Rush - Chemistry

The Peter Principle

If the secret of working in the music business could be summed up in one word, it would be “timing”. Success, or indeed failure, can result from a chance remark, a whim, or indeed whether a certain individual happens to switch on the radio.

Nobody could have predicted, for example, that UK-based pop producer Peter Collins would be in LA, working on a single for heavy blues player Gary Moore, at the same time as Gary was touring in support of Rush. Nobody could have planned the fact that Geddy, Alex and Neil would be bemoaning their failure to find a producer, even as Gary was being sent two copies of his single ‘Empty Rooms’ – one before, and one after Peter’s treatment. No-one, least of all Peter, would have imagined that the highly successful rock band Rush was struggling to adopt the influences of the eighties, without compromising their quintessential sound. It was coincidental in the extreme that Peter was to prove exactly the right man to help them out.

Appropriately enough, it was in Providence, Rhode Island, on 7 November 1984, that Peter and the boys arranged to meet for the first time. Peter had low expectations to say the least. “I had barely even heard of Rush,” he says, and the plucky pop producer was enthralled by his first experiences of stadium rock. “I was completely blown away!” All the same, Peter was in no hurry to work with this, or any other rock band. Despite a heritage in folk rock, Peter’s forté had been with chart-friendly UK artists such as Nik Kershaw and Musical Youth, hardly the most obvious CV for a rock producer. “The whole sound was exploding with that Trevor Horn style of production, which was the area of music where I was coming from,” he says. “The simple organic sounds had really dated for me at that time, they were just uninteresting.”

When Peter was given ‘Grace Under Pressure’ for a listen, he didn’t hold back in his critique – why should he? “I was a cocky British pop producer doing extremely well in my career at that time in England,” he says. “I believe I told Geddy that his vocals could sound 100% better, the whole band could sound a lot better.” Perhaps he was right – and he certainly convinced the trio that he was capable of helping out. From having adopted a determined resistance to outside direction, the band found itself enthused by what this “diminutive, bearded, cigar-smoking Englishman” could bring. With his first comments, Peter Collins was already taking control.

It was all going to be alright.

While Rush felt uncertain about their future, they knew they still wanted to play rock music. “We were really feeling isolated through the 80s,” Geddy said later. “We were one of the only rock bands out there playing real instruments and playing rock songs in front of rock audiences.” With Peter, everyone thought, the band could improve the balance between old and new, without compromising what it meant to be “Rush”. It was going to be an experiment, for sure, but that was as good an incentive as any.

As the band members parted for a month’s break after the tour, each recognised his own challenges. While Geddy was struggling with technology and Alex was fighting for room, Neil was wondering whether he’d taken his technique a step too far. In March 1985, one event in particular caused him to start rethinking this perspective. Neil had been invited to San Francisco by jazz bassist Jeff Berlin, to add a few back beats to Jeff’s record ‘Champions’1. Neil was understandably nervous, particularly as he was to share drumming duties with Journey’s Steve Smith, who had a solid background in jazz. “It was a major milestone for me to walk into a situation like that with no rehearsal,” said Neil, for whom things panned out as well as he could have hoped. “The satisfaction level was enormous!”

Geddy and Alex also had their invitations. Geddy sang a line on the charity record ‘Tears Are Not Enough’. Meanwhile, Alex added a couple of guitar solos to a Platinum Blonde album, ‘Alien Shores’. For Alex it was a refreshing change – the only person telling him what to play, was himself.

By the time the threesome got back together, at the Elora Sound studios in Southern Ontario, the fires of creativity had been lighted once more – not least because everyone loved the writing stage, brought in after the challenge of ‘Hemispheres’. “It has really shifted our focus, spending more time doing sketches before the final painting,” said Geddy. Indeed, the step had become Neil’s favourite activity. “It’s just us,” he said. “We just go away together and work very closely and tightly – and live and breathe new things, new songs and new ideas and possible directions.”

The mood was upbeat, and this was reflected in the styles of the songs. The first songs to come together – ‘Middletown Dreams’, ‘Big Money’, ‘Emotion Detector’ and ‘Mystic Rhythms’ were balanced affairs with no instrument having the upper hand; indeed, Alex showed he had learned the lesson of the past by preparing appropriate guitar solos in advance, particularly for ‘Emotion Detector’ and ‘Middletown Dreams’, rather than relying on spontaneous inspiration when his moment came in the studio. There were some electronic expedients – a “guitar riff” that opened ‘Big Money’ was to be a sample played by Geddy on the synth, but all in all things were balancing out.

Over time the unifying theme evolved of ‘power’, the first time the band had developed a single concept to link all the songs on an album. ‘Power Windows’ was the antithesis to ‘Grace Under Pressure’, suggesting hope where the former album had been about despair, but with a healthy dose of reality. “It’s perhaps a cynical view of people while remaining idealistic about life,” said Neil.

A few dates in Florida mid-March gave the opportunity to try out the new material in soundchecks. Peter had proposed engineer Jim “Jimbo” Barton, his insistence overruling Geddy’s desire to stick with Paul Northfield. “I was very stuck in my thing at that time,” says Peter. Jimbo saw the band perform for the first time at the Lee County Arena in Ft. Meyers. “I had no idea who they were, I burst out laughing!” he says. “I’d just come off Blancmange, I was shocked that this sort of thing still happened.” Like Peter, Jimbo was direct in expressing what he thought. “That’s where confidence of ignorance came in!”

Accompanied by the new producer and engineer, when the week was out Rush went back to Elora to record demos, and to start work on arrangements and pre-production. Neil was dabbling with electronics once again, experimenting with how he could make best use of his Simmons pads. There was one clear benefit – through sampling, Neil could make room for many more sounds than in the past. “I can have access to every percussion sound ever played (and some beyond), and still be able to reach them all! Paint cans, big sheets of metal, industrial sounds, pipes being struck – you name it!” As well as these, more esoteric noises, Neil took samples of a whole range of ethnic drums from Africa and elsewhere. “I rented a whole pile – some big giant ones covered with some strange kind of skin, some Indian tabla drums, and all different things,” said Neil.

Neil’s dabblings came at a cost, not least as he struggled over the manuals to understand how to burn the samples onto E-PROM chips. “I do not have a natural empathy with technological things – they often give me a headache,” he said, acknowledging that the hard reality of “hitting things with sticks” could never be replaced by a set of pads. “It’s not going to come even close to replacing my acoustic drums,” he said. Even if Neil wanted to, Peter wouldn’t have let him move too far from real drums. “He’s become very jaded about the Simmons sound,” said Neil. “He didn’t really want to hear it.”

Once pre-production was complete it was time to head over to England – another recommendation from Peter. The chosen location was Richard Branson’s Manor Studios, one of Peter’s favourite haunts, and a very different proposition to the rainy outback of South Wales. “You arrive with two Irish Wolfhounds to greet you,” says Peter. “It is just a fantastic sort of medieval atmosphere. Serving wenches, a big banqueting table and everything in excess!” The Manor offered a sure-fire way of creating a relaxed atmosphere, thinks Jimbo. “It was a very homely existence,” he says. “Richard Branson used to drop by to say hi!”

Astutely, Peter recognised that each player needed a kick-start. “I looked at each one of them and thought, what can we do here, to change this up,” says Peter, who gave little thought to the past or what the fans might think. “I didn’t have a great respect for the tradition of Rush, it didn’t mean very much to me.” Peter’s suggestions came fast and frequent, and the band were delighted to have someone telling them what to do. “I don’t touch the decks,” says Peter. “I sit there in the old tradition of producer and consider the arrangements and the performances and how the record is going to sound in the end.” As such the band could get on with what they were best at – the music – and they loved it. “The band did not show any tension at all,” says Peter. “It was fun from the outset.”

One of Peter’s first changes was to add a stage into the recording process. The traditional approach (of the threesome playing to a click-track) wasn’t ideal: Geddy and Alex found the click a distraction, wanting to play before or after the beat as the mood took them, while pace-setting Neil found his buddies to be the distraction. Peter proposed that Alex and Geddy laid down rough, regimented guitar and bass using the click; Neil could then play to this recording to capture his drums. This was ideal for single-minded Neil, who could focus on his own performance. The other advantage was for the engineer, explains Paul Northfield, who experienced the process on later albums. “You could punch in the drums,” says Paul. “If Neil is happy with the first half of the song but not happy with his overall performance, you can just spin the tape back and press play, he can play along, you hit the punch in button and then record.” As another change, Neil’s drum parts were recorded in the Stone Room at the Manor, acoustically different from anywhere he had recorded before. He didn’t let this phase him: having developed his rehearsal technique over the previous two albums, by the time Neil arrived in the studio every one of his performances was rehearsed to near-perfection. “There were no Neil overdubs ever,” says Jimbo. “As he would say, ‘unrewarding’ – he’d arrive, pass through the control room, sit down and you would hit ‘record’. Maybe there were three songs he did two takes at. We were sitting looking at him, saying to each other, what just happened?”

Once Neil had his parts down, it was time to build up the layers. Inevitably, there were some technical teething problems – Jack Secret managed to blow up Geddy’s keyboards by overlooking the voltage differences (“We didn’t get off to an auspicious start with the keys,” says Peter), and some issues with Geddy’s bass strings caused a bit of tension, but these were quickly overcome.

The band was spurred on by some early successes, notably with ‘Marathon’, which had proved difficult in the writing stages. “We thought, this song is going to be like pulling teeth once we get in the studio,” said Alex. “Of course, we get into the studio and it’s a breeze.”

Having put Neil in the Stone Room, Peter set about changing some of the fundamentals for the others. “With Alex I took away his pedal board to a large extent,” he says – initially dubious, Alex decided to go with it. “Peter suggested things that opened up directions that we wouldn’t normally pursue,” said Alex. “It was really an eye-opening experience to work with him.” Peter also suggested Geddy try his own Wal bass, which had a built-in battery preamp. “It was a very exciting bass in England at that time,” says Peter. “Nick Kershaw had used my Wal, it had a very distinctive sound, and I thought that would be quite a leap from the Ricky and the Fender.” Geddy already knew of Wal as Percy Jones used one – Percy played in one of Geddy’s favourite bands at the time, Brand X2.

Rhythmic keys and guitars were added, and any discomfort Alex might have had about his guitar sound was quickly laid to rest as Jimbo got to work. “He can very quickly translate a guitar sound you have in your mind to the console, so that you can actually hear it,” said Alex. “The sounds that we got were great and quite different for me – much cleaner, crisper sounds than I’ve ever had before.”

The atmosphere was relaxed, lots of fun was had, and for Geddy and Alex, the pair might as well have been back at school. Geddy’s quick wits were matched with Alex’s often maniacal ideas in displays of humour that Peter found hard to keep up with. “It is really, really incredible, wonderful, fast repartee,” says Peter. “Characters and language, the Rush language is something that will stay with me.” As things progressed, the band realised what they had found with Peter – the elusive “objective ear”. “Peter was very clear about what he liked and he didn’t mince words,” says Paul Northfield. “He didn’t come in and tell them the parts to play, he just would be very clear about whether he liked it, and whether he thought they were going in a good direction or not.” Whatever combination of qualities a producer needed, said Geddy, “I think we found him in Peter Collins.”

The posse moved from the Manor to Sarm East studios, back in central London, for the vocals and overdubs. Dave Meegan, then a junior engineer at Sarm, spent a day or so at the Manor to ensure no time would be wasted during the transition. “In Peter’s sessions, you couldn’t say to him when he walked in, oh, we’ll just be a half hour while we do this, you’d get the look of Satan!” he laughs. “That was the good thing, you knew you’d get decent hours with him, but you had to be shipshape.” Dave thought what he heard was great. “I remember hearing the tape when we came from Manor and it just sounded so really good, so energetic, I loved it.”

Peter coaxed a number of changes to the vocals, not least bringing them down a key or two. For the first time, Geddy also took the challenge of overdubbing some of his vocals, for added texture. All of these things needed careful handling – but Peter was the consummate people manager. Neil helped as well, ensuring the lyrics fitted the mood. “I’m very empathetic toward Geddy, who’s a real sounding board for my ideas,” said Neil at the time. “If there’s a line he just can’t get behind as a singer, I put it away.”

In the meantime, to fill the gaps, Alex tried out oil painting.

Once the basic tracks were recorded, Peter proposed the addition of certain “specialists”. There was ex-Strawbs keymeister Andy Richards for example, who’d worked with Frankie Goes To Hollywood and Grace Jones, brought in to provide the intro for ‘Big Money’. “It seemed to me that Geddy was more of a bass player than a keyboard player, by his own admission,” says Peter. Indeed, Geddy went along with it – and then some. “I remember Geddy putting a cape on him, a Rick Wakeman style cape, and Andy entered into the spirit of it all and got an incredible result.” Jimbo Barton recalls what it was like to work with Andy. “Spaces were left in the music for him,” says Jimbo. “He was amazingly talented, a great ideas guy – we’d open up tracks, hit record and let Andy go.”

The band had a lot of fun going touring Peter Collins’s favourite haunts from two decades in the business. Peter recommended strings for ‘Manhattan Project’ and ‘Marathon’, recorded at Abbey Road with a 30-piece orchestra (some of whom were jobbing musicians from the London Symphony Orchestra) and a 25-piece choir.

Once the London sessions were finished, George Martin’s efficiently run studios on the island paradise of Montserrat had been selected, to complete the guitars. Why Montserrat – well indeed, why ever not? “It might have been a reaction to ‘Grace Under Pressure’, but they just wanted to have fun and really enjoy making the record,” said Peter, who was happy to comply. There were no budget restrictions, so the most important thing was to ensure everyone got the most out of the studio time.

Alex used a Telecaster on most songs, having trialled the guitar on ‘Grace Under Pressure’, and despite the pressure to trim down the effects he used, he wasn’t prepared to give them up entirely. “I’m using effects a little less than I have in the past,” he conceded. “I’m starting to lean more towards a cleaner guitar sound.”

The trip was welcomed by everyone, but it wasn’t without some unexpected problems: not least Alex’s skin started reacting to the climate. “His hands swelled up so it was so painful for him to play,” says Peter. This wasn’t the only issue – as the sessions continued, the truth dawned that once again, the guitars had been left until last. All those gleeful overdubs, fun as they were, had left little room for Alex’s trademark sounds. “We just loaded that record with keyboards,” remembered Alex. “When it came time to do guitars, I really had a tough time trying to fit pieces in.”

If there was one issue Peter couldn’t resolve entirely, it was between Alex and his guitar. Alex the relaxed, Alex the outgoing was becoming Alex the fearful when it came to doing what he did best. “Alex seemed really, really confident as a person, but at times he was quite nervous about his guitar playing, bordering on being just a little bit edgy,” says Dave Meegan. “He was just a touch nervous of not impressing everyone in the room. Peter used to get him settled down each time, pretty sharpish.” All the same, the growing need for approval led to Alex’s solos becoming more democratically constructed than necessary.

“Everybody sort of dives in,” explained Alex. “Geddy likes to really get into doing that. He and the engineer sit down, and Neil makes some suggestions. Of course, the producer is there, too, and they piece together a solo. I come back in after a couple of hours when they have something assembled, and if I like it, then we either stick with it or we keep that as a starting point and go for another whirl over some of the older tracks.” Not that he saw that anything was particularly wrong. “I’m concentrating so hard on what I’m doing that I can’t possibly be objective,” he explained. “I’m better off if I go crazy on eight tracks, take a break from it, and then come in and listen to what they’ve assembled.”

Ultimately, it just wasn’t healthy. “I have a tendency to be a little bossy,” admitted Geddy, who was the polar opposite of Alex, in his own words, “The type of person that takes a back seat a lot of times.” All three were perfectionists, and all three were highly analytical about how they were doing, but Alex was just that little bit more susceptible to criticism than the others. Things nearly came unstuck with Alex’s prepared solo for ‘Emotion Detector’, as Neil blamed the solo for failing to give the song the right “feel”.

“That was tough,” said Alex. “It was so hard to divorce what had been in my head as a solo for three months and come up with something that was a totally different feel.” But the whole song was at fault, not just Alex’s parts. “We did our best but didn’t achieve what we wanted,” remarked Neil. Agreed Alex, “I’m still not really sold on that song. It never ended up sounding the way I had hoped it would.”

Despite feeling the squeeze, the experience with a hands-on, objective producer was very different and Alex was more comfortable going with the flow in the knowledge that he was being taken seriously. “For me, it’s always been very important to be a cohesive part of the band,” he said. “With ‘Power Windows’, I finally achieved that. With the way the songs were written and arranged, I felt much more tied in with the whole band, instead of being a single musical unit.”

A month of mixing took place back in Blighty: for Peter, it was the first time he had spent over three days on a single song, as was the case with ‘Big Money’. “It was definitely a difficult process, the mixing process,” says Peter, who was unused to what had become an over-democratised decision making process. “It’s all those little things that everybody gets fired up about,” says Alex. “Moments that go by that don’t really do anything for the song, but if you listen to it on headphones or in your car, suddenly you notice them.” There were very few arguments, however – not least, to defuse any tension there was the daily cigar challenge to contend with. “I always associate mixing that record with the cigar testing time,” says Peter. “Geddy was staying near a cigar shop, we had a chart and he was bringing new cigars every day.” To compete, Dave Meegan was sent out on errands to come back with bigger and better cigars. “Pete wouldn’t have let it get into an argument anyway I don’t think,” says Dave. “He would have defused it, sorted it out.”

And it was done. Six months was the longest time Peter had spent on an album, but he’d loved every minute. “Enormous fun,” he says. “My experience of pop music was, no loyalty to anybody: you get in and out fairly quickly, hope for a hit and move on. This was the first time I had ever worked with guys that had been together for a long time, that truly loved each other and had a team of people that had been with them a long time as their crew.” Dave Meegan was also impressed by the chemistry. “It was definitely a total, total unit where everybody was as powerful as any other part,” says Dave. “They all seemed very focused towards one thing. I don’t know what that one thing was, but they were all doing something and they were all 100% committed to it!”

Overall, the “overproduced-like- crazy” (according to Neil) ‘Power Windows’ cost $325,000 to record, with $80,000 being spent on the trips to the UK and Montserrat. Like so many before, the album was mastered by Bob Ludwig in New York, supported by Geddy to ensure the quality of the results, extending his overseeing role to the most final of final mixes. It was a busy album but a good one, as Neil re-discovered ten years later. “I found it dizzying,” he said. “There was so much stuff coming at you all the time. Which was great for the record and it works, and I still really like that album.”

The cover concept was down to Hugh Syme once again, who planned a painted project. “My father had just passed away and I really felt like digging into a painting, which is always very personal and very consuming,” says Hugh. The original concept was thought-provokingly uncluttered and simple – just a boy (modelled by an off-duty junior stockbroker) with a TV remote control, aimed out of a window – the TV itself was added through Geddy’s insistence. Hugh later realised Geddy was right, for two reasons. “From a commercial standpoint, the icons of those old televisions were lovely, recognisable,” he says. “It also had a Marshall McLuhan4 nod to the power window that television is, so it all made sense.” The cover still required location shots – this was no imaginary room. “Dimo Safari and I tirelessly searched locations to find the right window and cedar floorboards,” says Hugh. “We ‘auditioned’ several vintage televisions from several collectors that Dimo had been acquainted with 5.”

In September, a video of ‘Big Money’ was released, directed by Robert Quartly and produced by Geddy’s brother Allan. Neil had to play live – it’s difficult to fake hitting things with sticks. Afterwards Neil went off to cycle from Munich to Venice with some friends, via the Alps. When he came back, it was straight back into the tour rehearsals, interspersed with another video – this time for ‘Mystic Rhythms’, directed by Gerald Casale. “He found some weird toys in this shop in London,” according to Geddy. “Everything he said it was going to be, it ended up being which very rarely happens.” ‘Power Windows’ was released on 26 October 1985, “brought to you by the letter M” as many of the songs started with the letter. Thanked on the cover was Jim Burgess, who had supported Geddy throughout his keyboard initiation. ‘Big Money’ was released as a single on both sides of the Atlantic, reaching Billboard Number 45 on 9 November 1985, and ‘Power Windows’ peaked in the album charts at Number 4. By December 18 the album had gone gold, selling 500,000 copies; a month later, 27 January 1986, it had gone platinum at a million copies sold worldwide. Not a bad result. Once again, MTV offered Rush the opportunity to participate in a contest; once again, the offer was politely declined. They wouldn’t be asked again.

Not only could they go anywhere they liked, they decided, but neither did they have to go anywhere they didn’t, fixing an itinerary of the North American continent only. The band required a couple of extra months to prepare, given the additional complexity of the songs, many of which could only be played with the support of samplers and sequencers. Jim Burgess organised an Emulator keyboard to call up specific samples at specific times. “Things got so complicated that I thought it would be impossible to remember everything,” said Geddy, who worked with Jim developing colour charts to choreograph the samples. “We assigned different colours to each block of the KX76, so when we did, say, ‘Big Money’, I’d flip the chart. It turns out to be a lot easier to memorize than I thought it would be. If you can memorize a thousand notes in a song, it isn’t too hard to memorize four different colours.”

This was also a time for major transitions in the lighting technology. Howard having quite deliberately, wanted to “exhaust all the possibilities of the moving light world,” he took the plunge into a brave new world of electronics-based lighting. “It was like moving from vinyl to CD,” he says, “a revelation.”

Eventually the tour started in Maine on December 4. It lasted until May, the band playing a sedate ten days a month. Support band Marillion had been invited back on some of the tour dates, despite the reception from fans last time around. “They came back and said, please do it,” recalls Marillion keyboardist Mark Kelly. “On the opening night there was a bottle of champagne in our dressing room, saying welcome to the tour, hope you enjoy it!”

Every night of the tour Tony Geranios was constantly on his toes, loading samples from 5” disks into the sequencers for the different songs. Technology, and its tendency to cause human error, got the better of the band on more than one occasion. Fan Michael Ordaz remembers the gig in Austin, Texas on 18 January. “Midway through ‘Middletown Dreams’, Geddy was late triggering the sequencers, thus throwing everybody off and bringing the song almost to a stop! I am sure that Neil was upset. I was in total shock!”

On at least one occasion, Tony remembers having to play a sample himself, because the trigger failed or some other error crept in. “He used to be sat at the back of stage in a pit behind some black curtains, with a shitload of keyboards, loads of Emulator 3’s and stuff,” says Mark Kelly. “He claimed all he ever had to do was put disks in drives and set up programs. I know he played some stuff, because if you were listening very carefully, you could hear keyboards playing and Geddy was nowhere near them!” It was all quite understandable, according to Mark, “It wasn’t anything like a big deal, I didn’t think – a-haa!! – it was just the way he was so adamant that he never did anything. I suppose that was all part of the thing, it was important that it felt for them, they stayed a three- piece. They succeeded 99% of the time, and they got a huge sound for a three-piece, whichever way you look at it!”

It was true – it might have been a compromise, all the same it sounded awesome. “The band was trying to get the maximum, both musically and lyrically, out of their tunes, an experiment in expanding the textures and music,” says Tony Geranios. While his guitar was losing prominence on a number of the new songs, Alex frequently found himself picking up bass duties. Despite these inconveniences, the tour was a lot of fun, helped along by a constant flow of silliness. Not that this meant overdoing it. “We did have a bowling for bimbos night,” says Mark Kelly. “There were no bimbos… it was more bowling and drinking.” It was all a far cry from the hedonistic earlier days – but they’d tried that and didn’t particularly want to do it for ever. Having tried out oil painting in the duller times at the studio, Alex planned to try watercolours on the road – in the end though, he settled for tennis with Geddy. “Geddy and I like to get up early and play racquetball or tennis,” said Alex. “Exercise wakes you up and makes you feel a little healthier.”

Neil had also found his own way to avoid his touring demons. Not least he kept up his cycling, frequently choosing to bike the final hundred miles to the tour hotel rather than travel on the tour bus. In March 1986, he held his first ever drum clinic on the band’s second LA date – he really had relaxed sufficiently to parade himself in public.

Indeed, through his relationship with Modern Drummer, he was opening up considerably. He had written columns, personally answered letters he was sent, and was good friends with a number of the staff. Taking a step further he held an essay contest in the magazine, the main prize being his Tama kit. He laughed, “The only trouble was that I had to read 4,625 essays!”

The three musicians were building relationships that would stand them in good stead for the future. While on tour, Neil got to know Rod Morgenstein, drummer with the support act the Steve Morse Band, and jazz bassist Jeff Berlin came to visit the band one night. Jeff unconsciously gave Geddy some lessons as he was backstage, not to mention a reminder of where his musical heart lay. “I had the opportunity to watch him goofing around with a bass, and was just amazed at his knowledge of bass chords,” says Geddy. “That’s something I had never really exploited in my playing, so he inspired me to play around more with it. He probably doesn’t know it, and would be embarrassed to hear it.”

After the tour, Neil biked through Switzerland with his brother, Dan. Meanwhile Alex moved house, and took the opportunity to build a more soundproof studio, “a fully floating room built within a room.” Alex’s own solo prospects were drawing inexorably closer.