It caught not only the ambience of the title piece, but also the more conventional tracks on the second side of the record.

Side Two opens with 'A Passage To Bangkok', a song about a fantasy journey to the finest marijuana fields in the world and obviously the work of a T-H-C connoisseur.

There is another nod to the man 'Caress Of Steel' was dedicated to on 'The Twilight Zone'. It has a mystical space feel, and I think Rod Serling would have loved it. 'Lessons' is a rarity in that Alex gets the sole songwriting credit. But in another sense, it is an atypical Rush song, opening quietly before rocking out. Next is the studio production piece, 'Tears'. Although better produced, it is very much in the mode of 'Rivendell'. The song also marks one of the very few times that Neil plays in a straight four-time signature.

The album closes with perhaps the clearest and most concise statement of purpose the band ever recorded. 'Something For Nothing' sounds like a call to action. 'You don't get something for nothing/ You don't get freedom for free/ You won't get wise/ With the sleep still in your eyes/ No matter what your dream might be.'

The album as a whole is much better produced than their earlier efforts, and really shines on compact disc.

When the band delivered the finished product to Mercury, the record company executives were furious. Here was a hard rock act that had gone 'arty' on their last album. The record had flopped, and what did they do, but go in and make an even artier disc. To top things off, Rush wanted a 20 minute cut to lead-off the album. Their contract gave them artistic control which meant Mercury could not move the song to the second side of the record.

Only a handful of people at the label took the band's side. Cliff Burnstein lobbied hard telling company brass that unlike the last album, '2112' had the extra polish that could put the band over commercially, but most of his colleagues strongly disagreed.

Even Terry had his doubts. "It didn't seem to me that '2112' would be that much bigger," he says, "but everything was a bit more together. The album cover was more positive, and attractive to the fan. 'Caress' had a very dark and gloomy cover, while the cover of '2112' is quite stunning."

The record was released in March 1976 and the doubters at Mercury received a big surprise. Within a week of its release, 100,000 copies had been sold. The marketing plan had not even begun when orders for more records began pouring in. By the end of the month, sales surpassed the first three albums combined.

Rush played their first '2112' tour date in Los Angeles on March 18. Almost immediately after the album came out a difference was noticed by band and crew.

"To me it seemed to be the big turning point," said Liam. "Obviously everyone felt like they were under a lot of pressure. If you have an album that stiffs, the pressure is that much greater for the next album to be that much better. '2112' was accepted extremely well. It was a day and night difference between 'Caress Of Steel' and '2112'. It was a good thing too, because there were a lot of down feelings on 'The Down The Tubes Tour' and things turned around completely with '2112' so it was very uplifting."

After playing on the West coast, Rush moved to their strongest area, the American Midwest where they had spent much time touring and it was beginning to pay off.

"We started headlining small places on the 'Caress' tour," says Alex, "and we didn't really do that well in the majority of the halls. With '2112' it seemed to change. We would go back to these same halls and do a lot better. In many cities we were going the next step up the ladder, headlining 5,000 seat arenas."

This popularity came from playing places like St. Louis where they did four shows within an 18 month period. Rush were now playing a total of more than 300 shows every year, mostly one night stands. Another change was when they were billed as an opening act, they were often called 'Special Guests'. By May the group was playing a series of dates across Texas stages to prepare for the album that would sum up their development. Rush were getting ready to record a live album.

The idea made perfect sense for the trio. Much of their success came from playing live. Even radio airplay came only after Rush had visited an area. Plus an in-concert package would be welcomed by their fans. There were also more practical reasons: Alex, Geddy and Neil had exhausted themselves working on '2112'. They needed time to figure out what their next musical direction would be. A live set would buy them an extra six months. It would also (theoretically) be easier to produce.

1976 was the year of the live album. Former tour mates Kiss were well on the way to becoming one of the biggest rock bands in America as a result of the 'Kiss Alive' record. The same thing was happening to a hitherto obscure British guitar player by the name of Peter Frampton, and a perennial Detroit local hero Bob Seger who was stirring up interest with his 'Live Bullet' package, not to mention Lynyrd Skynyrd, Foghat and Led Zeppelin.

With a live album a natural next step, choosing a site was even easier. Toronto would be the place. Two dates were booked at Massey Hall, which would also serve as the kick-off to a brief Canadian tour. Tickets for the first two shows sold out immediately. A third show was added and all tickets for that date were also sold.

Rush had been performing an energetic spirited live set for three full months when they hit the stage at Massey Hall on June 11.

As Skip Gildersleeve cried out, "Oh... won't you please welcome home Rush," Terry was watching the dials in the Fedco mobile recording truck. "Other than freaking out and trying to get it all together, I don't remember anything about the shows. It was a bit of a nightmare to me," Terry says.

The pressure was on everyone. "Hometown is always intense," says Liam, "much more so than any other gigs. Everyone wants to be at their best playing to a hometown audience. Add to that the fact that we were recording a live album, it was extremely high pressure for a few days. It felt like we were there for weeks."

To Alex, "Three days at Massey Hall was a big deal. It was something to be really proud of, for us, being a Toronto band, and coming home and having that kind of response. We still got a lot of bad press about those shows, but that made it even better."

The first two nights' performances were good, and the band were counting on a magical show on the third. At the time, Rush always played best on their third straight show. The trio found that the first two dates put them in peak form, and the third was an occasion for a trip into the upper stratosphere.

So when they hit the stage for the final night's performance, all concerned knew that every note had to count. But they ran into problems, Neil especially, as he later told Jim Ladd on the syndicated radio show, Innerview. "I had a lot of equipment troubles... and I was just burning with rage... because there is no time... when you respond emotionally like you do onstage... everything just (snaps his fingers)... you respond spontaneously. I never lose my temper except when I'm on stage... because when things go wrong there... I'm wide open emotionally.... because of what I'm involved in... the level of concentration... I don't have time for a rational response... I just go urrrgghh.

"So consequently all of this angst was coming out of me during the course of the night, and I was so annoyed, and I figured the album was ruined because of all this. And then we listened back to those tapes and those were the ones that had all the energy, and it's true that anger can sometimes bring out the passion in the music."

As it turned out most of the two record set was taken from the third night's fiery performance. But, perhaps, what was most surprising to Terry and the band was how long it took to get the raw tapes ready for release. Everyone involved thought it would take a few days, and could be done right after the Canadian Tour. Then the band would be able to have a month to relax with their friends and families. It was not to be.

"We remixed the entire album three times", says Alex. "We thought it would take a week, maybe five days... and we were in there for a month. Geddy, Neil and I were going nuts by the end of it. We would go outside and play ping-pong, go back in for a few minutes and walk out. We got to the point where we did not know what we were hearing any more. We tried to get a balance between a very live album and the way we would want to hear it."

Geddy told Toronto's Globe and Mail newspaper during the remixing of the record that some overdubbing was needed. He talked about fixing a guitar part that was ruined during 'Working Man' when Alex broke a string. But, Geddy was reluctant to talk about the dubbing process because he felt it would take away from the magic of the album. He did add that other well-known concert albums have had some studio wizardry performed on them.

Even with the occasional touch-up, the record sounds raw, catching the band's primal fury; an extra fire and energy that is missed on the studio versions. This is most notable on '2112'. Some of that intensity may come from Neil's anger, and if you listen closely you can hear the snares break on Neil's snare drum during 'The Temples Of Syrinx'. The live side of '2112' is also missing 'Oracle: The Dream'. While the band debuted this epic on tour, they were an opening act which meant that song sections were restricted due to time constraints, but as Rush began headlining they added the missing pieces back into '2112'. All of the pieces except for 'Oracle: The Dream' which has never been performed live. The album has definitive recordings of 'Bastille Day', 'Anthem', 'Something For Nothing', and of course, 'Working Man'.

The live album is also notable because it captures the band just as they were about to switch musical gears. Neil later said: "We look at a live album as taking the place of an anthology or greatest hits. To me it's a nicer way of doing that. It offers the high points of our material in a group of records, a span of our career, without just taking them off the albums."

Geddy found time off that summer to marry his long-time girlfriend, Nancy Young. The pair had a traditional Jewish wedding and were able to squeeze in a two-week Hawaiian honeymoon. Nancy had seen the band perform since its earliest days, and her brother Lindy was in Rush for a short time during 1969. Nancy and Geddy had been going out ever since.

'All The World's A Stage' was released September 29. Its title is the famed line from William Shakespeare's play, As You Like It!.

'All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players/They have their exits and entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts.'

North America would be Rush's stage for the remainder of 1976. A new tour started off with a few warm-up gigs in the United States, with a complex show that required a 10-man crew. A major highlight of the tour was their first appearance as headliners throughout Canada. Ray's strategy of breaking Rush in the US first left large areas of their homeland unexplored. Of course the band had always been popular in the Ontario area, but with their growing success, it seemed like the right time to alert the rest of the nation to Rush on stage.

All the new equipment was trucked into Canada. There were no problems at the border and all the gear cleared customs. However, on the eve of their first show at Moncton's Lewis Levesque Arena, the government stepped in, and they were slapped with a 815,000 fine for importing the equipment without a licence.

The tour itself had its share of failures. Attendance was spotty in the Maritime Provinces, and audiences were unresponsive. After the raucous atmosphere the band had been creating in the States and Toronto, the shows were a let-down. However, there was other news to cheer the group up. 'All The World's A Stage' was flying out of record stores. 215,000 copies of 'Stage' were shipped. '2112' was also still selling well. It had already passed the 300,000 mark and was continuing to move 5,000 copies a week. A much more enthusiastic Mercury Records reported that October was the best sales month in its 30 year history as a company. The new Rush release was a prime force in the sales explosion.

The band were soon back in the United States opening for Blue Oyster Cult. Geddy told the Saginaw Michigan News that the trio was going over well with stateside audiences. "It's good to see the response from an audience primarily interested in seeing the headliner," said Geddy. "We have got to the point where we are better able to select the kind of music we play to the kind of audience that shows up. I see a good future for the group." At that point, the band had played the Saginaw area three times in 12 months.

Geddy couldn't have known that the band would not have to tailor their show for other people's audiences much longer. As the tour progressed, Rush found themselves headlining more and more often. They even began to sell out medium sized halls of 5,000 to 7,000 seat capacity. The momentum was building. They also started touring extensively on the East Coast of the United States.

Until this period the trio had concentrated on the Midwest, and to a lesser degree on the West Coast. Their appearances along the Atlantic Seaboard had been few and far between. But, even as the third billed act on the roster at coliseum concerts, Rush managed to make an impression and leave a few thousand fans behind in just about every city they visited.

It was a heady time for Alex, Geddy and Neil. They were beginning to be offered all the perks that come with being a successful rock band. Some were harmless, others were not.

On a lighter note, Neil reminisced about the first time the band played in Philadelphia. "I'll always remember the first time we played the Spectrum (where Rush opened for Robin Trower and Montrose). It was one of the very first times we had a limo, and we were talking with the stereo in the background. 'Still You Turn Me On' by ELP came on the radio while we talked together. It was a nice moment as we pulled up to the Spectrum."

On December 1 Rush opened for Ted Nugent at the L.A. Forum. Two weeks later they were back in Canada playing with Aerosmith at the Montreal Forum. On the 16th the trio sold out a 4,000 seat hall in Chicago. On December 22 they were presented Canadian Gold albums for 'Caress Of Steel' and 'Rush'. A Canadian Gold album is awarded for sales of 50,000 or more discs.

The band's dedication to science fiction and fantasy was also recognised when Marvel Comics dedicated The Defenders (Volume 1, Number 45) 'to Alex, Geddy and Neil of Rush'. The comic is based on Neil's lyrics to '2112'.

With things happening so fast it is a wonder that the band were also able to make a major decision about their future. The experiments of '2112' stimulated the group's appetite for musical change: they wanted to fully explore the progressive rock to which they had been listening and leaning towards for several years.

Since much of this music was keyboard orientated, the subject of expanding the group's line-up was broached for the first time since Mitch Bossi left. But one major factor stopped them: they had stood and succeeded as a trio. The lack of factions had always played in their favour. A unique chemistry had been formulated from this arrangement, and Alex and Geddy remembered the difficulties that always ensued when they added a fourth member. The idea was rejected.

Instead the band would work at expanding their instrumentation as a three-man unit. If, as Neil said, the live album summed up an era in the group's history, and a new road was to be taken, there would be at least one constant. Rush would consist only of the individuals who had risked everything to create what was becoming a very distinct musical force.

New Year's Eve was celebrated with another hometown gig, a date at the Maple Leaf Gardens Concert Bowl. It was another big step up for the band in Toronto. All 7,000 seats were quickly sold out. This was a major achievement considering the group had played three nights at Massey Hall only seven months before. Gauging the response, Ray and Vic decided to go for a second show. It too sold out. Standing Room Only (SRO) Rush concerts would become an increasingly common phenomenon before the year was out. But by January 3, 1977 two nights at the Concert Bowl were more than could be hoped for.

Even with this success, radio was still a problem. Rush got some airplay in the Midwest where their following was getting bigger all the time, but once outside this area radio was an invisible airwave for Rush, and even in the Midwest airplay tended to be closely tied to their concert appearances. Once they played a town, what little crackle of life they saw would taper off.

In Philadelphia a handful of songs made it onto the airwaves just before their first headlining gig at the Tower Theatre. But after the concert, that dwindled to nothing. Radio programmers seemed uninterested in slotting time for a group that was able to sell out a 3,500 seat hall, just a few months after being opening act on a triple bill.

Having just been converted to their music, I tried to do my bit by telling everyone I knew about Rush. I also started calling up the local stations and harassing disc jockeys, trying to get them to play the band's music. Among comments I heard: "Rush are raucous, they'll never make it," and "They are nothing more than a two-bit bar band." My continual phone calls made me a few friends, a few enemies and even occasionally got Rush on the radio in Philadelphia.

The problems I encountered were much more frustrating for the band, its management and Mercury Records. They thought that the success of 'All The World's A Stage' and Rush's growing status as a touring band would open the airwaves to the trio. It didn't turn out that way. Rush continued to be pretty much non-existent as far as radio was concerned.

Cliff Burnstein was particularly annoyed. Since he had begun promoting the group he, "Kept on hitting brick walls with them. No airplay at major stations. The stations that did play Rush, however, got a response."

Cliff was always one to look for ways to blow up brick walls. He hit upon the idea of putting together a radio sampler of their work, collecting material from the post-Rutsey Rush albums. The disc included an edited version of '2112', 'Something For Nothing', 'Making Memories', and 'Bacchus Plateau'.

When it came to giving the package a title, Cliff decided to vent some of his frustration. He called it 'Everything Your Listeners Ever Wanted To Hear By Rush... But You Were Afraid To Play.' "It was aimed at people who would never put the group on their own turntables," says Cliff.

Rush carried on touring while Cliff and Mercury continued to batter away at the doors of US radio programmers. The band were using the time on the road to their advantage. They began working on new material, and learning to play new instruments during soundchecks.

"We thought we'd try and broaden the sound on stage between the three of us," says Alex, "by having Gedd play the keyboards and bass pedals, me playing bass pedals and double neck guitar, and Neil would get a few more percussion instruments to have some other sounds in there."

Armed with the incentive to keep the trio intact, their experiments soon began to produce results. The first song that used their new arsenal of equipment was 'Xanadu'. Work was started on it during the later stages of the 'All The World's A Stage Tour'. Among the instruments used, double neck guitars, bells, temple blocks, wind chimes, bass pedals and synthesizer. Other songs were also going through the writing process; 'Closer To The Heart' was completed and about half of 'Cygnus X-1' was finished.

North America's last look at Rush's stage for four months came in Chicago's Aragon Ballroom on May 20 and 21.

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