A New Reality

“Conform or be cast out”

A New Reality

By the summer of 1979, the entity known as ‘Rush’ had achieved everything it could have asked for live. If fame was the goal, measured as bums on seats in the forums and arenas, then the boys were famous, whatever the press wanted to have people believe. The back catalogue of albums was selling well and each member of the band had attained a level of competence that other musicians could only strive for. From the outside in, things were on a roll.

Seen from the inside however, things looked very different. ‘Hemispheres’ felt like the end of an era: the success achieved with ‘2112’ had been built upon by ‘Kings’, and was then done to death with the album that followed. Long songs were, in hindsight, no more than a number of musical segments to be cobbled together in a way that made some sort of sense. “They just became too easy to do, a little boring,” said Geddy. “We felt like we were just doing the same song over again, just changing the words. Anything you can do too easily isn’t that much of a challenge.” The resulting pieces were an indulgence, a musical rag rug for Geddy to stand on, as he preached the word according to Neil. Recent experience suggested that the challenge was becoming more intellectual than musical, while they made the simplest of mistakes, and were losing sight of why they were in the game in the first place. “It’s very easy to fall into the trap of producing yourself to death and planning every minute of your life1,” Geddy had remarked. Rather than being fulfilling, the experience of creating ‘Hemispheres’ revealed only how far the band had to go.

Not ironically, the band’s faith in its musical abilities catalysed a desire to write simpler songs. “We started to feel more assured as both musicians and songwriters,” said Neil. “We were able to look at a song as just a song, and no longer felt compelled to overdress the music in order to hide inadequacies.” This realisation marked a point of no return, kicking off a series of experiments that would draw the band ever closer to the mainstream.

First of all, and for the first time in four years, it was time for an extended break. Immediately following the last ‘Hemispheres’ tour date at the beginning of June 1978, the travel-worn lads took a six-week vacation. “It was our intention to give ourselves a creative rest,” said Neil. “We decided that we owed it to ourselves.” The threesome spent time clearing their heads, remembering there was life outside music, and simply enjoying family life. Having spent much of the tour in flight manuals, Alex was gearing himself up for flying lessons and joining Geddy for the occasional game of tennis. After a while for Neil the call of the drums became too great, as he indulged himself in a new, mahogany-effect Tama kit from his favoured outlet, The Percussion Center. “I’ve always liked a good-looking drumset,” he had said, and this time was no exception, deciding on a deep burgundy kit that matched some Chinese Rosewood furniture he had back home. “They experimented with different kinds of inks, magic marker inks of red, blue, and black, trying to get the color,” he said. “It was very difficult.”

Bless.

When Neil’s honeymoon with his kit was over, it was time to start things anew. The boys reconvened to spend a couple of weeks at Lakewoods Farm near Georgian Bay, a two-hour drive north of Toronto, to regroup, decide what to do next, and maybe even develop some material. The farm was a peaceful place, with woods, and, well, a lake; next to the farmhouse was a cottage where Neil could develop his lyrical ideas in solitude. Much of Neil’s inspiration started from his notebook, where he scribbled down thoughts derived from the world around him. “Many lyrical ideas come from conversation or TV, some little twist of phrase that I like and write down,” said Neil. “By the time I start to write lyrics, I have pages and pages of just little jottings.” One such hastily written note was only three words, that he’d picked up from a short story2…“roll the bones”. Nice phrase, he thought to himself. Might come in handy sometime.

Compared to rushing straight in to a high-overhead, well-staffed, expensive recording studio, the approach that allowed some writing time was more cost- effective, and much less stressful. Ideas began to flow, remarked Neil, “in such a smooth and painless way that it almost seemed too easy!” The very first evening, a jamming session resulted in a piece of music (or, in Neil’s words, “a giant hodge podge of instrumental mish-mash”) called ‘Uncle Tounouse’3, which was later stripped for parts every time a song was lacking. It quickly became apparent that the new album wasn’t so much about breaking with the past, but more catching up with the present: there had been some major developments in popular music that were too much of a good thing to ignore. Once again many of Rush’s driving influences came from across the Atlantic, where a song didn’t have to be “pop” or “rock” to work on the radio. The players still wanted to define their own style, and they could not change their heritage – but they could incorporate a little reggae here, a touch of ska there, more through a desire to talk the language of the day than any commercial drive. “We are a sponge and we don’t try to hide that,” said Neil, whose eclectic tastes had been frequently foisted on the others in the tour bus. “We’re perfectly open to new influences all the time and love them, and love being inspired by them.”

Within a few days, the boys had laid the foundations for a number of songs, the first of which took direct aim at the inadequacy of the North American airwaves. ‘The Spirit of Radio’ offered a release of tension for the band, whose attempts to reach a broader listening public still led to a frustratingly small amount of airplay. The title came from the motto of CFNY in Toronto, an FM station that was steadfastly refusing to give in to the big business pressures of what should be played, when. “They were totally free-form, at the time when all these big programmers were coming in, and, you know, consultants were telling all these stations, and all these station managers, how to keep their jobs,” said Geddy. As it happened, the programme director at CFNY was the same David Marsden that had played ‘Finding My Way’ on CHUM-FM all those years ago, to the delight of a young Alex. What goes around, indeed.

The desire to produce simpler, more accessible music drove a need for simpler, more accessible lyrics. “It was time to stop the concept stories,” Geddy remarked, “to come out of the fog for a while and put down something concrete.” To his initial disappointment, this meant Neil had to shelve a piece called ‘Sir Gawain and The Green Knight’, but he quickly got over it. “Whether it gets used or not isn’t too important to me anymore, really, having done it,” he said. “It was really a challenge to me as a lyricist to take something like an eighty-page medieval poem and try to encapsulate it in a reasonably (even for Rush) lengthed song.” Its loss was not mourned for long, as the players realised how much more coherent things were becoming. “It was probably our first album that was in touch with reality,” Neil would remark. “It was about people dealing with technology instead of people dealing with some futuristic fantasy world or using symbols for people.”

Alex wasn’t too ruffled about the bigger picture of change: taking on the trends of the day was nothing new, his latest techniques influenced by Allan Holdsworth’s use of the whammy bar on his preferred Strat. “I couldn’t really say what my style of guitar playing is like,” he commented, a fact confirmed ten years later by producer Rupert Hine. “Alex is about the moment, and just letting things go and seeing what happens,” says Rupert. The guitarist’s free-form playing was naturally juxtaposed to Neil and Geddy’s more structured approaches. “I like to take up as much space as I can in the context of this band,” he said, but he recognised that there were other ways to create such textures. “We could fill in a lot with synthesizers now, but I still think the guitar chording aspect is important.” His remarks were a nod to the new kid on the block, as if to say, “you’re welcome to come along, just keep off my patch.”

It was not that big an issue, at the time. Such was the relaxed atmosphere at Lakewoods Farm, nothing seemed to be too much trouble. Alex cooked most of the meals (he made a fine lasagne); for entertainment, he spent much of his leisure time building model aeroplanes that had a nasty habit of crashing into large, inanimate objects – such as the ground. Watching Alex’s exploits seemed to be sufficient entertainment for everyone else. “Alex would spend hours every day re-assembling the pieces with gallons of epoxy, styrofoam cups, elastic bands, toothpicks and bits of plastic,” said Neil, who would watch gleefully with the others as the resulting creations spun a few times in the air before crashing down.

As the musical pieces came together, Neil took advantage of the writing time to rehearse his drum parts, in the knowledge that he would be recorded first. When the fortnight of creativity was up, it was time to get Terry Brown back in the frame. “I would listen to material and just get fired up and say, well, this is great, I can’t wait to record it,” he says. The omnipresent schedules were calling, however: almost as quickly as they arrived, it was time to take some of the material live.

A four-week tour spanning August and September gave an opportunity to road test a few songs, not least ‘The Spirit Of Radio’ and ‘Freewill’, which both still lacked guitar solos; the band spent the soundchecks working on a song called ‘Jacob’s Ladder’. Witnessing one gig were two staffers at Modern Drummer magazine, Karen Larcombe and Cheech Iero, who also caught support act the Pat Travers’ band with drummer Tommy Aldridge. “I remember Karen saying she and Cheech were more impressed with Tommy Aldridge’s drumming than with Neil’s!” comments Scott Fish, who was about to become managing editor at Modern Drummer. While Neil might have been winning prizes for his technique, he would have been the first to agree that he still had a way to go if he wanted to reach the bar his own heroes, such as Buddy Rich, had set.

Due to the overwhelming demand last time across the pond, a couple of extra dates were tacked on at the Bingley Hall, Stafford in England on 21-22 September, with a 10,000 capacity sold out crowd both nights. On the last night and to his own delight, Pat Travers joined in with Alex on ‘Working Man’.

On returning to Canada the band decamped to Le Studio at Morin Heights, situated in the mountains just north of Montreal. Le Studio was only a short hop away from home rather than the long-haul flight the band had become used to on the previous two albums, and it boasted spectacular views from its glass-fronted recording room. “A wonderful place,” enthused Neil. In attendance was resident engineer Paul Northfield (who had cut his teeth at London’s Advision and moved to Canada the year before), together with assistant engineer Robbie Whelan. It didn’t take long for Terry and the band to settle in with the pair, as Paul’s friendly professionalism and Robbie’s keen attitude quickly put the band at their ease.

A couple of weeks were spent finalising arrangements, melodies and lyrics, as well as deciding exactly what equipment would be used where – so-called pre-production. Once complete, Neil led the band on his new Tama drums to lay down the basic rhythm track, which was to be used as the foundation for the main instruments, vocals and other embellishments. Just because Neil could play each of his pieces note perfect by the time it came to record, this didn’t mean he would be happy with the first take. “We would always record multiple takes of the three of them playing together,” explains Paul. “Then we would edit between them and make up composite master takes.”

Having fixed this “just-so” approach, Neil was not about to make changes on the fly for ‘Different Strings’. Explains Terry, “I suggested in my infinite wisdom that a tempo change in a song was the right way to go, but Neil said to me you’ve got to be kidding! You’ve banged it into me over the years about tempo, and now you want me to make a tempo change? And he said, well, I can’t do that, it’s not going to happen.” For better or worse, the routine was set.

Owned and operated by Yaël and André Perry, Le Studio offered the perfect antidote to the experiences of the previous album. The ‘Hemispheres’ sessions had been cold, wet and Welsh, the timescales had overrun and everyone had been pulling their hair out by the end. By contrast this was idyllic and dreamy, the vestiges of summer hanging in the air like notes to be picked, and the food (prepared and brought to the guest house by Parisian chef André Moreau, who had his own, “fabulous” restaurant in local village St Saveur) was far more “haute cuisine” than the country fare of Monmouth. The band and crew wasted no time in co-ordinating some leisure activities – a makeshift volleyball court was constructed, complete with floodlights for night playing in between takes. Meanwhile Alex had his planes, a hobby that Terry joined in with wholeheartedly… and building on the flight theme, keyboard technician Tony Geranios started building rockets. Tony also lent his nickname to some off-the-wall productions by band and crew of ‘The Jack Secret Show’, cobbled together using the Le Studio video recorder.

Business-wise, having avoided the pitfalls discovered on ‘Hemispheres’ (not least, to ensure the tunes were sing-able), it took only a few days to capture the essence of most of the tracks on the album. The songs were simpler, but the band wasn’t actively trying to be commercial, whatever the management might have preferred. “There was always pressure to have something that could be played, and we usually managed to come up with one song that we could say was ‘the single’, even if it really wasn’t!” laughs Terry. “They were not the kind of band who would like to compromise their art by making an album of pop singles. It’s not like they were riding just on record success, they were out there working hard as a working band, and their audience were with them all the way, so, they weren’t looking to the Top 10 pop charts.”]

As the band developed confidence working with Paul Northfield as engineer, Terry continued to take more of the producer’s role. “I did all the hands-on stuff, I would recommend we would do this and that, and Terry would add his point of view as well,” says Paul. Agrees Terry, “My motivation for not engineering was to bring more expertise to the table and free me up to concentrate on the production side. We were always moving forward and there was positive energy galore, and I think that comes across.”

Indeed things moved so fast that the album would have been virtually complete, were it not for the “gaping hole” left by the departure of ‘Gawain and The Green Knight’. Once the drum parts were recorded, Neil had been sent into solitary confinement to come up with some lyrics that would fit better with the rest of the album: he emerged triumphant after a few days with the 9-minute ‘Natural Science’. To “set the monster to music,” the band reverted to the knit and stitch approach of ‘Hemispheres’, using the remnants of ‘Uncle Tounouse’ to create the epic. Overdubs on the song took a cue from ‘Kings’, with many instruments being recorded outside to add to the ambiance. The ‘Tide Pool’ splashes, for example, were made by Neil and Alex, hitting the waters of the lake with oars. Explained Alex, “We stuck a speaker cabinet outside, and we recorded the natural echo off the mountains in combination with the sounds of splashing water and Geddy’s voice.”

Hugh Syme, who turned up to discuss cover ideas with Neil and the others, once again ended up contributing to the album – he played Grand Piano on ‘Different Strings’. “Being in attendance and spending time with the band often led to, why don’t you play on this, why don’t you try something like this,” explains Hugh. “I would go down the hall and work something out, and if they liked it we would use it.” Alex was particularly pleased with his own solo on that song, inspired in part by the relaxed atmosphere. “It reminds me of soldiers sitting around a piano in a smoke-filled pub in England during the war,” he said.

For a change the band didn’t overrun the alloted studio schedule: there was time, and even material, to spare at the end. One piece of guitar music was left over after the final mix had made it to mastering, “a classical piece”, said Alex. It wasn’t decided what to do with it at the time, though it was saved to maybe take onto the next album. The final mixes, nips and tucks took place a week later, back at Trident Studios in London and giving some continuity with the previous two studio albums.

The working title of the album had been ‘Waveforms’, but it quickly became apparent that the name was already taken – several times over. Eventually, and perhaps more appropriately, the band settled on ‘Permanent Waves’, a direct comment on the pointlessness of musical labels. “This era seems to be pushing New Wave, and this wave, and that wave,” said Alex. “The material we’re doing is just Permanent Wave – it’s just music. It’s just a continuation, like a wave coming back in from the ocean.”

The cover went through a similar evolution as the name. The initial idea, according to Hugh, was to incorporate electro- cardiogram readings of the three band members, taken during a performance. “We were going to strap them all onto the ECG and have them play,” says Hugh. “Then, take a slice of their electro cardiogram from that particular point in time and run that on the cover as three separate colours. Very minimalistic, very all grown up.” But as often happens in these things, a throwaway remark at the end of his discussions with Neil, blew the deliberations out of the water. “I jokingly said, why don’t we have Donna Reed4 with her whole permanent Toni hair do, walking a tidal wave, and someone waving in the background,” says Hugh. “I was just intent on rattling their cage with this entirely preposterous notion!” To Hugh’s surprise, after a couple of days of deliberation the band agreed with him.

“I thought, no you don’t! I really resisted it.” Unfortunately he lost – insofar as he discovered how difficult it was to collate an appropriate set of images. Not least for the wave itself: “We finally came across a photo by a man called Flip Shulke,” says Hugh. “Flip had been known to strap himself to telephone poles to grab the worst of the weather on the Florida coast and this was one of those images. I was able to work with that as a foundation.” The girl was a then-little known model called Paula Turnbull. “The woman on the cover is really a symbol of us,” said Neil later, in a hastily considered riposte to any cries of sexism. “The idea is her perfect imperturbability in the face of all this chaos.” As for the man waving, well, you’ll have to ask Hugh.

The resulting pastiche was subject to a number of copyright issues, or rather, threats from companies that were worried about being misrepresented. Not least from the Chicago Tribune, whose “Dewey Beats Truman” headline portrayed on the cover still smarted. “To boot, Coca-Cola asked that we strip out their billboard way off in the background because it was too close to a cotton-clad mons pubis,” said Hugh. Some people are so sensitive.

With the album in the bag, the trio went their separate ways for a while. Alex finally started his flying lessons at Toronto’s Buttonville municipal airport, and Geddy picked up his first producer’s credit, working on the Wireless album ‘No Static’. This was as much a favour as an opportunity – hard rockers Wireless were on the Anthem label, and the band had played support at a number of dates on the ‘Tour of The Hemispheres’. An altogether family affair, the album was recorded and mixed by Paul Northfield at Le Studio, and Terry remixed one track back in Toronto.

‘Permanent Waves’, released on the first day of the New Year, was grudgingly recognised by the band’s Greek chorus (the press), as more modern, more relevant, more in touch. Despite opening with the paradoxically radio-friendly diatribe, ‘The Spirit of Radio’, the album fitted with the journalistic preconceptions about what popular musicians should be doing. With no hint of irony, despite its anti-corporate undertones, the opening song provided a welcome release for fan-pecked DJs. At last, they thought, we can play some Rush, and get these blasted fans off our backs. Confirmed Neil, “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.”

It was time to tour, once again. Bookings were up an order of magnitude – Rush were selling out (in advance) arenas of up to 18,000 fans (for example the Cleveland Coliseum, still the epicentre of the Rush story) – and band and management were finding themselves far more able to have their say than before. Not least, this enabled Rush to achieve its goal of playing seated venues, a decision catalysed by tragic circumstances the year before. On 3 December, 1979, 11 fans of The Who had been crushed to death at a concert in Cincinnati. “It’s treating the kids like cattle, which they’re not,” said Geddy about the tragedy. “It’s something we’ve fought for a long time but nobody listens to you.” Suddenly, SRO had the ear of the venue organisers who were suddenly a great deal more interested in writing seating into the touring contracts.

The increased scale offered a huge opportunity to lighting designer Howard Ungerleider, who was delighted to fill the largest auditorium he was given with the widest array of lights and effects. Howard had been doing his homework, listening to the more down to earth feel of the album and tuning his designs accordingly. “I was trying to create a natural atmosphere,” he says. “I’d watch the Jacob’s Ladders coming through the clouds, or headlights in a forest at night, and I’d think, how can I recreate that?” Expectedly now at the start of the tour, SRO was in debt once again – 300,000 US dollars all told, spent on the ever-increasing tonnage of equipment the band needed for its live show. Requiring four huge trucks to transport it all, the stage equipment was worth 600,000 dollars alone!

All the same the band insisted on playing less profitable locations, both to repay the debt to fans of previous tours and radio stations who had promoted the band in the past, and to grow presence in new territories. Wherever they went they took the full show, a decision that made overseas engagements difficult: in the end they settled for a 19-date circuit of mainland Britain. Neil was pleased to announce he had put his Carnaby Street ghosts to rest. “It’s tremendously satisfying to do well in Britain,” he said. “It’s not the most important market in the world in terms of record sales but we all have a special relationship with this country. I’ve lived here for a while, we’ve recorded several albums here and enjoyed doing them tremendously and we’ve also experienced a lot of loyalty from the fans. You really can’t have a better relationship than that.”

All dates were headliners, and the band settled into a routine that drew a line under the past. They’d had their fun and they didn’t want to blow the present, a professionalism that rubbed off on the crew. “The band members were not really caught up in the trappings and aura of fame and stardom,” says crew member Nick Kotos. “Everybody on the entourage, band and crew alike, enjoyed themselves in a myriad of ways, but at the core of any successful touring entity, band or production staff, is the central theme of providing the best possible show every day.”

On 2 February 1980, with the band already having 30 dates of the tour under their belts, the single ‘Spirit of Radio’ reached an acceptable #51 in the Billboard chart. The album hit the charts in a way that no previous Rush album had ever done – it peaked at Billboard #4 on 2 February, and reached #3 in the UK album charts. “I guess our time has come,” said Neil, though the band’s hands-off record label reacted only with bemusement. “We haven’t got the time to wonder why,” said a spokesman. “We’re too busy shipping the albums.” To be fair, the sudden popularity was as much of a surprise to the band, who saw the album as evolutionary. “There’s nothing radically new or different on it,” he said. “It’s just another step, like ‘Hemispheres’ was to ‘A Farewell To Kings’. And yet, the feedback we’re getting on ‘Permanent Waves’ is that a lot of people think it’s very new, very fresh, and something quite different for us.”

Some of the band’s sternest critics started to soften their outlook, influenced by the inevitable – the band were appearing on covers of music magazines, and in the UK, Rush was ranked highly in readers polls in both Sounds and Melody Maker. As ‘Permanent Waves’ went from strength to strength, it became harder to dismiss the band as irrelevant. “Are Rush finally winning over the critics who’ve mercilessly been directing written abuse at them for years,” lamented arch-cynic Steve Weitzman, who was finding himself increasingly isolated. “Will there soon be only one writer left unimpressed with Rush?”

Not all the changes were good – as the audiences grew bigger, so did the size of the band’s entourage, in particular the amount of security. With reason, perhaps – on 3 January, 20 police had to be brought in to break up a near-riot among fans, who had been waiting in the freezing cold outside the Detroit box offices and ended up venting frustration (and perhaps warming up a little) by smashing up the booths.

“We became a little over protective of our privacy,” remarked Geddy later, noting that Neil had had a harder time than most. Unfortunately, the more introverted Neil had no choice but to cope as best he could. “I’m not any kind of a misanthrope – a person who hates human beings, but I am a private person,” explained Neil. “I’m basically shy with people I don’t know, especially when I can’t meet them on equal terms.” In particular, he didn’t like the idea of putting on a show after the show, so to speak. “I’ve projected all I have to project,” he said. “All I want to do is go home, and if you walk out after that to a big crowd of screaming people, it’s horrible … there’s no middle ground to walk there, no way of being natural in a situation like that, there really isn’t.” Ah – the fans. Not only was the number of me-too ‘fans’ – the autograph hunters, the screamers and the backslappers – on the increase, so was the number of slightly obsessives. “There are a lot more weirdoes coming out of the woodwork,” said Neil, with characteristic bluntness. “We could start a ‘Flake of the Week’ club.”

In the main however, the fans were harmless. On occasion they were exceedingly useful, as Geddy found at the Queens Hall in Leeds, UK, with what he still remembers as his worst nightmare on stage. “I went onstage to sing ‘Closer To The Heart’ and for the life of me the lyrics would not come into my mind. I just stood there silently waiting for them to come back. I just looked to the audience and the kids are singing it, and they’re trying to prod me on.” Eventually the words came back, but not before the occasion had been indelibly stamped on his memory. Every night was a huge test of stamina, and the necessity of playing quite so many dates became a frequent subject of discussion on the bus. “We’re getting home every five to seven weeks for five days, and it’s not a lot of time,” said Alex. “We all have kids – well, Geddy’s got one on the way – and we like to spend time with them.” The band owed much of its success to past touring, so it was not something anyone wanted to give up completely but perhaps, it had served its purpose. At least, from the band’s perspective the scale of success was the final nail in the coffin for any commercial pressure. “For a long time, we had to fight like hell,” said Neil, “Now we’re at the point where we can say ‘Shut up, it’s none of your business’ to people who would try to tell us how to work.”

The 96-date tour ran from January through to June 22, ten months on the road. The crew recorded gigs in Scotland and London to be used on a future live album, and the tour marked the first time that the band had achieved any reasonable profit. “We’re not out to become millionaires or anything like that,” said Alex, more sanguine than a year or so before. “If we happen to make a lot of money or get material success, all well and good: we’re not going to not take it. That stuff is nice, but we’re doing what we want to do, playing the music we want to play, and I think audiences pick up on the fact that we’re happy with being performers.”

Geddy had spent much time on the road on the phone to his wife Nancy (who was expecting); no sooner had the tour finished than he became a father, to Julian. All three band members had the welcome opportunity to take two months with their respective families. When it had just been Alex and Charlene with children, little had changed, but then Neil and Jackie, and now Geddy and Nancy had gone the family way. Having kids was changing everything.