IT’S such a simple question, yet why must I ask: “What is the case for the defence?”
Critics snipe, cynics swipe - but monolithic Canadians RUSH keep playing on. Admittedly devoid of the hip gene, it’s easy to blame high-pitched singer Geddy Lee’s tight rocker pants for the scorn they’ve endured. His voice, they hail, is just a wail. He’s no Robert Plant, though of course he did try.
But even had he worn looser slacks, his ass may still have been critic-bit due to the band’s early prog rock leanings.
Yet there’s compliment to be had when influence’s head is raised so high. Next thing, Rush are heading up the album charts, outstripping heavy rock’s best acts - and there’s even a hit single or two.
It’s 1980 - Zeppelin are dead, long live the great pretenders. And there they remain, acclaimed by many, dismissed still by a few. My first glimpse of Rush came maybe a year later via a poster on a friend’s bedroom wall, aged 12. And they actually looked cool. Especially drummer Neil Peart at his kit, surrounded on all sides by percussion aplenty, like Custer at Bighorn. Equally striking was his look, no Metalhead here - “He hasn‘t got long hair,” I thought. “This is different.”
The photos, from their recently released second live album, ‘Exit…Stage Left’, opened the door. Record arrived Christmas. As I scoured the sky from my bedroom for the Star of Bethlehem, the opener The Sprit of Radio was already waking the house.
Years later and ‘Exit…‘ still captures the band at their fluent, unhindered best, a groove that would soon be lost and not recaptured for many years. Even Q magazine has hailed it one of its 10 best live records.
They possessed an elusive, otherworldliness that my schoolboy brain never fathomed and that still avoids capture or categorisation. Bold and breathtaking. Maybe it’s the recognising of something in others that one will never have.
All striking musicians, Peart - often hailed the world’s best - drummed in a sublime fashion. So fresh and loose. But bassist Lee and guitarist Alex Lifeson were equally thrilling and in a clever, clever way. No three-chord riffing here.
A year earlier, possibly sensing their sci-fi influenced world was about to expire, they made their move. After six years and five albums of 12-minute epics about journeys into black holes and bleak visions of future worlds, it was time to cut themselves down in size.
Peart, whose fertile mind had led them lyrically, began talking more of the world he actually lived in, though it remained less than a paradise. And succinct he was, too. And Lee and Lifeson’s lengthy tunes were sliced, heralding the band’s most productive years.
1980’s Permanent Waves album was the breakthrough monster, a hit world-wide and no surprise. Subtle too. Its cover - a girl in an open, wind-blown dress smiling among a battering rain storm - was one side of a double meaning for life’s strife. Permanent Waves indeed.
A year later came Moving Pictures and the hit single Tom Sawyer. It was rock of cerebral minds. But as if to say ‘that’s enough of that’, they switched tack again, alienating some fans and splitting the critics.
Never willing to run to stand still, 1982’s Signals album set the cat among the pigeons, relegating Lifeson’s beautiful guitar work to the back seat. Keyboards, before used tentatively, now moved up front. It was brave, controversial, but possibly a masterstroke for the time. It was also pivotal - they couldn’t backtrack, but where go next?
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Grace Under Pressure, still delving into man’s struggle against the system, brought Lifeson back on an even keel with Lee’s Mini-Moog, in 1984. Oh, the excitement during school lunch break at the reading of Kerrang’s four-star review! Power Windows, arguably their best work, came in 1985. And that’s where the story almost ended.
It seemed that, in a subconscious nod to the 80s, keyboards and high production took over. “Eau naturelle? No!” No longer did they gel together like water into a cup. Maybe they were trying too hard to be the best, to stay ahead, to avoid being labelled. Perhaps they even felt the critics partly right and were compelled to respond.
The spark gone, I retreated. Each release, though still bought, seemed a musical desert, barren of emotion. As if to reflect the age, it was like the rough edge of vinyl, replaced by the stark digital of compact disc, was echoed in Rush. Peart’s words seemed formulaic. Worse, they sounded ill at ease on Lee’s lips, like they now had to be learned by wrote rather than taking an easy trip off the tongue. Did he really feel comfy singing them?
And boy did it hurt. A musical limb was lost. Dinosaur they did now appear, struggling against the times that had been theirs. Like quicksand, the more they fought to maintain themselves, the more they sank.
They couldn’t be faulted for what they tried to do, and it wasn’t like they were bad. Cream rises and quality and good stuff remained. My ‘schoolboy brain’, though, was gone.
Now forward a decade and it’s 2002, and out of the blue comes Vapour Trails. It was a shock to the system, a swiping away of the cobwebs and, in one violent guitar-bass-drum-vocal swirl, a tearing down of all there had been for so long. Crash and burn to all you thought you knew. And not a keyboard in sight or sound.
It was back to basics - and with a bang. It was venomous, loud and bare, an unleashing of a force long thought spent. And it went Top 10 America, but then again all their albums had. The driving force was likely just astonishment they were still around. In the five years since their last release, the most humbling of tragedies had struck Peart. His only child was killed in a car crash. A year later, his wife died, too. They admit they thought themselves unlikely to recover. But now their self-imposed hiatus was over.
Vapour Trails was unlike anything they had done, and a light year from my other listening. Yet it is at times eye-wateringly good, a grasping of air into the lungs, daring, an old fashioned thrill.
With impending fatherhood, I saw Rush in Newcastle. They played the old and the new to a sell-out, ecstatic 10,000. It was wonderful, such grace after the pressure. A case of birth and rebirth.
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