Four decades later, I still stand by that accurate assessment. Objectively speaking, you don’t have to be an individualist to know that the ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity—but how extraordinary is it that Rush’s first step was to build their own ladder by self-releasing an iconic album that continues to represent the living embodiment of everything that rock ’n’ roll stands for? That’s a rhetorical question, by the way. But if you’re looking for answers, Rush contains eight of them.
Which is why my writing this Rush reiteration has got me thinking that it’s time for me to upgrade my fond memories of 1973 by going to see them perform live in concert for a second time—and as soon as I scrape up another four bucks, that’s exactly what I’m going to do. I hear they’ve got a new drummer.
Neil was demoralized and working in the parts department at Dalziel Equipment when he received an invitation to audition for Rush. Author collection
“It wasn’t like there was a falling out or anything,” recalled Alex, decades later. “He didn’t want to do what we were doing, so he quit. In fact, that last year, in ’73 we had a substitute drummer for a while because John was really sick. We had some gigs we had to play, and so we had this substitute drummer. Jerry Fielding was his name. Then John came back in, but with the prospect of touring and all of these things that were suddenly happening, all of these good opportunities, he just wasn’t into it. That was really odd at the time, because we were so excited about it; it was a dream come true but he didn’t really want to be a part of it.”
“We had American gigs lined up and no drummer,” remembered right-hand man, Ian Grandy. “We were set up at a rehearsal place and three drummers tried out. The first guy was nowhere, the second guy was a guy they knew and liked but I think all of us knew he wasn’t good enough. Then this guy Neil shows up. Geddy looks at me and says, ‘He’s a greaseball,’ because Neil had what came to be called his ‘submariner’ hairstyle. Neil had this small, funky, gray drum kit and set it up himself. They proceeded to jam for about forty minutes and I recorded it as best I could with three microphones. After that, Geddy asked me was this guy as good as they thought he was, and I couldn’t do anything but agree because I don’t think I had ever seen [or] heard anyone play like he did. They talked together by themselves for quite a while and, presto—we had a new drummer. Looking back I’d have to say that worked out pretty well.”
The Neil of which Ian spoke is of course Neil “The Professor” Peart, born September 12, 1952, in Hamilton, Ontario, after which the family migrated to more rural climes. Neil, like Geddy and Alex, had similarly wrestled with the quandary of pleasing one’s parents versus the long-haired rock ’n’ roll dream. For Neil, it started with big-band jazz, particularly Gene Krupa, and then quickly progressed through formal lessons (meaning lots of rudiments and snare work), until a captivating TV presentation of The T.A.M.I. Show film in 1964 lit the way (highlights: James Brown and the Rolling Stones), followed by immersion into the wonderful drum tornado that was Keith Moon and the more skillful and creative possibilities presented by John Bonham. All the while, Neil had chalked up more serious credits than Alex or Geddy, writing and recording with a number of bands, including the Majority and J. R. Flood.
Like many of his generation, Neil was profoundly influenced by the TV presentation of The T.A.M.I. Show in 1964.
April 1969. Pre-Rush, Neil had chalked up more serious credits than both Geddy and Alex, writing and recording with several bands, including the Majority.
Neil had been working part-time at Dalziel Equipment (where his dad was employed full-time), but in fact had already lit out for swinging London, where he found himself a small-fish drummer in a big pond of pounders. Back home, demoralized and working in the parts department at Dalziel, he received a visit from Vic Wilson (and Johnny Trojan, the buddy who had recommended Neil) in a white Corvette. Neil was noncommittal about the invitation to audition for Rush, but once he did, the connection was obvious. Once part of the fold and rehearsing like mad, the band had ten days to prepare for their first U.S. tour (their first tour of any sort, really) supporting the high-flying Uriah Heep.
Geddy and Alex have always quipped that this nerdy guy they had brought into the band “knew words,” “read books,” and perhaps most amusingly, “spoke English better than anyone we knew, in fact, better than anyone we had ever met.” Quiet and intense as Neil was, the three bonded over Monty Python and prog rock, Geddy and Alex putting aside their slight intimidation at his school smarts. It only seemed natural that come work on the band’s second album, Neil would be asked to write the lyrics. Odd task for a drummer, but after all, the drummer had always written the lyrics in Rush.
“I never thought seriously about writing lyrics until I joined this band,” said Neil, “and it became a necessity because no one else was doing it. I’m an avid reader, though. Actually, I’m a high school dropout. But I’ve educated myself. The music we’re playing is the music we honestly want to play. I like playing hard rock; it gives me a lot of scope. There have been inferior hard rock bands and people have used it to disguise a lack of talent. Our strongest point is our mentality, I think. The thing I love about this band is that we’re honest. We’re not in it purely as a matter of economics. It’s fun and enjoyable. We would like to become rich, but that’s not our sole objective. We don’t see the point of trying to get a hit single by appealing to the lowest common denominator.”
The songs that would pepper Fly by Night, issued February 15, 1975, were written mostly on the road, the band bonding in cramped cars across the Midwest, jamming at soundchecks and, as Geddy put it, “in hotel rooms trying to come up with heavy metal on an acoustic guitar.”
Fly by Night represented a massive step forward. Critics oversimplify the character of the Rush album as bashing, barroom rock ’n’ roll. Actually, it was more than that, something closer to what the more studious veterans of rock were doing. Fly by Night found the guys venturing well beyond what the established bands had been doing within the hard rock idiom, truly and purposely combining the art rock grandeur of Yes, King Crimson, Genesis, and Emerson Lake & Palmer with the quaking guitars of (proto) metal, spiced with Geddy’s hair-whitening vocals, the crackling, exacting note densities emanating from Neil’s large kit, and the roaring rear of Alex and Ged. In effect, a whole new genre called progressive metal was born. Surely, Zeppelin, Heep, Sabbath, and Deep Purple had periodically been to this place, but Rush took to it in stride, pairing, on the literary side, swords, sorcery, science fiction, and the requisite talk about rocking, with the idea of unapologetically playing up a pretentious storm sure to rile critics who had always crowed variations of “less is more” as the most reliable method of making music with taste.
© Rock ’n’ Roll Comics, Revolutionary Comics. Courtesy Jay Allen Sanford
FLY BY NIGHT Neil Daniels
After the departure of drummer John Rutsey, who was not committed to the band’s hectic touring schedule, Fly by Night is notable not only because it was the second Rush album but because it marked the studio debut of Neil Peart, who has undoubtedly become one of the greatest and most revered rock drummers in popular music history. Peart had made his official introduction to Rush on July 29, 1974, a fortnight before the band’s then forthcoming U.S. tour.
The album was recorded at Toronto Sound Studios with Terry Brown, marking the beginning of his and Rush’s long-running and successful artist-producer collaboration. (Previously, Brown had remixed the band’s 1974 self-titled debut.) Audiophiles and anoraks have looked deeply into the band’s recording history, noting equipment upgrades at Toronto Sound, the studio used to record the sophomore effort and the aforementioned debut.
Peart would become an integral member of the Canadian trio not only because of his drumming talents but also due to his skills as a wordsmith. Peart’s interest in science fiction and fantasy literature, notably with a dystopian outlook, would become a stable of the band’s trademark sound
and image. At the time of Fly by Night, Peart was reading the writings of the controversial right-wing philosopher Ayn Rand (evident on “Anthem”). On a lyrical level it’s obvious why academics have become so engrossed by Rush. “Rivendell” is focused heavily on fantastical themes evoking strong lyrical images, while the epic eight-minute track “By-Tor & the Snow Dog” concerns the story of Rush roadie Howard Ungerleider during his stay at the home of Anthem Records owner Ray Danniels, where he was not greeted warmly by Danniels’ dogs. The title track was influenced by Peart’s brief sojourn to London as a young musician in his pre-Rush days. The closing track, “In the End,” is evidently inspired by Led Zeppelin, as both Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson were enthusiastic fans of 1960s British bands. The heaviest song on the opus, however, is most emphatically “Beneath, Between & Behind,” and although the band may have focused on complex arrangements and instrumentals, there are still the touches of the blues on Fly by Night that had been fully present on the first album.
With Terry Brown and Neil Peart onboard, Rush developed the band’s trademark sound. Despite minor tinges of Zeppelin and the Who, Fly by Night marks the true beginnings of Rush as they would develop and harness a musically challenging and thought-provoking sound all of their own throughout the decade and beyond. By comparison, Rush was more of an homage to the band’s influences than anything else. It would take time for the trio to fully develop their storytelling techniques, but Fly by Night is as much a Neil Peart album as it is a Rush album, given how integral he would become in helping the band shift toward a new, more original direction.
The 37-minute album was released in February 1975, and although it may not be regarded as one of the band’s finest, it certainly has some standout songs. To be sure, Fly by Night has its strengths and weaknesses in almost equal measure, but after the radio-friendly sound of its predecessor, Rush was becoming a proper prog rock outfit.
“It showed a progression from the first album,” Geddy told Circus after four months of hard touring in support of it. “We’re very happy with it. We recorded it as an album. Singles would be nice, but that’s incidental.” Addressing “By-Tor & the Snow Dog,” the first of many complex Rush epics to come, Geddy added, “All the music in that relates to the story. It has visual sounds, monsters, screeching animals. It’s where we want to head.”
Terry Brown, back to produce the band, but this time from start to finish, figured you couldn’t underestimate the effect Neil had on Rush’s quick-firing band chemistry. “Well, for starters, he came with this whole lyrical background that he wanted to bring to the band. He was a great player. And he just gave the band a whole new lease on life. It was almost too complicated at that point, but we made it work. And we felt that it was going to be the way to go. It wasn’t my decision—you have to appreciate that I was purely co-producing those records back then. We made Fly by Night in twenty-one days, from the very beginning [when] they walked in the studio to when they walked out and Vic picked up the masters. That’s pretty damned quick. So I didn’t have a lot of time to form a lot of opinions. But I was very happy with his performance. I loved the direction the tunes were taking, and I felt it had tremendous potential.”
Rush would score a minor hit with “Fly by Night,” the title track and a metal-lite paean to the road that amusingly demonstrates the band’s over-the-top performance approach upon a structure that, in other hands, might be a painfully plain AM radio number. Elsewhere, the band exhibits flashy metal chops, “Anthem” folding in upon itself with panache, “Best I Can” and “Beneath, Between & Behind” serving as platforms for Neil’s meticulous, bright, drama-filled whirls. With Fly By Night, Rush had indeed found a signature sound, one that they would nourish, poke, and cajole but not wholly reconstitute for the next six records over six exhausting years. But first they would have to experience the soul-breaking reversal of fortune that would be their next record, a dark work of art, and its subsequent tour playing to small gatherings of the confused.
Fly by Night found the band truly and purposely combining the art rock grandeur of prog giants like Yes, King Crimson, Genesis, and ELP with the quaking guitars of proto metal.
By late 1974 a visit to their label’s New York City offices was newsworthy enough to garner some attention in the October 19 issue of Billboard.
1975–1976
SOMETHING FOR NOTHING
“We’ve been compared to everybody from the New York Dolls to Led Zeppelin and Humble Pie, but all those comparisons are just superficial. Like, Robert Plant and I both have high voices so they expect us to play ‘Whole Lotta Love.’”
—Geddy Lee, quoted by Rick Johnson, Creem, 1975
HARD TO BELIEVE, but it was not uncommon in the ’70s to crank out two studio albums in a year, the mortar between the bricks being live dates five days a week for months on end. Rush, being hardworking Canadians with salt-of-the-earth parents (not to mention a couple of whip-snapping managers) complied with the era’s mercilessly compressed timetables, taking all the work they could get following the encouraging success of Fly by Night. So there they were, September 24, 1975, with a second Peart-fanciful album, this one brandishing the mighty title Caress of Steel and emerging seven months after the last.
Delving even further into the realm of prog-soundtracked fantasy, the album featured a second side containing the suite “The Fountain of Lamneth.” What’s more, half of side one’s real estate was consumed by a similar multipart epic called “The Necromancer.” In the conventional song department, this left only the quirky “I Think I’m Going Bald,” a proto speed metal history lesson called “Bastille Day,” and the radio hopeful “Fly by Night” reprise called “Lakeside Park.” The dark vibe of the record was augmented by the mysterious, alchemical nature of the artwork, the first for the band by Hugh Syme, famous now for his legendary Rush covers over the ensuing decades, but in 1975, little more than keyboardist for the Ian Thomas Band, another act in the SRO stable.
All the World’s a Stage tour, Civic Center, Springfield, Massachusetts, December 9, 1976.
CARESS OF STEEL Jeff Wagner
On the back of the fairly popular Fly by Night, Rush indulged their prog tendencies to greater extent with their third album, Caress of Steel. Comfortable with new production cohort Terry Brown, the band’s willingness to widen their scope for album number three was an attitude that also carried them nicely through the rest of the decade. Much of Caress of Steel’s character is the result of delving further into expanded song lengths, its five songs taking up 45 minutes, two of them swallowing up nearly 33 minutes of that running time. Grand designs, for sure.
If early Rush influence Led Zeppelin can be described as proto-metal, then album opener “Bastille Day” might as well be considered the state of the nascent heavy metal art circa 1975—no proto about it. The Zep influence is strong here, but the song’s majestic precision thrust and hulking rhythmic attack—similar to the previous album’s “Anthem”—helped distinguish Rush from its influences and predecessors.
The second track, “I Think I’m Going Bald,” was bound to be the album’s odd song out. Written for Max Webster main man Kim Mitchell (and, indeed, it sounds more like one of their tunes) and a deliberate answer to Kiss’s “Goin’ Blind” (whom the band befriended on tour), the song’s simplistic structure was the final one Rush would write that resembled their derivative debut. “Bald” is a slice of lighthearted fun on an album otherwise dark and foggy. It’ll never be considered a Rush classic, even as deep album tracks go, but wow, what a scorcher of a Lifeson solo. Like a hybrid of Page and Frehley, the minute-long song-ending sequence proves Lifeson a guitarist with a special approach, something he stamps all over this album—like his jazzy freewheeling throughout the pastoral “Lakeside Park.” The song’s atmosphere synchs well with the earthy, nearly underproduced recording, a hazy, languid, nostalgic walk that expands the scope of the album and primes gears for the dynamic variety immediately around the corner.
And here’s whe
re it gets weird. “The Necromancer”—ten minutes of epic fantasy—incorporates drifting psychedelia, slicing slabs of metal, vise-tight riff explosions, and narration from what sounds like an old, stoned wizard (it’s Neil Peart, actually). Each part is impressive, although it lacks the cohesion of some of their other grandiose biggies.
Then there’s the band’s first side-long endeavor. While not considered the greatest of Rush’s three twenty-minute songs, “The Fountain of Lamneth” offers much ear candy. Most of its six segments could have existed as songs of their own, while “Didacts and Narpets” is one strange minute of experimentation that remains the band’s most bizarre recorded sequence. Frantic drums, frantic Geddy, punctuated rhythmic blasts, and the ending scream of “Listen!” all act as segue to the song’s most brilliant segment, “No One at the Bridge.” Featuring some very aggressive vocals, its melancholic, desperate beginning turns into otherworldly doom, punctuated with those great Geddy shrieks. His vocals, as the lyrics convey, “scream out desperation” and then dive back into tranquility. As complete and well written a twenty-minute song as any young band could be expected to write, “The Fountain of Lamneth” is a perfect representative of the gray melancholy and parchment-paper fantasy that permeates the entirety of the album and even its packaging.
With a botched album cover (gold instead of the intended steely silver), Caress of Steel was similarly cursed in other areas. Disappointing sales and an equally difficult tour resulted in pressure being put on the band to offer something more accessible next time around. Of course, history shows the band members would only continue to follow their hearts and indulge their minds and talents. Caress of Steel is one of the great transitional Rush albums, but then Rush only ever defined themselves by being in constant transition.
Rush Page 3