In The Basement Bars
To say there was a great deal going on musically in the late sixties is an understatement in the extreme. In particular, many bands that had forged their reputation on folk blues were now pushing the boundaries of their art. A combination of drawing on new influences (not all of them musical), experimenting with more complex arrangements and exploiting increasingly powerful amplification technologies led to the arrival of day-tripping psychedelia and its more seriously minded companion, progressive rock. The Beatles and the Beach Boys, The Who and Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention, Cream and the Grateful Dead were leading the musical revolution on each side of the Atlantic, and the message was clear: this is not stuff you want your parents to listen to. “The music of the early sixties was safe, the messages were just on the border of rebellion,” says Rush’s keyboard technician Tony Geranios, who was working the circuit at the time. “Later there were real messages to unite youth into some kind of awareness. You could see a lot of questioning, some violent, some downright criminal.“ Agrees Toronto-based photographer Bruce Cole, “We all grew up in an era of rebellion.”
Old hands like singer songwriter and Rush collaborator Mendelson Joe felt that musically at least, they had seen it all before. “The sixties were relevant but the seventies were just the commercialization and regurgitation of what made money in the 1960’s,” he says. In Canada as in the USA, for newcomers this ‘regurgitation’ meant there was a structure for their non-conformity. This offered an opportunity for angsty youths not too drop out, but to create something on their own terms; any band starting out had a potential road map and an understanding that they might actually become something. It was a tempting vision for any teenager, and the Willowdale boys were not immune.
In the spring of 1968, Gary – sorry, Geddy joined his first band. While he might have started as a rhythm guitarist it wasn’t long before fate, or at least the band’s original bassist, decided to play his own part in Geddy’s destiny: he quit. New boy Geddy was “offered” the bassist’s position, and his mother agreed to loan him the money for a Japanese “Conora” brand bass guitar, as long as he paid it off – 35 dollars in all. Despite her outward acceptance, Mom was none too happy at the thought of Geddy becoming a musician, but still, he was young, it could be just a phase. As Geddy moved over to playing bass, he discovered a new set of heroes in the shape of Cream’s Jack Bruce and John Entwhistle from The Who, and Jack Cassidy who played with Jefferson Airplane . “What I liked about Jack Bruce was that his sound was distinctive,” said Geddy. “It wasn’t boring, and it wasn’t typical. And he was very busy. He wouldn’t keep his place, which I really liked a lot. He was obtrusive, which I like in a bass player.” Like many of his peers, Geddy started to grow his hair, rebellion sprouting from the top of his head. “We were very typically suburban,” said Geddy later, “what you’d call weekend warriors. I guess we thought that we were kind of cooler than the next guy, but we probably weren’t.” Confirms Bruce Cole, “They were middle class guys, as opposed to starving musicians – they all had a family fallback position.” Indeed – not everyone had parents willing to cough up a loan for an instrument.
Meanwhile, 15-year old Alex had teamed up with neighbour John Rutsey to form a band of sorts, which they called The Projection. “We were horrible,” said Alex later, recalling the dozen or so songs they used to play at their friends’ parties. “We just kept repeating the songs during the course of the night until everybody would leave!” Alex had his own “Conora” electric guitar, bought for him by his parents back at Christmas a couple of years before. It had to look like Eric Clapton’s guitar, “like a Gretsch Country Gentleman,” explained Alex. He’d also acquired a Fuzz Face distortion pedal, but he had to borrow an amplifier from friends. “Even before I could really play guitar, I had an effect,” he said, setting the scene for his love of gadgetry. For home practice, Alex wired his parents’ TV to take his guitar and pedal as input. “That sounded pretty lousy, but with the Fuzz Face, I thought I was hot stuff!”
Geddy and Alex would still play together from time to time, particularly as Geddy’s next purchase was an amplifier – a Traynor twin-15 guitar amp with a Bassmaster head unit. Back at Geddy’s place after school, they re-created their own British Blues Invasion. Recalled Geddy, “Alex would pretend he was Eric Clapton, I would pretend I was Jack Bruce, and we’d play ‘Spoonful’ for twenty minutes.” Alex played to an extent that would put even an obsessive to shame. He played every available minute of every single evening, taking breaks only to eat and, if absolutely necessary, to rush his homework. Somehow he also found time for his new girlfriend, Charlene McNichol. The Projection took its influences from the heavier end of the blues spectrum, such as Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin. By the summer they were joined by Jeff Jones who took on the bass duties and added rudimentary vocals. Jeff was an established player, working with a band called Lactic Acid at the same time as joining the pair of hopefuls.
Nobody liked the name “The Projection”, and the need to find a better name was becoming ever more urgent. “The bass player in my jazz trio was in charge of a drop-in program at a High School in Toronto and part of his responsibilities was to arrange entertainment,” explains local man and Rush cover artist Paul Weldon. “Geddy Lee and his friends went to this drop-in centre and when he announced that he had a $50 budget, they said they would like to play. He said okay, but what do you call yourselves? They said they didn’t know.” So he explained he needed a name for the promo posters, and sent the youngsters on their way. Inspiration came quickly: after several rejected ideas, an off-the-cuff remark from John’s older brother Bill Rutsey caught everyone’s attention. “Why not Rush?” he suggested. While the fifteen year olds might have joked about the drug connotations, they mostly thought it was just a good name.
So Rush it was.
In early September of 1968 the newly named band was offered the opportunity to play a regular slot on Friday nights at a coffee bar for teenagers, in the basement of the local United Church on Kenneth Avenue. The Coff-In, as it was known, charged 25 cents admission to Rush’s first date, on 18 September. The band had ten songs in their repertoire, which they repeated throughout the evening to the thirty or so people who had bothered to turn up.
The gig brought in a meagre 10 dollars, but nothing could suppress the feeling of excitement felt by John and Alex. Jeff didn’t share the enthusiasm however: he had seen the band as a bit of fun and he was already over-committed to other projects. Indeed, Jeff only ever played that one show at the Coff-In: the following week he failed to turn up, having ”gotten himself drunk,” according to Geddy, who was called up at 4 o’clock that afternoon. A worried Alex offered (nay, begged) Geddy to play that evening. How could he refuse?
Geddy had two hours with the others before the gig to agree a dozen songs they could all play. Fortunately, Rush’s repertoire incorporated the John Mayall and Cream tracks he had been playing already with Alex, together with a few bluesy numbers that he could jam along to. The threesome clicked: by the end of the evening Geddy was invited to join the band, and Jeff was awarded the same level of support that he had given. The changes were not that much of a deal, to either party – it wasn’t as if anyone was about to make it big.
As time passed invitations came up to play at high school functions, sometimes for slightly better money, with long-suffering mothers driving the youths to gigs with all the equipment in the trunk. “We wanted to play every chance we got,” says Alex. Over time, the band built a relationship with Toronto’s parks and recreation department, and picked up gigs that way. The threesome slipped into what could be called a routine, with school during the day and gigs at night, the regular slot at the Coff-in punctuating the frequent journeys out of town. One of the regulars at the Coff-In was a green, yet determined lad of 16 years named Ray Danniels, “a local street-type, hustling kind of a guy,” according to Geddy. Only a year older than Alex and Geddy, Ray had quit school and set up an artists agency called Music Shop.
Alex was forever experimenting with instruments, which he would buy, borrow or rent for the purpose. As the gigs continued, he was able to save enough money for his first “real” guitar, which he bought new – a Gibson ES-335 in Tobacco Sunburst, together with a Marshall amp and a few pedals, supplemented on a regular basis by borrowed equipment to support his experimental habits. As 1968 came to a close, Alex asked his friend Nancy Young if he could borrow her brother Lindy’s Gibson Firebird guitar. When the band discovered Lindy’s talents not only on the guitar, but also keyboards, vocals, drums and harmonica, they quickly invited him in to complete the line-up. Slightly older, he also brought a certain amount of experience to the band.
At the same time, Rush voted for a name change to Hadrian, more suggestive of the loud, solid, hard-rock edge they were delivering live. Ray Danniels offered to book a few gigs for Hadrian, and would leave no stone unturned in promotion of the newly named band – borrowing a motorbike to go and put up posters.
Hadrian’s reputation grew quickly. By March the following year the numbers at the Coff-In had grown to the hundreds, and these were people that were coming expressly to see the band. “We built up our own little following,” said Geddy. Income had increased accordingly – the wages had been increased to 35 dollars.
If only things could have stayed that simple, but they were teenagers. John, who was undoubtedly the coolest (but also the moodiest) band member, didn’t think Geddy fitted with profile of the band. By May, the drummer convinced Alex that they could do without Geddy, suggesting another friend, Joe Perna in his place. With little aplomb Geddy was kicked out. Unperturbed – well, a little perturbed – Geddy wasted no time in setting up his own band, “with a little more of a blues profile.” He named it Ogilvie, but quickly renamed it Judd; by July, Lindy had left Hadrian and joined him because Ray was having more success booking Judd than Hadrian. Joe Perna left as well, and Alex and John were left with little choice but to wind up their own band. There was little opportunity for Geddy to gloat, as Judd wasn’t to fare much better. By September 1969, it had broken up too – Lindy was going to college, amongst other reasons.
Sometimes, they all realised, its best to stick with what works. Rush was reformed in its post-Jeff line up, with Alex, John and Geddy. Who needs keyboards anyway – the previously spurned vocalist/bassist was welcomed back with open arms and a sheepish grin.
The trio set out again with renewed vigour and no little determination. “We were brought up to realize that if you want to get anywhere, you’re going to have to work for it,” Alex once remarked, so knuckle down they did. Ray Danniels was quick to volunteer his services as Rush manager, an offer that the threesome accepted gladly. All four were competent, ambitious, and unafraid of hard work, and it wasn’t hard to see that both sides stood to gain. “Ray and the guys were philosophically aligned,” explains DJ Don Shafer, who knew Ray prior to Rush. “Despite the fact he started very young, he always understood what was necessary.” Immediately, Ray put his back into finding some bookings for the newly reformed band. His scope was limited – the sixteen-year-olds were not allowed in the bars of Toronto – but he was undaunted. “He was an entrepreneur,” says Don. “He figured out the basics of how to book venues and fill halls. There were no schools to go to, you had to be adept at learning the business.” From Ray’s perspective, he didn’t know what else he’d do. “If I didn’t succeed with this I didn’t even have the education to be a postman,” Ray said later. Don recalls the pair of them sitting in the back seat of an old car, talking about the future. “He was focused on putting his heart and soul into it,” says Don.
The bookings came, the rehearsals continued, the repertoire grew and gigs started to happen at a gentlemanly pace. Alex and Geddy would get picked up from school, stop off to get John and take off towards a town in the middle distance, to play a set list consisting mostly of covers – “the only way we could get hired,“ according to Geddy. The band was accompanied to gigs by Ian Grandy, the band’s first crew member, who helped with the drums (the rest of the band could cope with the guitars) as well as organising and working the sound and lights during the show.
Over time a routine developed, bringing with it a steady musical progression towards harder rock. Cream was out, Led Zeppelin was in, and Geddy was quick to adapt his singing to match. After experimenting with different vocal styles, he trialled a falsetto that was immediately unique, raunchy, exciting – everything the boys wanted to distinguish themselves from the R’n’B masses. The desire to do something fresh and exciting was greater than that to make money – and if Led Zep could make it on their own terms, why couldn’t Rush? The trio even started to write their own songs, all three contributing to what would become the blues number ‘Losing Again’ and the rockier ‘In The Mood’, which would be inserted into the set at appropriate intervals. It was a clever strategy – keep it relevant to the newcomers, but give them something unique – and it paid off. Not everything made it to posterity: songs such as ‘Child Reborn’, ‘Keep In Line’ and ‘Run Willie Run’ were all trialled live, never to be recorded.
One thing nobody felt comfortable about was writing the lyrics. These largely fell on John’s shoulders, though he never felt anything he wrote was particularly good. Still, the lyrics were good enough to fit the music, and for Geddy and Alex, that was all that mattered. As the sixties became the seventies, the band had a growing reputation on the teenage coffee house circuit and was playing a significant number of its own songs , with additional titles like ‘Morning Star’, ‘Margarite’, ‘Feel So Good’ and ‘Garden Road’. The newer tracks offered an opportunity for the band to further distinguish themselves by adding more complexity to the music, which wasn’t to the taste of everyone in the audience – the high school crowds would be a trifle baffled by the occasional, experimental piece, incorporating time changes and a variety of dissonant sounds, not all of which were necessarily good. Rush was determined to find its own unique way, and so the band struggled on, in the knowledge that wherever it was going, it was not the same road as the mainstream bands. This did niggle a bit, particularly with John, but he indulged Geddy and Alex. He’d dropped out from school, by this point, and didn’t really have anything else he wanted to do.
As Alex was turning 17, suddenly and unexpectedly, things got serious. Really serious in fact, as he found out from his girlfriend Charlene McNichol, that he was to become a father. Alex took this news on the chin and was determined to ensure he did the right thing, moving in with Charlene as soon as they could find a place. Justin Zivojinovich was born in March 1971. For Alex at least, this additional responsibility only increased his determination to make it work.
One month before Justin’s arrival, the band decided to try out a second guitarist, Mitch Bossi. He lasted three months before going the same way as Jeff Jones, deciding for himself that the others were all taking things too seriously. As he left, those who remained became even more of the opinion that three was the better number.
Still, there were bigger things afoot. About the same time as Mitch was saying his goodbyes, the legal drinking age in Ontario was dropped from 21 to 18. This could not have been better timed for Geddy, Alex and John, who were all having their 18th birthdays at the time – Alex and Geddy’s birthdays were in July and August. The potential opportunity was huge – “In Toronto in the early 70’s there was probably a club on every other downtown corner that had a trio or a live band,” says Bruce Cole. When Ray got onto the case, he found that the bookings didn’t come easy, but when they did the money was better, the audiences older and the venues bigger. By the summer, Rush was starting to play in Toronto’s many bars, getting their first gig at The Gasworks on Yonge Street in the middle of town. At the time, the Gasworks was the place to be seen, as well as heard . “Everyone played at the Gasworks,” says co-founder of the Orbit Room, Tim Notter, who was an early follower of the band and a friend of Alex. “We were thrilled! Alex – when he was 19, he was fabulous!”
The eventful times required some big decisions. The band members agreed that they should make a proper go of it, so Geddy and Alex quit school completely to concentrate on their music. Their parents were dubious, but the young men were unrepentant and excited at the new opportunities. “All of a sudden it wasn’t just two gigs at weekends, it was six gigs a week, five sets a night!” Geddy’s mother in particular had been a little distressed when he said he was going to go with the music thing, rather than going on to college. Alex’s folks were a little more understanding, especially given his personal circumstances.
Opportunities were not as frequent as everyone hoped, and the bar audiences were as tough as they ever were, particularly in the north of the state. “They don’t care if you do the greatest original material in the world if their ears haven’t heard it before,” Geddy recalled. “They just want to get drunk and hear their favorite tunes.” But, he admitted later, “Our compositions were probably too strange for them.” There was also the volume issue – on one occasion, the band were ejected from a club because the barmaids couldn’t hear the beer orders! Not without reason, the summer of 1971 was nicknamed “the dead summer” for the band.
Despite Ray’s cajoling for the boys to play more popular songs and the clear difficulties they were having in getting a gig, they stuck to their musical guns. Ray was frequently frustrated by their single-mindedness, says Don Shafer, “Ray picked up the band because nobody else would,” and the agent didn’t always enjoy the experience. “Without a doubt they were the hardest act I had to sell,” he remarked. “Sometimes nobody came to see them, sometimes the gyms were packed. And that’s what convinced me they were the ones who could happen if anybody could.“ Ray booked the band in any and every venue that would have them – in his opinion, the most important thing was to get out there and play, helped out by friends and neighbours who would drive them. On one occasion, the band were taken on a 600-kilometer round trip to Sudbury for a 35-dollar gig, though they could earn up to $350 for some gigs – such was their desire to take every opportunity that presented itself. As things developed, Liam Birt was taken on as an additional crew member to assist Ian Grandy.
Finally, at the end of 1971 the band managed to get a regular downtown slot, at the Abbey Road pub in Toronto: it paid $1000 weekly, so the guys had some guarantee of income. Some of the money was put towards an Econoline van to accommodate the ever-increasing piles of gear. While things were working out, this was clearly not going to be an easy ride to the top. Nor did anyone expect it to be – the feet of the band members, as well as the growing support structure, Ray, Liam and Pegi Cecconi, Ray’s assistant, were all firmly planted on the ground. “This thing came from the ground up,” says Don Shafer. “It was not a formula – it took really talented people to build the brand. The finest enduring qualities of the organisation and band – they were all genuine down-to-earth people who never lost contact with their audience.”
On 17 June 1972, Ray scored a gig for the band at the Grande Ballroom in Detroit, playing alongside The Rumor and Spangus Marangus. Back home meanwhile, to make ends meet Geddy worked in his mother’s shop and did some painting work, while Alex helped his father on plumbing jobs and held a job at a gas station. They even wrote a song about it – ‘Working Man’ chronicled the humdrum existence of the blue collar worker, seen from the perspective of someone who wanted something better.