My relationship with Rush dates back to 1980, when a friend of mine whose brother was off at college decided to sell all his stuff. So he traded me copies of Led Zeppelin II and Rush's Fly By Night for a bunch of hockey cards (they were "doubles," cards I already had more than one of--I had a lot of hockey cards at the time). I was 12 and had been listening to rock radio for a little while and was moving away from top 40 fare to the harder edged sounds of what is now known as classic rock, but back then, it was just rock. Living in Pickering, Ontario, Canada, there was plenty of CanCon (Canadian content) on the radio and Rush was getting plenty of airplay with "The Spirit of Radio." A few years earlier when they were starting out, they had played one of the two high schools in my town. Anyhoo, I was very pleased with my acquisitions and even though I dug Zep II a little more, I definitely became a Rush fan. (Postscript: A few months later, my friend's brother came home from college and made my friend get everything back. He ended up giving me $2 for each record.)
In February 1981, Rush released Moving Pictures, which was their breakthrough (and best, IMHO) album. I picked up the vinyl not long after its release and it quickly became my favorite. It wasn't just the musicianship, but Peart's lyrics that appealed to young nerds such as myself. I was also a comic book and sci-fi fan, but I didn't hear a lot of Rush's earlier, proggy stuff until a little later. But in addition to Zeppelin, the Who and Black Sabbath, I embraced Canadian acts like Rush, Max Webster and April Wine. I picked up Rush albums like A Farewell to Kings and Permanent Waves, but there was still much I hadn't heard.
We moved to the U.S. in late '81, so Rush remained my lifeline to my Canadian past. Living in Richland, Washington, I was pretty far from my former home. But if anything, my Rush fandom grew. When we first moved there, we were living in a tiny duplex and got yelled at by our neighbor because I was cranking the Rush live album Exit Stage Left a little too loudly (parents were at work, obviously). I bought magazines like Circus and Hit Parader and rabidly read any articles about Rush (we didn't have MTV in our town and there was no Internet yet, so Rush info was hard to come by; I remember reading a Rush concert review in a copy of the Los Angeles Times at the library). I became a member of the Columbia Record Club and used its "12 records for a penny" deal to get most of the Rush back catalog. That's when I got into the band's earlier efforts, especially albums like 2112 and Hemispheres, which featured sidelong suites. I spent a lot of time listening to the albums while reading the lyrics included with them.
Peart was far from the stereotypical knucklehead drummer. In addition to his obviously prodigious talent, which was evident from his first appearance with the band on their second album Fly By Night (replaced original drummer John Rutsey), he was a cerebral dude, and while there was plenty of Tolkien-esque and Ayn Rand-inspired imagery on the early records, his writing style evolved into much more economical songs that examined more everyday topics. Songs like "Subdivisions" on 1982's Signals spoke to the alienation of suburban outcasts, something that a lot of Rush fans could relate to. Certainly this suburban outcast did.
I saw Rush in concert three times, once on 1984's Grace Under Pressure tour and twice on the Power Windows tour a year later. As the '80s wore on, I started getting more into alternative rock and punk. I still bought Rush albums, but it was more out of loyalty than anything else. The band went on a hiatus in 1998 after Peart's daughter died in a car accident and his first wife from cancer. Peart returned to Rush in 2002 and the band released three more albums over the next decade. They did a 40th anniversary tour in 2015 before Peart retired, ostensibly to spend more time with his family (he remarried in 2001 and had a child). I got back into Rush in the mid-2000s, around the time when I realized that it was okay to revisit the music I loved as a teenager. I still regret not seeing Rush one last time before they stopped touring.
Rush was generally ignored or ridiculed by critics and mainstream press for nearly their entire existence. It wasn't until the 2000s that the band was embraced in popular culture, on shows like South Park, Freaks and Geeks and Archer, and in movies like I Love You Man. In 2013, the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, something that fans of the band had long resigned themselves as an impossibility.
The outpouring of grief that followed Peart's death has been overwhelming and heartwarming. It definitely hit me hard, partly because of the shock element. Other than his inner circle, nobody knew that Peart was ill, let alone dealing with brain cancer. Upon hearing the news on Friday afternoon that he had died on Tuesday, it kind of took my breath away. I guess we've become accustomed to losing these epic figures, but it still hurts. So we listen to his music and read his words and remember why he was so great in the first place. Rest in peace, Neil Peart.
No comments:
Post a Comment