The Definitive Book About Rush Fans by Alexander Hellene FOREWORD BY ED STENGER November 5, 2020 |
Rush, the legendary Canadian progressive rock trio, has a legion of devoted fans. But what is it about the band that inspires such a loyal and dedicated fan base? And what is it about these fans that has created this powerful bond between artist and audience?
The story of these fans has never been told . . . until now.
There is no question that Neil Peart's lyrics are the reason I became a Rush fan at age twelve. Being a budding teenager enthralled with science-fiction, fantasy, and history, it was no surprise that his lyrics and Rush's music resonated with me so fervently. Over the years since that initial introduction I've also developed an intense respect and admiration for Peart's philosophical musings, wort( ethic, unparalleled skill as a drummer, and commitment to charity. He was my first and most influential musical hero.
In the hours and days following Peart's tragic death in early 2020, fellow Rush fans from across the world-many of whom I hadn't heard from in years-reached out to me for mutual comfort and solace, reminiscing about past Rush shows, and often sharing their deeply personal stories about has Pearl's lyrical poetry coupled with Rush's powerful music helped has through a difficult time. Friends and family, whether Rush fans or not, passed along their condolences, making a point of telling me how sorry they were.
I became keenly aware of has intensely his death was affecting me; it went far beyond what I would expect to experience upon the death of a musical hero, leaving me somewhat rattled and confined. After the dust had settled, I digested the multitudes of online tributes to Neil, interacted with dozens of other fans, shed a few tears, and realized that I wasn't alone in my experience. The Rush fan community had reacted to Peart's passing like an enormous extended family of siblings and cousins who had just lost a respected father, revered uncle, or older brother, demonstrating how deeply Rush's music had touched all our lives. This struck at as a profound, and somewhat unusual, reaction for fans of a rock band.
Rush has often been called the "world's biggest cult band," but after this experience I realized that Rush fans are more like a family than a cult (see the popular online hashtag #RushFamily for an example of what I mean). Rush are the ideal patriarchs of this extended family of fans, sticking together through thick and thin for over four decades, without the drama or dysfunction associated with most rock bands. Classy, polite, and charitable, these three self-described brothers always went above and beyond for their fans, continually churning out masterful albums and elaborate stage shows, always with a sense of humor and great humility, and without ever compromising their integrity. Rush fans recognize these unique qualities in the band and inevitably end up developing a relationship with "Dirk, Lerxst, and Pratt" that goes beyond hero worship and into the realm of genuine affection, respect, and even love-like family. Like the typical family, we Rush fans all have our own unique personalities and differing opinions on all ranges of subjects, but Rush is the common thread that binds us together, and we all have that extra "YYZ" chromosome in our DNA.
But what is it about the band that made us this way? What are our Rush fan birth stories, and how did we all find ourselves on the Rush family doorstep, swaddled in our Rush t-shirts and gripping copies of 2112 and Moving Pictures? Alexander Hellos attempts to answer these very questions in Dreamers and Misfits by going right to the source-Rush fans themselves. He enlisted the help of fans from across the globe via an online survey and personal interviews. Questions that the book tackles include, "what is the one song that best defines the typical Rush fan?", "is Rush a guy band?", and "are all Rush fans nerds?" The answers are mostly expected, but Hellene parses through them in meticulous detail, uncovering hidden layers of nuance that are both surprising and refreshing. - Ed Stenger
Ed Stenger is a web developer from Cleveland, OH who runs the popular RushIsABand.com blog. He's been a Rush fan since discovering a beat-up cassette tape of 2112 in his older brother's closet back in 1982. His other interests include spending time with his family, running, Chinese martial arts, sci-fi/fantasy books/movies, and Cleveland sports.
My wife and I were driving through northern Greece one early morning over a decade ago. We were returning home after a night of partying. To stay awake, we had flipped on the radio and were cruising through stations. Let me tell you, there are few things as interesting as channel-surfing in a foreign country.
"Whoa, hold it!" I said when I heard a familiar clatter of wood hitting metal floating over rumbling bass-drums and ma-chine-gun snare.
"What's that?" asked my wife, still my girlfriend at the time; she was driving, and I suggested the radio to help keep her awake on the long drive on that empty Greek highway.
"It's Rush. It's Neil's drum solo. From Rush in Rio." Yes, I'm such a dork that I recognized this particular version of Neil's concert-staple showstopper from this particular 2003 live album.
"Okay," my wife said, and rolled with it. She's not much of a rock n' roll fan, though she knew about my love of Rush before we were married.
The solo ended, exhilarating as always. I was awake now, The DJ came on, speaking something that sounded like Russian but was probably Bulgarian given our proximity to the mountains that formed the border between Greece and her northern neighbor. And then he played the version of "Natural Science" from the same album, the fantastic nine-minute-and-twenty-second closer to 1980's landmark Permanent Waves.
Permanent Waves marked somewhat of a reinvention of the band, mostly eschewing the multi-part, high-concept prog epics of past albums like Caress of Steel, 2112, A Farewell to Kings, and Hemispheres in favor of shorter, punchier, though no less technically complex songs with more accessible lyrical subject matter.
Rush seemed to have pushed conceptual prog metal to its limits with the preposterously titled "Cygnus X-I, Book II: Hemispheres" from the Hemispheres album, sequel to the slightly less preposterously titled closer "Cygnus X-1, Book 1: The Voyage" on Its previous album, A Farewell to Kings. The duology details the adventures of an unnamed star farer who sails his ship, the Rocinante,2 into the titular black hole, emerging on the other side to become Cygnus, the God of Balance and ending the war between the heart and mind being waged by followers of Dionysus and Apollo, respectively, on some strange, distant world. The Greek in me appreciated the shout-outs to
classical mythology, but much like Geddy Lee,' I could barely make sense of the story. I still can't,' All I know is that it rocks.
Permanent Waves had none of that. Songs were about the radio, free will, thunderstorms, and—gasp—relationships! Like, between men and women! Relatively uncharted territory for Rush. The album also had mostly shorter songs than previous outings. There are more keyboards and synthesizers, more major-key non-blues-based melodies and harmonies, and guitarist Alex Lifeson's newer, shimmery, heavily chorused tone that seemed to usher in the decade. And in a striking shift, Neil Peart's lyrics were more personal and direct and less allegorical and obtuse than on Rush's five prior releases.
Of course, prog was still present. Permanent Waves had not one, but two lengthy, highly technical workouts clocking in well over the seven-minute mark: The underrated "Jacob's Ladder" in addition to the aforementioned "Natural Science."5 It also had one of Rush's biggest hits, "The Spirit of Radio," which is also on Rash In Rio. But it was "Natural Science" that the Bulgarian radio station played that late night/early morning on the car radio of an old, well-maintained Mercedes-Benz (from a "better, vanished time," perhaps?) in Greece.
We listened and rocked out—well, I rocked out, though I kept the air-drumming to a minimum. Towards the end of this undeniable tour de force, my wife asked me, "What are the lyrics?"
Now, Geddy Lee had just sang the stanza: "The most endangered species: the honest man/Will still survive annihilation/ Forming a world, state of integrity/Sensitive, open and strong."
I relayed this to my wife.
"Oh," she said. "What's that mean?"
What a question! Mind you, it was probably close to 4:00 a.m., I was slightly hung over, and we were coming off our second or third night of epic partying in a row. But what did this mean? How could my fuzzy mind sum up this song in a succinct manner that someone completely unfamiliar with Rush's music and overall raison d’etre could digest?
It's tough to distill certain Rush songs into simple statements like "This is a love song" or "It's about family" or so on. If the radio station had played another track from Permanent Waves, like "Entre Nous" or something, it would've been a bit easier to do so. Neil Peart's lyrics were always purposeful and laden with meaning, but more often than not they could be taken many ways. "Natural Science- is a song about tide-pools and stuff like that, right? But the tide pools are just a metaphor for how people exist in little "tide pools" of our own, little personal universes separate from those of others, causing us to often miss the big picture. Simple enough, as Its as Rush songs go. But the song is also about the music industry. And art. And making sure humankind never allows scientific progress to get out of hand and control us instead of vice versa. And the importance of staying true to your principles ... you know, standard Neil Pearl stuff that, in between the guitar solos and rumbling bass and symphonically precise and powerful drumming, gets the old noodle working.
I don't remember what I told my wife. I think I said some-thing like "It's kind of hard to explain," because otherwise I'd have to embark on some long, dorky discussion that would have put my wife to sleep, defeating the purpose of us turning on the radio in the first place.
"Okay," she said, and we kept driving.
When the song was done, we resumed our station-surfing, but that blast of live Rush coming through over the wave on those roads in the hinterlands of Greece felt like a touch of home. That was the magic of Rush. "The Spirit of Radio" indeed.
Neil Peart's passing meant a lot to people, because he and his band meant a lot to people. Lots of people.
Why? I don't know, and that's why I'm writing this book. But I'll give you my overarching theory. Keep in mind it's based on my own personal experience as a Rush fan, back when it was still uncool to be one. But I think I'm on to something:
Rush were one-hundred percent sincere. This is clearly reflected in their music and their lyrics. For example, let's talk about the rap section in the middle of "Roll the Bones," the title track from their 1991 smash-hit album . Yes, Rush raps: Geddy Lee's synthesized vocals-portrayed by a sunglasses-wearing skeleton in the music video-spit Peart's rhymes about taking chances, not listening to "maniacs in polyester slacks" and getting out there to rock and roll the bones. After all, as we're reminded, "the night has a thousand saxophones." It's easy to mock, and many did, though Spin's 1992 article interview with Peart calls the rap not "half as goofy as Michael Jackson, or Michael Stipe's."
Knowing the band, one can imagine Peart hearing some rap on the radio and thinking, with a younger man's endearing earnestness, “Hey, this is cool! Maybe we can do some rapping in one of our songs," And in fact, this is pretty much exactly the case:
Yeah, that started off as a lyrical experiment for me; I was hearing some of the better rap writers, among whom I would include like LL Cool J or Public Enemy, musicality apart, just as writers, it was really interesting. And it struck me that it must be a lot of fun to do that; all those internal rhymes and all that wordplay and everything.
How can you not love these guys?
This earnestness, devoid of smirking cynicism, nihilism, and ennui, shone through not just in their music and lyrics, but how Geddy, Neil, and Alex lived their lives. Rush were regular people taking their music seriously in an utterly ridiculous industry, and they always respected their fans. Yet by playing it straight-despite the band's goofier moments and sense of hu-mor, evident mostly in their album liner notes and their on-stage antics and video clips-Rush made listeners feel like the band was on to something important and were inviting listeners along for the ride.
Plus, there's no artifice or pretensions with Rush, as pretentious as some find their lyrics."' As longtime friend of the band Donna Halper, current college professor and former radio DJ who broke Rush into the American market while musical director at WMMS in Cleveland, Ohio, is fond of saying about the band: "What you its is what you get."" And what you got seemed like three regular guys who just happened to be ridiculously good and hard-working musicians.
Vinay Menon of the Toronto Star recalls in a January 14, 2020 memorial about Neil Peart a story Peart told him about his audition with Rush to replace original drummer John Ruts, "I remember is all lying down on the floor among the gear in the rehearsal room talking about 'Monty Python,' talking about `Lord of the Rings,' but especially it was the humour right away that we shared that made me really want to be in that band ..."
I'll say it again: How can you not love these guys?
Fairly or not, Rush got slagged as a nerd band. Not only that, Rush was one of the few bands I can recall where critics and other music fans attacked their listeners. It's one thing for the uber-cool self-appointed tastemakers to dislike a band's music, but to dislike their fans? That's an entirely new level of condescension.
Remember: Rush found success when being a nerd (whatever that means) or being into nerdy pursuits (however those are classified) was a social stigma. But Rush were like those nerds at school who were really good at something, it good that even the jocks and the cheerleaders had to tip their cap, metaphorical or otherwise, and say, "Yeah, those guys are nerds, but they're kind of coo/ nerds" and leave them alone. Mostly. As Cool Nerds, an oxymoron if there ever was one, Rush were a safe haven for the rest of us Uncool Nerds who might have been socially awkward or featured some kind of physical or other characteristic that made is not quite as popular as our counter-Parts.
Yet Rush never talked down to their fans, never engaged in self-pity or angsty finger-pointing at the wider world. Neil's lyrics were a massive part of this. He wrote poetry, if you ask me, poetry set to music.
"Duh, Alex! That's what lyrics are!"
I know. But have you heard most rock lyrics? They're pretty dumb. Some are fun, and I love them dearly, but they're still dumb. Neil Peart was different. Neil wrote, in part, about things like dystopian future, fantasy battle, ancient Greek gods as a metaphor for the battle between the heart and mind, growing old, losing hair, insecurity, alienation, uncertainty, teen suicide, fear, the weather, piloting spaceships through black hole, sentient tree, cities, civilizational decline, travel, the corrupting influence of money, recovering from tragedy, and the freaking French Revolution.. But above all else, Rush sang about staying true to your principles. That resonates with a lot of people, nerds and cool kids alike.
Rush's final album, 2012's Clockwork Angels, is a steam-punk epic as a metaphor for the battle between utter chaos represented by the character of the Anarchist, and restrictive control "for your own good" represented by the character of the Watch-maker, all told through the airship-flying deeds of Owen Hardy as he finds adventure, wisdom, inner-strength, and the love of his life. And it's probably the best thing they ever recorded.
Bear with me: Clockwork Angels was a concept album, Rush's first overtly concept album if you can believe it. Unlike programmatic songs like "2112," "Xanadu," or the two parts of "Cygnus X-I," Clockwork Angels is connected not by broad themes like Signals, Grace Under Pressure, Power Windows, Hold Your Fire, Presto, Roll the Bones, or Counterparts but by an actual, honest-to-God, Pete-Townshend-would-approve narrative. Neil even co-wrote a companion novel with science-fiction legend Kevin J. Anderson. But Peart was such a skilled lyricist that each song worked on its ow, detached from the overarching story. Every track has its own mini-narrative with a beginning, middle, and end that works within and without the album's overall story arc. It's utterly brilliant, and if you're a Rush neophyte intrigued by the band due to the overwhelming outpouring of fan-grief over Peart's death, it's a fantastic place to start.
When Rush retired in 2015, it was due to Alex's arthritis and Neil's chronic tendonitis, foot injuries, and shoulder pain from his athletic drumming, as well as all three members' desire to spend more time with their families. Us fans appreciated the band's 41 years of fantastic music and wished them well. But we all secretly-and yes, I feel comfortable speaking for all Rush fans since we're very, very similar in so many ways"-thought that they'd surely get together again someday for a one-off show or another album, or even a single. Neil's untimely death put an end to those admittedly selfish hopes.
I generally find it sad when people base their entire lives on a genre of music or a particular musician. But hypocritically I make an exception for Rush. This is because Rush were a unique and utterly weird animal in the world of rock: Three regular guys who made thoughtful music, who respected their fans, and who achieved monumental success without selling their souls in the process. If you're going to have rock star idol, you could do far worse.
This matters because it's very difficult to separate the art from the artist no matter how we try. But it's impossible for an artist's personal life to not bleed into their art. We see this with Rush. The three members were faithful to their wives and devoted fathers. Geddy and Alex are still married to their high-school sweethearts. They are all family men. Other than youthful dalliances with marijuana, Rush was not a drug band.
The Rush story is, by rock standards, really quite tame. There are no band-ending rows, no drug-fueled recording sessions, or bitter legal disputes. Their story is bereft of any legendary encounters with weird groupies a la Led Zeppelin or Frank Zappa. Kiss and UFO used to make fun when they toured together for singing about dining on honeydew and drinking the milk of paradise, and not being interested in all the readily available female attention. Geddy Lee got interested in baseball be-cause he was bored on tour and didn't party, and back in the 70s and 80s daytime baseball was still a thing so he'd watch games in his hotel room. Alex Lifeson would play his guitar. And Neil would read. A lot. As he put it, "What more perfect, portable education than having a lot of free time on your hands and book-stores everywhere. In the 2003 documentary The Boys in Bread, Geddy Lee characterizes Neil as "... just a normal guy, you know? He's just got a big brain." Lee also warns viewers of the 2010 documentary Beyond the Lighted Stage: "Don't be surprised when you discover how boring we really are."
Sadly, Neil Peart's life is most well-known for its personal tragedy. In 1997, Neil's only child, his daughter Selena, died in a car accident at age 19. His wife succumbed to cancer 10 months later. He essentially quit the band to ride his motorcycle around North America.. When he returned in 2002, the band leaped back into action, releasing Vapor Trails, a pounding, vital album the showed Neil's renewed vigor and, somehow, optimism, in both his drumming and lyrics, although there is plenty of sorrow in songs like "Ghost Rider, "Vapor Trail," and "Earthshine," and perhaps Neil's most scathing bits of social and political criticism in "Ceiling Unlimited" and "Peaceable Kingdom."
The whole album is great, easily an 8-out-of-10 if you want to rate things numerically. The centerpiece, at least lyrically, is a song called "Secret Touch":
You can never break the chain
There is never love without pain
A gentle hand, a secret touch on the heart
You can never break the chain
(You can never break the chain)
Life is a power that remains
(Life is a power that remains)
A healing hand, a secret touch on the heart
A gentle hand, a secret touch on the heart
This is an oblique reference to Peart's newfound love. He would remarry, wedding photographer Carrie Nuttall, and he would have another child, his daughter Olivia. He remained a reader and a clean-liver with a strong work ethic who never complained about playing the hits like "Tom Sawyer" every show. He continually improved his craft. He kept reading and writing. He didn't do drugs. And he died at the age of 67 anyway while many of his chemically compromised colleagues shamble on in undeath.
Sometimes the world of rock n' roll doesn't make sense. Sometimes the world doesn't make sense.
Neil Peart was famously private. Reading and watching inter-views with him, especially when he was younger, revealed a rather prickly man who routinely got his words twisted by the low-consciousness music journalists he spoke to who really hat-ed the band for not being trendy or for being fans of Ayn Rand.. He even eschewed meet and greets with fans due to shyness and a general dislike of adulation.
Later in his life, especially after he rejoined the band in 2002, Neil comes off as much more relaxed, although there, a part of him that gill seems closed off, still the nearly-thirty-year-old thrust into the limelight due to the success of 1981's Moving Pictures who wrote the oft-quoted line I can't pretend a stranger is a long awaited friend." Neil always seemed like he had to slow down his thoughts to communicate with normal people, though he did so with a gracious demeanor and a smile on his normally stoic face.
In Beyond the Lighted Stage, there is a scene where the three members are sitting at a table in a fancy restaurant, eating a nice dinner and drinking fine wine. They're cracking jokes and having a good time, ostensibly discussing the next Rush album which Alex Lifeson describes as being a concept album about the life of Frankenstein. He and Geddy also stumble upon the title "Rise to Your Knees.". A part of me wishes they actually had made this album. But what struck me when watching this sequence is that, in addition to Neil laughing nearly the entire time and how damn funny Alex is, Neil still seemed like a bit of an outsider even though he'd known Geddy and Alex since 1974.
A part of this is inevitable: Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson had been friends since they were thirteen.. They have that telepathy possessed only by those who have been friends nearly their entire lives. And even though Peart had been a part of the band for decade, it seems like he still couldn't penetrate that invisible wall. He laughed along with them, but when he interjected with jokes and comments of his own, they were somehow . . . off. Not bad, not wrong, not unfunny, just . . it's hard to explain. Maybe the best way to put it is "too cerebral," as though even when telling jokes Neil thought very deeply and very seriously about them.
Geddy and Alex laugh along, of course, and build on his contributions-the classic improv comedy idea of "Yes, and..." But there's no denying that Neil was a bit of an outsider, a misfit, even within the band of outsiders and misfits that was Rush. You have to watch the scene to get what I mean.
And yet that was one of the most endearing part of Neil: he never lost that young man's tendency to think very deeply and very seriously about everything. This is why his lyrics and drumming were so good. He never phoned anything in. Not even his jokes.
I don't care if Neil was an avowed atheist who even wrote a song called "Faithless." I like to think he's at peace and that his family will find some measure of peace as well. R.I.P. Professor, and God Bless.
This isn't a book about me, but I'm going to have to talk about myself a little bit, an please bear with me.
This isn't even a book about Rush, the beloved Canadian rock band that was more than a band to many of us, although Rush will be in it. There are enough Rush biographies and documentaries out there without me adding to the din. In fact, the 2016 film Time Stand Still is about Rush's final tour in 2015 and the relationship the band had with its fans, who made their uncompromising four-decade career possible. Geddy Lee has expressed this sentiment many times, for example, in the liner notes to 1998's live album Different Stages' and in his speech during the band's induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2013:
And on behalf of my two partners, I have to thank the most passionate, most dedicated, incredible fan base around the globe. That's you guys. For not only supporting and encouraging our musical progress over the year, but for the insistence of their voices which has most certainly led us to this evening. We share this honor with you. Thank you.
So why write a book covering such well-trodden ground?
Because, as far as I am aware, there has never been a book detailing what it is about certain types of people that makes us an loyal to Rush. "Most bands have fans," writes Toronto Star journalist and friend of the band Vinay Menon. "RUSH has kindred spirits."' We know the fan base is intense in the emotional connection it feels to Geddy, Alex, and Neil and their music, but why? What makes your average Rush fan tick? Are all the stereotypes about Rush fans we? If so, what does that tell us about why the band's music appeals to them? And if not, what does that tell us?
In other words, is there a Rush fan type?
So this book is different. This book is about you, the Rush fan, the kindred spirit.
Over the course of 41 years, bassist/vocalist/keyboardist Geddy Lee, guitarist Alex Lifeson, and drummer/lyricist Neil Peart created some of the most exciting, complicated, and thought-provoking rock music the world has ever seen. 1 know the label "prog" gets attached to Rush, which I understand given their penchant for odd time signatures, ambitious compositions, and ridiculous skill at their respective instruments. But Rush was a rock band, whose main purpose was to write catchy, driving songs that would elicit a visceral, emotional response in their listeners. That their songs didn't focus on the typical rock fare of sex, drugs, and other forms of illicit behavior only endeared Rush to their legion of rabid fans.
Why? Why was there such a special connection between Rush and their fans than, say, Led Zeppelin and their fans, or Van Halen, or The Rolling Stone, or The Eagle, or U2 have with theirs? What is it about the fans of this critically revile& but commercially' and popularly beloved trio of Canadian mis-fits that inspires such fervor? Why did the death of Neil Peart on January 7, 2020 at the age of 67 from glioblastoma affect so many of us so deeply?
Personally, I have never been affected by a celebrity death until Neil's. I mention this for two reasons: (1) 1 am not alone, and (2) it forms the impetus for this book.
In conversations after Neil's passing with my brother, a Rush fan himself,' we found ourselves wondering why we couldn't stop thinking about Neil Peart. We never met him! He didn't know that we existed outside of that amorphous, abstract concept he knew of as his fan base! Yet every time we listened to Rush's music, thought about Peart's lyrics, or watched an old interview with him, it felt like he was still alive. In interviews after Peart's death, longtime fan of the band Donna Halper, the woman in large part responsible for their long and illustrious career, expressed the same sentiment, finding herself talking about Neil in the present tense.
This was weird, right? I'm a fan of both David Bowie and Prince, yet their deaths did not affect me like Neil's. No, this was different. And like I said, a quick Internet search of news-paper articles, blogs, and social media postings shows that my brother and I are not the only ones who feel this way.
Rush fans are as interesting a beast as Rush the band. The Rush fan stereotype is a familiar one to anyone with a passing familiarity with the band: geeky, socially awkward white males sits are bad with girl, play Dungeons and Dragons and video games, and probably have severe halitosis. In other words. Rush were a nerd band.
This is, of course, the portrait painted by the hipster-driven music press before they were even called hipsters. Yet my own experience was very different. There were all sorts of people who liked Rush. Some of them were the "cool kids." And ye, I hope you're sitting down for this on, but even females were fans.
Have you recovered from the shock yet? Good.
Now, none of this is news if you're a Rush Its yourself. I relate these anecdotes for the benefit of those picking up the book out of curiosity or who are new to the band and their mu-sic. Suffice it to say, the typical Rush fan shares many traits with other Rush fans, and yet comes from all sorts of walks of life. How do I know this? Not just from my own personal experience, but from a survey I conducted on-line to gather as much data as I could from Rush fans to see if these stereotypes were true or false, and to also determine what, if any, commonalities I could draw. Over 650 fans responded, giving me a picture of (mostly American) Rush fans that is at least as accurate as any political polling you see in the news media, I get into the specifics of the survey and its results in each chapter dedicated to one or more of the popular conceptions/stereotypes of Rush fa, so the questions were devised with these stereotypes in mind. None of these were meant to pry, nor with the intent of sharing any information fans did not authorize me to disclose. I'm a lawyer- I know how this works.
The survey I asked Rush fans to fill out asked the following questions:
• Name
• Age
• Gender
• Race
• Ethnicity
• Country
• Education Level
• Area(s)/Field(s) of Study
• Occupation(s)
• Are you a musician?
• If yes to above, what do you play?
• Other hobbies/areas of interest
• Religion (if any)
• Politics (e.g., More Left? Right? Libertarian? Etc.)
• When did you first start listening to Rush?
• What was the first Rush song you heard?
• How did you become a Rush fan?
• Favorite Rush song (if you HAD to pick one)
• First Rush album you bought
• Favorite Rush album and why
• Favorite Rush era
• Have you seen Rush in concert?
• If yes, how many times and which tours?
• Favorite Rush concert memory or memories?
• What other kinds of music do you like?
• Do you enjoy what are considered "nerd" or "geek" hobbies?
• If "yes," which ones? (e.g., comic books, sci-fantasy, tabletop RPGs, etc.)
• How did you react to Neil Peart's death?
• What does Rush's music mean to you?
I'll provide a little teaser here by saying Rush fans are a more diverse lot than conventional wisdom would say. And there are several commonalities among fans, though not necessarily the ones you may be thinking of.
Let me give you an example of the power of Rush's music. One of my favorite things to do is watch reaction videos on You-Tube. "Reaction videos" are a genre where the name describes them perfectly: videos showing people's reactions to experiencing certain things for the first time, be it a movie, a TV show, a video game, food or drink, or more germane to our purposes, music.
I'm a musician myself, as musicians are always fond of letting you know, so I enjoy watching musicians or people with deep knowledge and appreciation of music react to stuff they've never heard before and talking about why they do or don't like it. And there's a subset of reaction video I like to call, for lack of a better term, "Black Guys React."
Before you close the book, offended that I'm getting all racial on you, I beg your continued indulgence for a few more paragraphs as there is a point to this story.
Now, there are all sorts of people of various ethnicities who make reaction videos. But I'm discussing African-Ameri-cans since Rush has, fairly or not, been sneered at by some as a "white" band, as though having a primarily Caucasian fan base band, as though having a primarily Caucasian fan base is intrinsically negative thing or reflects poorly upon the band itself, but that's a debate for another day. This may be more due to the fact that progressive rock as a genre appeals mostly to white males," which we'll get into in Chapter III. A second reason is that there are, surprisingly, tons of Rush reaction videos made by black YouTubers.
Some of these were made before Neil's passing, some after, and a bunch were reactions to Neil's live drum solos. Before we begin —and if you're a Rush fan, you already know this so feel free to skip—but Neil Peart was leagues above his peers when it came to constructing and playing drum solos. "It is no exaggeration to say that Neil was one of . . . rock music's most respected drummers," wrote Donna Halper on January 21, 2020 in her hometown news-paper The Patriot Ledger. "Even drummers in other bands ad-mired his work, and there were rock critics who didn't like Rush's music but still acknowledged Neil's talent". In other words, in music as well as in sports, talent will out and like recognizes like.
The drum solo has been mocked, and for good reason, as the part of a rock show when it's time to brave the crowds and detritus they leave behind to venture to the venue's fragrant lavatory, or maybe grab a beer or some other form of chemical enhancement before coming back to see the band play their next real song. It doesn't help that most rock drummers, while good at keeping the beat, aren't so good at playing all by themselves.
Not Neil. Nope. It's not just that he had a gigantic drum set so big it had to rotate so he could play the whole thing. It's not just that Neil, unlike many drummers (ahem, Nick Mason)" actually used every last bit of his gargantuan drum kit. And it wasn't just Neil's superlative skill that set him apart from his peers.
It was how Neil constructed his drum solos. Lots of drummers are good drummers. Not a lot of drummers are good composers. Neil was. His solos were built, like his drum parts in general, in an orchestral fashion, playing rhythmic melodies. The solos move from fast snare work to tom-heavy fills, to African-inspired rhythms on his electronic drums, to a call-and-response between marimba and drum to a full on jazz work-out accompanied by a pre-taped horn section Neil would trigger with samples tied to his electronic drums.
The solos last around eight minutes but whizz by since they're so damn interesting." And watching them is utterly mesmerizing. I remember showing one such solo to my seven-year-old son shortly after Neil's death. My son's response: "He had a really special talent."
Yes he did.
When these YouTube reactors who'd never listened to Rush before watch Neil play, their faces become masks of bewilderment as they nod along, interjecting with their analysis and admiration of his playing. I particularly like a YouTuber named jamel_AKA_jamars video about Neil's drum solo from Rush's concert in Frankfurt during their 30th Anniversary World Tour in 2004." One of my favorite channels is called Lost in Vegas. The two gentlemen, George and Ryan, come from a rap and hip-hop background and through their channel delve deep into the world of rock and metal." They offer very trenchant explanations about why a piece of music works ... and they really seem to like Rush.
The overwhelming sense George and Ryan convey in these videos is that Rush is fire. Music transcends barriers of culture and subculture, race and ethnicity, nation and continent. Even me writing this little anecdote is poking fun at the idea that some bands or some styles of music should be "white" and some "black," and that a black guy is incapable of enjoying and under-standing Rush and a white guy is incapable of enjoying and understanding rap. It's preposterous, and the kind of thing the band would likely agree with me about.
You and I, we are pressed into these solitudes
Color and culture, language and race
Just variations on a theme
Islands in a much larger stream
For you and me, race is not a competition
For you and me, race is not a definition
For you and me
We agree
"Alien Shore"
As you'll see through the course of this book, Rush fans run the gamut, although there are threads that seem to typify your average Rush fan, if any of us weirdos can be considered "aver-age." Many are musicians. Many have backgrounds in science and engineering. Many were or still are into what are popularly called "nerdy" hobbies like role-playing games, computers, sci-fi, and fantasy. Many were politically center-left or libertarian. Many were atheist or agnostic. Many were male. Many were white.
But these are the superficial similarities. It's the deeper ones I'm more interested in.
We'll get into Rush's musicianship, lyrical content, and personality, and why it resonates so much with fans, later on, but suffice it to say Rush's songs fire the imagination and provide hope and comfort in ways few rock bands can.
I will dose this introduction trying to answer the question "Why are we here?" with something other than "Because we're here." In fact, I will answer this question with three other questions:
1. What is it that binds Rush fans together? In other words, what is the "Rush fan" archetype?
2. Why does this band speak to so many of us so deeply? and;
3. Why did Neil Peart's death affect so many of us, who never knew the man but for his words and his drumming, in such a profound way?
The first five chapters get into question 1. Chapter I will look at popular and critical conceptions of Rush and their fans. Next, Chapters II, III, IV, and V will each focus on one or more stereo-typical aspects—appellations or epithets, depending on your perspective—thrown towards Rush fans and exploring how accurate or not this is in light of my survey results. Chapters VI and VII will look at questions 2 and 3, respectively. Chapter VIII gets into the fanbase's favorite songs and albums, while Chapter IX will at-tempt to bring it all home, put a bow on it, and any other cliche you think is appropriate. The Appendices feature portions of survey results and interviews I conducted in writing this book.
The results of my research were illuminating, entertaining, poignant, and a little mind-blowing. I sincerely hope you will enjoy the fruits of my labor as we travel across the cosmos of Rush fandom, learning lessons, making memories, and having a few laughs along the way.
We sometimes catch a window
A glimpse of what's beyond
Was it just imagination
Stringing us along?
More things than are dreamed about
Unseen and unexplained
We suspend our disbelief
We are entertained
"Mystic Rhythms"
Every subculture attracts a certain type of person. Your fan of classical music tends on average to be different than your fan of death metal or hip-hop. Your fan of patchwork quilting tends on average to be different than your fan of motorcycles. Your fan of the New York Yankees tends on average to be different than your normal human being., You get the idea. There is some overlap, but every group gathered around a different hobby or pursuit tends to have certain core commonalities, and these commonalities differ from those of other groups of fans, whatever it is they are fans of.
And sometimes, as was the case with Rush, a group of fans were despised by the music press.
I say this in the past sense because the hatred for Rush fans is pretty much non-existent nowadays. Sure, there is some light ribbing, but not the visceral dislike we saw in the 1970s and 1980s. Before we get into the similarities between Rush fans and see whether the popular stereotypes about them are valid, it's worth discussing why Rush fans themselves were the object of so much scorn, almost as much as the band itself, and how this may have shaped Rush fans' perceptions of themselves.
"Rush weren't straight up prog," actor W. Earl Brown told me over Twitter. "Rush weren't straight ahead rock. Rush didn't fit. Nor did the fans. In the 70s and early 80s, there was no such thing as a cool nerd. Rush was nerdy yet powerful—they attracted a nerd herd of smart & interesting people. The cool kids scoffed."
"Rush didn't fit the mold of a rock band," explains Ed Stenger, long-time Rush fan and proprietor of one of the biggest and best Rush websites, RushlsABand.com. "A lot of the reasons Rush fans are so passionate about the band is the same reasons these critics didn't like them." Stenger elaborates:
They were almost too serious for rock music from a lot of the critics' standpoints, too pretentious. What do they think they're doing, 20 minute songs. I think that was the key right there. They weren't used to seeing a band like this and they were like "Who are these guys?"
I think Brown and Stenger are on to something. In particular, Brown's usage of the term "the cool kids" to describe the music press is perfect, particularly as it relates to their relationship to prog rock as a genre. We saw this in the 1970s, and we still see it to a degree now. One example of this phenomenon can be seen in the Chicago-based Pitchfork.com—the so-called "Most Trusted Voice in Music" —and their reviews of modern-day prog-metal behemoth Tool.
First, here's a bit from Pitchfork's review of Tool's 2001 album Lateralus, where reviewer Brent DiCrescenzo writes a story-within-a-review from the perspective of a young Tool fan:
I feel like this record was made just for me by super-smart aliens or something, because it's just like a cross of 1971 and 1987. Imagine, like, Peter Gabriel with batwings or a flower on his head singing while Lars Ulrich and Rick Wakeman just hammer it down. It's the best Tool record be-cause it's the longest. All summer I worked at Gadzooks, folding novelty t-shirts, and on each break, I would listen to Lateralus because the store just plays hip-hop and dance. My manager would always get on me for taking my breaks 20 minutes too long, but that's how long the album is and it just sucks you in.
The whole thing is rather snide, unsurprising given DiCrescenzo's 1.9-out-of-10 rating for the album. Note the sneering references to mall culture and the fictitious Tool fan feeling like nobody understands him.
Here's Jess Harvell reviewing Tool's 2006 album 10,000 Days:
Like most progressive rock and heavy metal—hell, maybe most popular music in general—suspension of disbelief is key with Tool. Taken at face value, with their song suites, meat puppet videos, and histrionic singer, they're pretty goofy. People make fun of Tool fans because they assume they take the band seriously—these spotty, greasy kids with bad shoes and worse hair who already wear an insult on their T-shirts. At 28, I'd feel funny mocking 15-year-olds still finding their place in the world. And as for taking them seriously—well, I take Tool about as seriously as I do black metal or Lil Jon or the films of Tsui Hark. Which is to say, not very.
Harvell, at least, tempers the derision for Tool and prog fans with a little understanding of what it's like being young. But ever, still, Harvell has to throw in that he totally doesn't take Tool seriously, and that fans who do take them seriously are mock-worthy. Keep the usage of words like "spotty" and "greasy" in mind, because we will see them again later.
And finally, here's a bit from Jeremy D. Larson's review of Tool's 2019 album, Fear Inoculum:
Tool are just King Crimson in Joker makeup. They thrive in an enormously popular world of polyrhythms and prurience; of Jungian philosophy and Bill Hicks memes; of pewter dragon statues with orbs in their mouths and guys telling you that DMT is actually a chemical in your brain. Forged in the mad-at-my-dad fires of '90s post-grunge and nu-metal, the progressive metal quartet has sustained a decades-long career on equal parts technical precision and psychedelic bullshit. Their multi-part songs are loosely about embracing pain, grief, desire, transgression, until all your chakras are open and you know exactly why the pieces fit. They've been a punchline for years.
Now, Larson does go on to explain that the band themselves might not take themselves too seriously and are in on the joke too! Because bands like Tool have to be a joke. Nobody takes prog rock seriously, right?
For whatever reason, Rush fans and prog fans in general were singled out by the music press just as much as the actual bands. Journalist David Weigel, most well-known for his political writing, penned a love-letter to the genre called The Show that Never Ends: The Rise and Fall of Prog Rock. Rush features prominently in the book, as is expected, but for our purposes it's Weigel's discussion of Rush fans and the backlash that they faced which is most interesting:
Progressive rock was, at that exact moment [the late 19705], being chewed up by a critical backlash. The fans showing up to hear Rush were the wrong kind of fans—the mockable ones, with mockable taste in music. "Rush failed to deliver the killer punch I had half-hoped was coming," Paul Morley wrote in NME. "Instead it was heads down for the first of their long Science Fantasy epics and, after that, epic after epic. As far as I could tell, there was little point to them."
I do have a minor correction to Weigel's analysis: Morely wrote the first half of the article, whose full title is "The Rush Phenomenon: This Band Has Fans. Lots Of Them. They Sold Out The Free Trade Hall And Surprised Even The Promoter. PAUL MORLEY asks why, PAUL RAMBALI tries to answer.", Paul Morely wrote about the British fans gathered to see Rush, while Paul Rambali wrote a more in-depth concert review. The words Weigel quoted were actually written by Rambali. Again, a small quibble, but I want to be accurate because we're going to take a deep dive into this very same article.
In the New Musical Express piece, Morley expresses his sheer disbelief that Rush had any sort of fan base whatsoever:
I AM ON THE TRAIN, sat uncomfortably among a load of moderately hairy, strangely excited, spotty young kids. They are wearing pre-faded denims, Levi jackets and tatty pumps, and I'm thinking that I must have accidentally jumped into a carriage containing some sort of school trip—until the train stops and all the kids herd onto the platform.
I see T-shirts and garishly coloured embroidery on the backs of the Levi jackets, exclaiming Ted Nugent! Kiss! Blue Oyster Cult! And, most Noticeably, Rush! Christ, they're going the same place I'm going—to see Rush.
Rush have fans! I thought the only other people in the Free Trade Hall would be a few reluctant or curious fellow hacks. But of course Rush have fans. It's just that it's a bit of a surprise, is all. Quite unnoticed by anyone, it seems, maybe even Rush's followers themselves, the band has zoomed from obscurity through cult status to hover around super-stardom. A phenomenon.
The Free Trade Hall had sold out, apparently surprising even the promoters.
There is no mention of the fans' races or genders here, al-though we can assume they are male (see the adjectives "hairy" and "spotty"—) as well as white (this being Manchester, England in the 1970s), but the disdain Morley feels for the concertgoers is, though not vicious, certainly palpable.= You can sense this in his interactions with Rush fans as he tries in vain to understand what this phenomenon is all about:
So what's it all about? I donned my investigative mac and trilby, swam merrily through the Free Trade Hall bar, and did my best to uncover ... why.
Most of the fans I talked to seemed unimpressed at my dis-belief, seemed unimpressed moreover that Rush could fill the hall so effortlessly. "Could have played two night, I reckon," said one guy. My knees buckled slightly.
There was a good number, too, who claimed that they'd dis-covered Rush way back in 1974 (which is a long time ago in terms of this audience—it was overwhelmingly school aged) by, apparently, listening to the radio or just "knowing by the cover of the album that they were a good rock band." A few remembered The Old Grey Whistle Test playing a Rush track, and took it from there.
Everywhere it was blatantly apparent that there is a rare fanaticism for Rush, and an insatiable appetite for any im-ported flash heavy metal. I must be mixing with the wrong people, because really this was all a revelation to me. I dug deeper, asking a number of milder looking fans why they actually liked Rush.
So, why? "Because they're good ... It's really good music and it hits the brain ... They seem to get better with each album . They're Canada's best rock group. .. People want to go to live shows and hear really heavy stuff that's gonna freak them out ... I don't think you give them enough coverage ... Are you Max Bell? ... Their words are nice, they really get a lot of things across . . . Power and intelligence . . . They're different from Ted and Sabbath and all that lot ... Because I want to..."
Reeling from all this, and from the remarks of one guy who put me firmly in my place when I asked: "Aren't they similar to Led Zep?" —he sternly replied, "Ah, but Led Zep are a quartet and this lot are a trio" —I found my seat.
For those of us who got into Rush fans in the late 80s, 90s, or later, it's interesting to see that the fierce loyalty among the fans was already firmly established at the time this piece was published: a year after the release of 2112 and three months before A Farewell to Kings. As far as his thoughts on the band itself, Morley walked away impressed by their musicianship, but he still didn't "get" the acquired taste that was Rush:
It was a tense and crude atmosphere, obvious what was imminent—a rush to the stage as soon as Rush appeared on-stage. Unfortunately I missed the no doubt almighty welcome for Rush because minutes before the big moment I was thrown out of the hall for assaulting its manager. But when I sneaked back in everyone was standing in the stalls, arms outstretched, plenty of V-signs, the odd Rush banner, and even a fairly large Canadian flag right at the front.
It was no way a perfunctory response. The kids around where I was stood knew every note and lyric of each song. There were even odd attempts at lighting matches, a la American audiences.
Rush played absolutely amazingly — no sloppiness, total control, all the flash licks, sharp riffs, Jerk-off guitar solos brilliantly executed, carefully placed breaks, classy pinnacle vocals that the crowd was thirsting for. Their light show was maybe the best I've ever seen.
It was loud, but very very clean. The band looked like pup-pets—they could play The Royal Variety Show and probably offend no one.
So what is it about Rush?
This concluding question was what Rambali tried to answer in his conclusion of the NME article. And he doesn't get it either:
MAYBE IT'S SOMETHING to do with the cathartic effect of a big noise. Unlike other turn-of-the-decade phenomena, such as glitter and the introspective singer songwriter, heavy metal refuses to die the death.
It isn't just a question of dinosaurs still being extant either —new heroes emerge with increasing regularity. Last year it was Ted Nugent and this year Judas Priest and, no two ways about it, Rush.
They thunder into the opening number with all the power and subtlety of an earthquake, and the crowd roar in approval as Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee roam around the stage in an endless series of guitar superhero postures and power-chord dynamics.
This staunch observer was almost converted as the first three numbers (especially "Bastille Day") sledgehammered into the audience. But Rush failed to deliver the killer punch I had half-hoped was coming—instead, it was heads down for the first of their long Science Fantasy epics and, after that, epic after epic.
As far as I could tell, there was little point to them. They were no more than a lot of riffs, mostly derived from Sabbath, Purple and Zeppelin, and loosely thrown together around various concepts. Titles like "By-Tor And The Snow Dog" and "The Fountain Of Lamneth,- give a fair indication of what to expect—the fairytale castles of Yes meet Sabbath's headbanger.
But never mind the content, just feel the dynamics. Each successive riff ploughed new depths of heavy metal dynamism, and the only unusual thing was Geddy Lee's strangled banshee vocals, which sounded like someone trying to sing like Robert Plant after an unfortunate accident. Alex Lifeson played elementary power chords and gimmick-laden solos, and Neil Peart's drums were exemplary heavy metal thunder.
However, Rush's ability in their chosen field is unquestionable. No matter how overworked the basic idea maybe, they attack it with enough ferocious zest and almost obsessive dedication that the results really did sound alive and, to the crowd at least, fresh.
The degree of technological sophistication involved in Rush's stage show simply reflects the single-mindedness with which they approach their music.
The epics were full of dramatic lighting (their own, specially flown in) and Lifeson was surrounded by echo units, phase shifters, digital delay and harmonizers—very expensive stuff that enabled him to seemingly double-track his guitar on stage.
The PA (their own again) used digital delay to spread the sound out over the stereo columns, and the sound mixer knew exactly when to boost the volume—they didn't miss a trick, visually or aurally.
Rush's dedication to their cause is about to pay off, the opinions of those who see it as some kind of sophisticated torture notwithstanding.
I am not saying that rock critics have to like or understand a band, and Rambali is actually pretty fair in his assessment of Rush's music and on-stage presentation. This relative even-handedness is admirable given that Rambali, like Morley, was hip-deep in the decidedly anti-prog world of punk rock. But reading this, one can't help get the impression that, like Morley, Rambali also thinks the band's fans are easily amused rubes stunned by pretty lights, pummeling riffs, and puerile lyrics.
"What are the two things that the cognoscenti of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame or Rolling Stone magazine, which are one and the same, hate the most?" asks Martin Popoff, author of Rush: The Illustrated History. "They hate progressive rock, they hate heavy metal. Well, Rush invented progressive metal. They're both.". This genre snobbery definitely explains the rock press's disdain for Rush, which could at best be called "lukewarm." Obviously, this disdain spilled over to the kinds of people who would actually like this weird Canadian band with the super-high-pitched singing guy. People have to be a bit touched in the head, or at least uncool, to tolerate this guy's voice, right?
And while we're at it, let's take an aside to talk about Geddy Lee's voice.
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