2022 Preface
“Since their inception, Canadian rock trio Rush had the cards of popular music stacked against them.” Thus began the preface to the first edition of Rush-Chemistry – not the first book ever written about the thinking person’s power trio, but certainly the first for a while, even this a testament to their lack of mainstream popularity. How was it that a band seen as influential by so many other, more popular artists, “from Godsmack to the Manic Street Preachers,” a band which could fill stadia in countries from Latin America to Northern Europe, could still remain off the radar for so many?
“There is no place for the band on the podium of mainstream music, alongside the rock illuminati – the Zeppelins, Queens and Nirvanas. The band has never been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, nor is it likely to make the cover of Rolling Stone magazine,” continued the preface. In hindsight, wrong, and wrong, though the former event had to wait until 2013. “We’ve been saying for a long time — years — that this wasn’t a big deal… Turns out, it kind of is,” Neil Peart told the Toronto-based Globe and Mail. The big deal was not the fame, perhaps, but the industry recognition of a band too-used to media criticism, even as fans bought the albums and flocked to the gigs.
Two years later and halfway through the band’s final tour, even the Rolling Stone felt able to include Alex, Geddy and Neil on its cover. But the tables had already turned – the illustrious magazine no longer held the sway it once did, faced with multiple threats of publications moving online, falling advertising revenues and the all-encompassing nature of social media. While musicians have also suffered from the digital revolution, technology has given bands such as Rush a voice, as they can connect directly with their fans (to date, Rush has 2.8 million followers on Facebook).
It does beg the question of how things might be, should Rush have appeared today: whereas it took Donna Halper’s radio show to ‘break’ the band in the US over four decades ago, this medium is also a shadow of its former self. But it is fair to surmise that audience-driven social media would act in Rush’s favour. “The final target for music, the listening public, is a lot more discerning than is generally assumed,” went the previous preface; “Rush are more than a phenomenon, they are a statement: you felt you could dictate what people listened to, and you failed.” In today’s world, as illustrated by the success of so many unlikely artists, from Ed Sheeran to Billie Eilish, people hold the reins, not labels.
But this is now, and that was then. The fact that Rush not only made it, but sustained a career across the years, has to be seen as testament to the artistic consistency, quiet diligence, and sheer hard work, of the three people at its core. When the last performance came to an end, on 1 August 2015, the reaction was one of subdued disbelief – rumours of some kind of reunion, or potential studio work, never came to fruition. And, potentially, rightly so: having pulled an album out of the hat with Clockwork Angels, the band was without doubt finishing on a high. Which brings to the music, that complex array of frequencies that inspires so much in the listener. While theories abound, nobody really knows how a song has the power to inspire, to bring joy or sadness, or touch our subconscious, more primitive selves through its (sometimes mystic) rhythms. Creativity is alchemy, and songs hold the power of the miraculous. The entity known as Rush may only have been immortal for a limited time, but the music they created across 19 albums will live on, perhaps forever.