Rush

by Martin Popoff

  Billboard ad, October 21, 1978.

  Shepperton Studios, Surrey, England, December 2, 1978. Fin Costello/Redferns/Getty Images

  HEMISPHERES Daniel Bukszpan

  In 1973, Yes released Tales from Topographic Oceans, a two-record set consisting of four twenty-minute extended epics based on the Shastric scriptures. Listening to it is a great experience, provided your idea of fun entails subjecting yourself to 83 very long minutes of dentistry-grade suffering.

  Rush’s 1978 album Hemispheres has its own twenty-minute epic, and it stood a good chance of falling victim to Topographic Oceans Syndrome. Luckily, total disaster was averted. It’s only a single disc, and its second half contains some actual songs, so on balance it gets away with a passing grade.

  Rush had created album-side-length epics twice before, with 1976’s 2112 representing one of their finest recorded moments. Maybe they thought a third trip to the well would yield fruit once again. What they came up with, however, was “Cygnus X-1 Book II,” and it simply doesn’t work.

  The song is not without its moments, but they add up to five or so minutes of cool riffs and impressive drumming, none of which hangs together coherently, much less deserves to hang around for eighteen minutes. The end result is a jumbled slog that only the most masochistic Rush fan would listen to repeatedly, and only because he believes that he doesn’t like it because he doesn’t get it.

  Flipping the record over clears all the cobwebs, and it’s here that Hemispheres becomes a worthwhile listen. Side two kicks off with “Circumstances,” a short, smart song whose effect is that of a cup of strong coffee after a pot hangover. It’s based around a labyrinthine chord pattern and a catchy chorus that features what may be the highest-pitched Geddy Lee vocal ever committed to tape.

  “Circumstances” is followed by “The Trees,” an all-time classic that firmly separated the Rush diehards from the casual fans. Listeners for whom Lee’s voice had not been a total deal breaker found themselves unable to tolerate the lyrics, which concern oaks and maples jockeying for political position in the forest. By the time the trees were all made equal by hatchet, axe, and saw, many fair-weather fans had probably started listening to Blondie.

  The album closes with the instrumental epic “La Villa Strangiato.” It hangs together as one unified piece, something “Cygnus X-1 Book II” couldn’t manage, and ends on a definitive full stop. This was an appropriate choice, as Rush would never flirt with Topographic Oceans Syndrome again.

  The next time anyone would hear from Lee, Lifeson, and Peart on record would be 1980’s Permanent Waves album, which opened with the vibrant fireworks of “Spirit of Radio.” A new decade was underway, and there would be a new way of doing things. Rush would still create extended pieces, traffic in sequels, and commit egregious lyrical overreaches, but never again would they do them with the same navel-gazing inattention to craft as they did on the first half of Hemispheres.

  “It was too long to do in one take, because it wouldn’t go on a piece of tape,” recalled Terry Brown. “So we had to do it in sections, and then we would get the section and find a convenient place where we could actually pause, stop, and then we’d go back and we’d start recording again and do the next eight or ten minutes. And then we put it all together. It’s a long piece and obviously, they can play it. But you have to remember that we were developing a lot of the nuances and parts and details at the time we were recording. Now, in hindsight, they can go back and listen to it, and it’s imbedded now, they know every nuance and note. But at the time, we were developing. To develop the whole piece in one go, certainly for me was a challenge that I wasn’t really up for. I needed to make sure that we had this section right, then do this section, then put the three sections together.”

  In a squarely positive review of the album, Rolling Stone wrote, “The pick to click here is ‘Circumstances,’ whose chorus reworks the tidal stresses of ‘Something for Nothing’ in sprung rhythm and whose lyrics are the most personable, least didactic on the record. ‘Hemispheres,’ the obligatory space opera, was meant to expand on ‘Cygnus X-1’ from A Farewell to Kings, but the musical and thematic references are only tangential; on the new LP, the words belabor the bejesus out of the heart/mind dichotomy and skimp on the science fiction. ‘The Trees’ is an attractively droll political fable with a gorgeously rendered classical-guitar intro (one of Lifeson’s arcane strengths). But the real new ground is Rush’s first stab at an instrumental: ‘La Villa Strangiato’ boasts taut riffing, acute tempos, flawless phrasing, the discipline to sound effortless and enough energy to flow in torrents.”

  Print ads, Philadelphia and Passaic, New Jersey, January 1979. John T. Comerford III collection/Frank White Photo Agency

  Melody Maker ad, November 18, 1978. Author collection

  Cashbox ad, December 30, 1978.

  Courtesy Wyco Vintage/www.wycovintage.com

  It was testimony to Rush’s fan base that they could gather the wagons and turn such a musicianly and literary record like Hemispheres gold pretty much immediately, with nothing like a hit single in sight. Yet strivers that they were, Rush was starting to feel as though they were writing to formula—a formula that was nonetheless capable of giving them heart attacks, especially combined with so much time away from home and family for touring but now also for making albums abroad.

  “This is the end of the story of Cygnus X-1,” said Geddy, in one of many comments made through the years echoing his exhaustion with Hemispheres. “It’s resolved. It’s over. I kind of think the next album will be quite different —it will be time for another change. We wanted to make it a great work, and we just kept at it until it felt right in our minds and sounded magical in the studio. The hardest part was to make it sound as if we’d been slaying it for three months.”

  The album that would become Permanent Waves was, in Geddy’s estimation, a joy to record. The band had “discovered” Le Studio, Morin Heights, in rural Quebec, significantly not far from home. Mixing would take place at Trident in London, a locale that Geddy figured the band would not have been aware of had they not gone through the trauma of making Hemispheres.

  New Musical Express ad, April 14, 1979. Author collection

  Hemispheres tour, 1979. Ray Wawrzyniak collection

  Hemispheres tour, Hammersmith Odeon, London, May 1979. Fin Costello/Redferns/Getty Images

  PERMANENT WAVES Andrew Earles

  Permanent Waves is the first Rush album truly to showcase the trio’s mastery at acclimating to the rapid and potentially threatening changes that dominated the rock music climate as the ’80s arrived. The band’s dedication to album-anchoring epics had continued with 1978’s Hemispheres, even while many of their (former) colleagues in progressive rock—Kansas, Manfred Mann’s Earth Band, Golden Earring, and Triumph, to name a few—had scrapped the form in hopes of scoring rotation in the AOR sweepstakes.

  Perhaps the most casual observers, upon a superficial listen to Permanent Waves, would group Rush with the aforementioned bands. After all, the album marked the first of the band’s two drastic detours away from the side-long, multi-suite statements of the sort that partially defined their creative and commercial arc leading up to its 1979 recording sessions. Sides A and B end with the relative brevity of “Jacob’s Ladder” and “Natural Science,” respectively, with both songs clocking under the ten-minute mark. And while 1977’s “Closer to the Heart” may have officially charted higher (No. 33 on the Billboard pop charts), the two singles from Permanent Waves that received repeated airplay would combine to solidify Rush as a hard-rock radio staple and provide crucial groundwork for the mega breakthrough of 1981’s Moving Pictures. The less-successful of Permanent Waves’ two singles was the borderline perfect hard rock gem “Freewill,” which today seems far more popular than its No. 103 slot on the Billboard pop charts would suggest. But the impact of Permanent Waves’ one-two punch is brought home by the wildly infectious and relatively (for radio) heavy fist-pumping greatness of “The Spirit of Ra
dio.” In the last 30-plus years, this track has taken on a life of its own that belies its seemingly low chart highpoint of No. 55.

  To understand what it was about these two singles (and Permanent Waves as a whole) that set Rush apart from the AOR crowd to which their above-listed prog contemporaries belong, one good listen to “Spirit of Radio” shows that Lee, Peart, and Lifeson were paying close attention to newer sounds coming from realms outside their comfort zone, namely the reggae-informed New Wave pop (or loosely interpreted post-punk) of the Police. Despite the song’s breakdown being a clear example of what this writer likes to call Canadious interruptus (see April Wine’s midsong spoken-verse ruination of the otherwise brilliant hard rock hit “All Over Town” for the ultimate example of this unfortunate phenomenon), the somewhat clumsy sonic curveball is the Police, if not UB40 or outfits residing a little closer to real reggae, all the way.

  Elsewhere, “Freewill” stands up to the best of early Cheap Trick and other credible purveyors of hard rock with power pop intentions. Elsewhere on Permanent Waves, the previously touched-on “Jacob’s Ladder” makes amazing use of heavy music’s feel without being nearly as technically heavy as earlier marathons like “By-Tor & the Snow Dog” or most of 2112. And though stating so is usually taken as derogatory, “Jacob’s Ladder” seems far longer than it really is … in the best possible sense. Closing out the album is the three-part “Natural Science,” a track that doubles the nooks and crannies of “Jacob’s Ladder” (and triples the amount of lyrics) and still manages a total running time of 9:27.

  All in all, Permanent Waves is a classic best-of-both-worlds album, rewarding Rush with the key that unlocked radio longevity for the next three decades without sacrificing the trio’s signature artistic drive. Very few bands managed this balance, but this wouldn’t be Rush’s last time doing so.

  Realizing the exhausting nature of albums that included so many long songs, the band summarily had decided that Hemispheres would mark the end of an era. Recording at Morin Heights was an inspiring experience, the band spurred on by the lake locale, the view of the Laurentian Mountains, and the nighttime volleyball games. The result was a buoyant album that eschewed the darkness of Hemispheres.

  Permanent Waves (working title, Waveforms) was released January 1, 1980. By most litmus tests, it would still classify as complicated progressive metal, especially tracks like “Jacob’s Ladder” and “Natural Science.” Four additional tracks rounded out a record that was in total under 36 minutes long, with each of those containing a plethora of parts. Least complex were the pop-melodic “Entre Nous” and rare ballad “Different Strings.” Elsewhere, “Freewill” would become an up-tempo rock ’n’ rolling concert classic, eclipsed only by smash single “The Spirit of Radio,” the first Rush single of a heavy nature, the first Rush single that felt natural, and the first Rush single that demonstrates all of the magick of Rush.

  New Musical Express ad, September 22, 1979. Ray Wawrzyniak collection

  German ad, May 1979. The foremost non-U.S. compilation was Rush Through Time, an eleven-track package covering the debut through Moving Pictures. Author (album) and Ray Wawrzyniak (ad) collections

  Print ad, Netherlands.

  Print ad, Canada.

  Melody Maker ad, January 26, 1980.

  “It was our intention at the time, because of Hemispheres taking so much out of us, to give ourselves a creative rest,” explained Neil, referring to a six-week vacation that included flying lessons for Alex plus the usual rounds of tennis. “We decided that we owed it to ourselves. At the time we’d been out on the road nonstop all year, and then we went straight into the studio and only had a couple of weeks to get the material together, and ourselves as prepared as we could be. But we weren’t that well prepared, and we had to squeeze ourselves. I don’t think that the result suffered—working under pressure can be really productive—but we did. You pay a high toll for it in how badly you feel afterwards. It was so draining and difficult. When you’re working with a twenty-minute piece of music, I guess it must be what making a film or writing a novel is like. With something of that span you have so many threads that you have to keep together in your mind all the way through, and as you’re recording one part you’re trying to relate it to the other parts and make sure the continuity is going to be there as well as the integrity of the original parts. It takes a lot of concentration to pull something like that off. It was something we wanted to give a rest for a short while, though there are two pretty long tracks on this album, and the short ones are no shorter than five minutes.”

  “The Spirit of Radio” (titled for the tagline of hometown radio station CFNY) was one of those short ones, but the beauty of it is that it was still hard-hitting at high speed, yet stuffed with musical surprises. The result is a polished jewel of everything Rush.

  Geddy loosens the pipes during the Permanent Waves sessions at Le Studio, Morin Heights, Quebec, in October 1979. Fin Costello/Redferns/Getty Images

  Down time at the Permanent Waves sessions, Le Studio, Morin Heights, Quebec, October 1979. Fin Costello/Redferns/Getty Images

  Neil catches up on his reading at Le Studio, Morin Heights, Quebec, in October 1979. Fin Costello/Redferns/Getty Images

  “The Spirit of Radio” b/w “The Trees” and “Working Man” U.K., 1980.

  Courtesy Wyco Vintage/www.wycovintage.com

  Had the band’s new succinctness helped them with the critics? Evidently so. “Earlier LPs like Fly by Night and Caress of Steel bear the scars of the group’s naïvete,” wrote Rolling Stone. “But now, within the scope of six short (for them) songs, Rush demonstrate a maturity that even their detractors may have to admire. On Permanent Waves, these guys appropriate the crippling riffs and sonic blasts of heavy metal, model their tortuous instrumental changes on Yes-style British art rock and fuse the two together with lyrics that—despite their occasional overreach—are still several refreshing steps above the moronic machismo and half-baked mysticism of many hard-rock airs. Fortunately, Rush lead off with their trump card, a frantic, time-changing romp called ‘The Spirit of Radio.’ Not only is the sentiment right on, but the tune is packed with insistent hooks, including a playful reggae break that suddenly explodes into a Led Zeppelin–like bash.”

  “I guess our time has come,” mused Peart. “It happened with FM radio where it was pretty much a forced thing. It became that we were so popular in so many cities with touring all the time and people calling them up and saying, ‘Hey, play Rush,’ that radio stations couldn’t avoid playing us! They certainly didn’t do it voluntarily. For a lot of people airplay brings popularity, but for us it was the other way round.”

  That’s the palpable sound of cheering, from band, fan, and critic alike. Now that Rush was celebrating a new immediacy and verve that fortunately their fans relished, there would be no stopping them. “The Spirit of Radio” would pave the way for the real Rush at radio, a life-changing event the band would exploit fantastically on their next record, a career milestone.

  1980–1981

  MOVING PICTURES SHIFTING UNITS

  “It is Lifeson who unassumingly leads the band instrumentally on stage. Last night, he sported a new look, with a nice, neat page-boy haircut that would make him welcome at any doting mother’s home, and a flashy red suit, tie and shoes that gave him a certain innocent Elvis Costello appearance. But his confident power chording was the axis around which the music revolved all night.”

  —Alan Niester, The Globe and Mail, 1981

  FOLLOWING THE UNVEILING OF PERMANENT WAVES, Rush managed another action-packed year, playing large venues to large crowds at large expense (causing white knuckles back at SRO, which was now $300,000 in debt). Winter and spring saw the band blanketing the United States and Canada, followed by a curious jaunt across the pond where the guys conducted a U.K. blitz but neglected the mainland entirely. The summer featured a two-month vacation, each of the guys now with growing families.

  The proposed idea of issuing another liv
e album at this juncture was quashed, Cliff Burnstein suggesting that the band strike with another studio album while the iron was hot—Permanent Waves had gone gold pretty much immediately (it was the band’s fifth), and “The Spirit of Radio” had reached No. 51 on the Billboard singles chart, pushing the album to an astounding No. 4. Adding to the decision were the promising new bits and pieces the band had been conjuring during soundchecks.

  London, June 1980. Fin Costello/Redferns/Getty Images

  Permanent Waves tour, somewhere in the U.K., June 1980. Both Fin Costello/Redferns/Getty Images

  Sounds ad, June 14, 1980.

  Similar to last time out, Rush began the new album with a writing retreat, setting up shop in the summer of 1980 at Ronnie Hawkins’ farm in the Stony Lake area north of Peterborough, Ontario, converting the barn into a rehearsal studio, with the cottage serving as living quarters (these sessions marked the height of Alex and Terry’s interest in remote-control model airplanes). The band then moved once again to Le Studio, home of the fun times and haute cuisine the guys experienced crafting Permanent Waves. More model-airplane flying (and crashing) ensued, now joined by rocket launches, mostly the handiwork of Alex and crew member Tony Geranios, also known as Jack Secret.