Rush - Chemistry

Powers That Be

Spending several months away on tour was not the best way to prepare for the creative process of making an album, especially as the band no longer really had the time, nor the will to develop anything new on the road. Starting work at a rehearsal room not far from Rockfield, the approach to the music was becoming awfully democratic. The threesome would jam together, see what worked, and try to arrange things into more complete songs and instrumental parts. “We would write fourteen different pieces, or bits, that were in different time signatures and stick them all together to create a concept,” explained Geddy. As well as mucking in on the arrangements, Neil was writing lyrics and passing them to Geddy, who would trial them with the evolving music.

Not all the material was necessarily long or complex – the band found time for short and sweet pieces such as ‘The Trees’, which provided a welcome respite. Based on a cartoon Neil had seen of – er – trees, the lyrics were “a piece of doggerel,” that he alleged to have scribbled down in five minutes. “I certainly wouldn’t be proud of the writing skill of that. What I would be proud of in that is taking a pure idea and creating an image for it. It’s simple rhyming and phrasing, but it illustrates a point so clearly, I wish I could do that all of the time.” A better lyrical achievement perhaps, was ‘Circumstances’, a simple but effective catharsis of Neil’s time spent in England.

As the band worked on its new themes, Geddy was finding more and more use for the synthesizer. The unobtrusive addition of keyboards (and in particular, the Oberheim eight-voice he’d been using on tour) provided an additional dimension, a few more tools in the tool chest… at least, that was the theory. “That’s when I really started to get keyboard crazy,” said Geddy. This was despite the pre-MIDI connection issues that dogged the technologies at the time – in fact, these added to the challenge.

Keyboards could do no wrong. Truth was, Geddy was falling in love.

After a couple of weeks and at the scheduled time, the band went into the studio proper, and each of the foursome had to confront the fact they weren’t as prepared as they would have liked. For a start, the technology was starting to exert its own individuality. Geddy had hired a specialist company to build an Oberheim synthesizer rig, but when it was delivered from the US, it wasn’t working so a local engineer came and patched it up as best he could. “Rockfield was where Geddy’s keyboards were torn apart and rebuilt,” says Terry. “The Oberheim, oh my goodness. It was crazy!” Neil and Alex were content with what they had – for Alex, his chorus and other new effects were enough to keep him occupied, and Neil was content with good ol’, traditional drums. “I don’t feel comfortable with wires and electronic things. It’s not a thing for which I have a natural empathy,” he said at the time. “It’s not that I don’t think that they are interesting or that there aren’t a lot of possibilities. But, personally I’m satisfied with traditional percussion.”

Second on the list of headaches were the arrangements, not least for the instrumental ‘La Villa Strangiato’. The ideas might have come to Alex in a dream, but Rockfield was hard reality, particularly as the band tried to make the piece work in one take. “We felt it was a song that needed the feeling of spontaneity to make it work, so we spent over a week learning it before we recorded,” said Alex. “After we were finished, none of us thought we’d ever be able to play it again.” In total, ‘La Villa Strangiato’ took more time to record than the whole of ‘Fly By Night’! At least the title track, ‘Hemispheres’ was more a collection of parts, each of which could be recorded separately. All the same the constant arranging and re-arranging was taking its toll and dragging out the schedules. Studios do not work on an open- ended basis, and originally six weeks had been booked. This was extended by a further four weeks, at the end of which the pressure was starting to show. “We felt so much like machines,” remarked Neil, “and all of us were crippled by that.”

It was all quite an eye-opener for journalist Geoff Barton, who was present for some of the final stages of arranging. “To me it seemed very simple, you stick out an album, you put songs on it and that’s fine,” says Geoff. “I didn’t really realise how much debate would go on about which track should open the album, which track should be half way through… and this debate raged for ages. I was frankly getting very bored! I guess it worked out alright…” For some maybe, but not to Geoff, nor to many fans who were so looking forward to a science fiction continuation to ‘Cygnus X-1’. The one area that nobody had worried too much about was Geddy’s vocals, which as usual had been left until last. During the writing sessions, Ged had sung along to the rough tunes and was reasonably confident that he could sing them – he didn’t really give it any more thought until the time came to actually do so. When it came to recording his vocal parts, Geddy realised with horror that they were off the top of his usual singing range. By this time, re-recording all the other instruments in a lower key was not an option, so Geddy was faced with no choice but to sing them in anger as they were written. Terry and the others had been slow to realise that this might be a problem. “It was like, what do you mean it’s hard to sing!” recalls Terry.

Geddy’s first attempts at vocals were understandably poor, and besides time at Rockfield was running out. A slot had been booked at Advision in London for the mixing, so off to London they went, feeling a growing sense of panic. “The night before we left Rockfield, it was not great,” says Terry. “We got to Advision and started doing vocals instead of mixing.” Geddy was giving his best, but he was working way outside his comfort zone and becoming frustrated as a result, losing his rag on a number of occasions. “Things were said, mugs were thrown,” says Terry. “Alex would say, ‘I think I’ll just go get a cup of coffee, and Neil would say, I think I’ll just go get a smoke…’”

Finally, with the vocals more achieved than completed, everyone needed some time out. The boys jumped on a plane and went back to Toronto for a well-earned break, before returning only a few days later for the mixing. The initial mixes were far busier than would normally be acceptable, but Terry was determined not to say die. “I had a cassette tape of rough tracks, and it sounded phenomenal. It just had this vibe to it, so I knew it was going to work,” says Terry. “But sometimes it’s just hard to translate it into something that you can turn on and everybody gets the story.” After trying out the tapes at several studios, he booked two weeks at Trident where he felt he had a chance to pull things together.

Indeed it did, thanks to the doggedness of all involved and to Terry’s own tenacity. “If you hear it, you can do it,” says Terry. “So I hung in with it, and it did turn out good.” Agrees Neil, “I don’t think that the result suffered – working under pressure can be really productive. You pay a high toll for it in how badly you feel afterwards. It was so draining and difficult.” Following a couple of nights of celebratory high jinks, it was back to the new world for a well-earned break.

Following the relative straightforwardness of ‘Kings’ the resulting album, ‘Hemispheres’ was more indulgent and complex than had originally been planned, but it worked. Furthermore, some of the songs on the second side were an indication of the shorter, neater shape of things to come. The time in the studio was a learning experience for the whole band, in particular the challenge of complex compositions. “That was all well and good for the time, but in a certain sense, it was really an easy way out,” said Geddy later. Surely he didn’t mean it was that easy? “Okay, it wasn’t easy to play and it wasn’t easy to think of, but it was easier than trying to write a great song that’s got a lasting melody and a moving feel.” Point taken.

The band’s – and particularly Neil’s – extended absence in the old country had made communications with cover artist Hugh Syme difficult. To fit with the themes of the album, the cover was intended as an elaborate pun, with the “severe, Magritte business man” Apollo, opposed by the naked Dionysus. “The band told me, ‘Go ahead, we’ll see it when we get back’,” said Hugh, “and all my conversations with them were over the telephone.” Inevitably, signals got lost and the resulting cover wasn’t anybody’s idea of perfect (said Hugh, “Technically, it’s an abomination.”), but there was no time and little will to do anything about it.

‘Hemispheres’ was released in October 1978, coincident with the start of the tour. Once again the band were managing to fill arenas by themselves but financially, things were still not easy: it was well into the tour before the tour debts were paid off and the band started to feel they were making any money – understandable given that the kit itself cost $10,000 per day, and there was a 25-man crew to pay. Howard Ungerleider ensured an even better light show than before, building on the set (and the success) of the ‘Kings’ live show – but this cost money. Nonetheless Rush turned down the opportunity to play the first annual Canada Jam festival, which would have earned them $200,000 Canadian. Despite all the talk of capitalism, it clearly wasn’t all about the money.

The crew incorporated a couple of new faces, not least Larry Allen, who was brought in as drum technician. Another newcomer was Nick Kotos, who did what any good crew member would do – what he was told, otherwise keeping out of the way. Nick was surprised then, to receive a summons from the band. “Having worked with other bands, I assumed that there was a significant problem, why else would they want to speak to me?” says Nick. “When I walked into their dressing room, the three guys asked me, what the problem was and why wasn’t I hanging out in their dressing room?” He got the message – this was no ordinary band, they were ordinary people.

By 18 November ‘Hemispheres’ had charted at Number 47 on the Billboard charts, which was a competent, if not glowing result. The album wasn’t to everyone’s tastes, not least because some of the band’s harder, more populist edge had been smoothed by the additional layers of production. “I went off them when ‘Hemispheres’ came out,” says Geoff Barton. “The thing that disappointed me was that I really wanted this fantastic conclusion to ‘Cygnus X-1’, which never really happened, and it just went into this Greek god chorus stuff… I was upset about that!” He wasn’t the only one, but the album was enough to ensure the growing, gentlemanly popularity of the band. What was more, radio play on the AOR stations was starting to pick up.

There was little time to stop and think about this. The boys were playing at least 20 days every month, with only four days for the Holiday season, and were being rewarded with a commensurate level of support wherever they played. Any last traces of the idea of playing two hours then partying until dawn were quashed, as the guys found they had to reserve most of their energy to keep up such a routine. “You have to be in first class shape to be able to do it in the first place, so you can’t afford to let your health run down,” said Neil. “You do start learning after a while to get a good meal and a good night’s sleep.”

The continued trappings of success were not without their problems, as a minority of fans started to cross the line into the trio’s private lives. When fans discovered where Geddy lived, in the Beaches area of Toronto, they disrupted his day-to-day existence to such an extent, he and his family were forced to move to another, more exclusive suburb. “There’s always a fringe which doesn’t understand, and will never understand, that an artist’s main responsibility is to perform well,” said Geddy later. “And that’s where it ends.” Support bands were also subject to the fans’ collective wrath, as discovered one band, Blondie, on 23 January, 1979, as they were booed off the stage. “The stage was filled with debris,” wrote one report.

The first leg of ‘The Tour of The Hemispheres’ came to a welcome close at the Pink Pop festival in Geleen, Holland, on 4 June 1979. The event was more than a little surreal - the band shared the stage with Mick Jagger, The Police and Dire Straits, Alex was nursing a broken finger, and one crew member fell out of the rigging and broke his leg.

By the end of the ‘Hemispheres’ tour the band’s finances were finally, well and truly sound, but the uphill journey for the Willowdale three had been steep and long. Perhaps, the band said, as they won a second “best band” Juno award, our touring work is done. Not that anyone wanted to stop; all agreed that touring was the ultimate connection between music and audience. However the need to tour incessantly for the sake of promoting the interests of the band – that was different.

From the record label’s perspective, the band was playing to the converted, its music was delivered consistently and the albums provided a guarantee of sales with little requirement for marketing. From the child the label wanted to control, the band were now left to their own devices. “Most bands at that time, or especially this time, would not get that kind of latitude,” said Geddy. “We were kind of overlooked. It was a small company at the time and they were a little bit disorganised.” That was a sword that could cut two ways, but at the time, it was ideal.

The band had found its niche as a highly successful yet non-mainstream band. As one journalist, New Yorker Robert Christgau ceded they were, “the most obnoxious band currently making a killing on the zonked teen circuit.” All the same, the band’s increasing popularity was taking its toll. Neil in particular was suffering from being under the spotlight: he loved being a successful drummer, but hated being a famous person. “Not only don’t I care about superstardom, I hope it never happens,” Neil had remarked. “We travel a lot around the country every year and we’ve pretty much just been able to do our jobs without a hundred people hanging on our every movement. I think that kind of privacy and isolation would be hard to give up.”

Unfortunately, Neil was finding he had no choice, and was becoming frustrated as a result. “Having famous hands is okay, even though that carries its own set of pressures and insecurities. But having a famous face? That’s nothing. I mean, what’s your face? I didn’t work all this time for my face.” Above all perhaps, Neil’s solitary nature and ability to observe were being squeezed. “You can’t just sit back and soak up the vibes if you’re the centre of attention.”

Despite the outside pressures, the threesome was happy sticking together. There was no one big personality in the band, so the weight fell on three sets of shoulders. “I don’t think we have too much trouble being humble ‘cause none of us would let each other get away with any other kind of behaviour,” remarked Geddy. “We each have a strong tendency towards normal. I think we were just brought up right.” The fellows knew exactly where they stood with each other, which was a better protection than anything. “It’s almost beyond family,” said Alex. “We’ve shared so many dreams, and we’ve shared so many good times and hard times together. And, basically, the chemistry is right between the three of us.”

In terms of musicianship, the technical learning curve was levelling off, and it was time to raise the bar in other ways. “We realized that one element often lacking in our music was feel,” said Geddy. “We felt like we were just repeating ourselves, and we thought it was time to start experimenting at different ways of writing songs.” The world of music was changing as well: in 1979, the brashness of punk was giving way to more polished production values, and a wealth of electronic devices were transforming disco. Said Neil, “When more thoughtful bands like Talking Heads came out and later the new romantics, I embraced it totally. It was an irresistible force at that point, it was just rock music that could call itself new wave.”

New wave? Old wave? Whatever.