Rush - Chemistry

Time Stand Still

Seven Months.

When grown men start getting big on DIY, it can mean one of three things. First, they’ve always been a bit homey and they know where their slippers are. Second, the place is falling down and has left them no choice. Or perhaps third, they’ve lost some of the perspective on what they are doing, and they need a period of procrastination to give their subconscious time to breathe.

Geddy bought a cottage in this period, and was doing the décor.

Never one to miss out on a good break, Neil was delighted to have time for the things he’d been dabbling in – cycling in general, and writing about it in particular. He’d cycled from Munich to Venice, from Barcelona to Bordeaux, and latterly from Calgary to Vancouver. “A cyclist is obviously a harmless eccentric,” he’d said, a role he felt he fitted perfectly. Neil had kept notes as he went, writing them up as a series of books that were shown only to his family and friends, with titles such as ‘The Golden Lion’ (in 1987), followed by ‘Raindance Over The Rockies’. “The nice thing about travel writing is that it encompasses anything you damn well want to throw in there,” he’d said. His books had always been self-published, and distributed to friends and colleagues – there was little interest from mainstream publishers, and besides, he didn’t feel his writing was quite ready for a wider audience.

In November 1988 Neil went to Cameroon with specialist “holiday” company Cycle Africa. Drumming was part of the culture in some places he visited, and Neil just couldn’t resist joining in. “I’ve had some situations where the whole village just gets dancing and laughing and pointing and screaming and just can’t believe what they’re seeing, but at the same time still having a great time with it.” He documented his experiences in a new book he had called ‘The Masked Rider’. “That one, strangely enough for me, represented the turning point,” said Neil, “the only one I could look at a year later and still like.”

While Neil’s horizons were opening, Alex still lacked just a little distance. Back home, SRO general manager Val Azzoli sensed Alex needed a return to his roots, so he proposed that the guitarist produce and mix a five-track EP for SRO signing, Clean Slate. “I wanted him to get back to, hey listen, we got eight dollars to make this record,” said Val. “We can’t record in Montserrat and Paris and Istanbul. We got a dingy little studio at 40 dollars an hour. Ya got three weeks. You’re not gonna sleep… Remember this? By doing that he realises all he’s got is a guitar, an amp and a lotta coffee, just like the old days in-between tours. He’s now in the mood of, ‘Hey I got an idea, fuck the outboard gear, I’m back to guitar and fingers!’” Once the six-month period was over, the trio met up at Neil’s place to find out what conclusions each had drawn. “There was no sense of compulsion about it – it was simply a question of what we wanted to do,” recalled Neil. “We decided what we wanted to do was make another record… without any obligations on us, we found we were still excited about making music together, and truly wanted to make something new.”

The decision was – let’s rock. “As much as we like to get heady or pseudointellectual, the reason we play in a band is because we like to play rock,” said Geddy. “We like to play hard rock. I think that’s the one thing you’d get the three of us to agree on: we don’t want to be wimpy. So I guess whenever we feel like we’re getting too old for it, something in us rebels and wants to kick some butt!” There was a battle to fight, the kid gloves were off: the enemy was the bland, MTV-ised music that plagued the airwaves. “We’re in this homogenous zone of the most boring fucking music I’ve heard in my life,” said Val Azzoli. “Radio is not listening to the kids, which is a fundamental mistake society is making as well.”

Faced with whether they were getting too old for it, they were philosophical. “I think the age barrier in rock ‘n’ roll has gone,” said Geddy. “I think the bottom line is whether or not you sell records.” Speaking of which, the live album ‘A Show of Hands’ was released in January 1989, and Larry had got the shots he wanted for the live video. “When I delivered the Rush cut, there were not that many changes,” he says. The video was finally released in October 1989, with a preview night held at a number of selected cinemas. Geddy thoroughly enjoyed the experience of what the band looked like. “I never get to see us,” he said. “There are effects and magical moments I’d never known were happening.”

The bigger business beckoned for Val Azzoli, who left his post at SRO to go work for Atlantic Records as General Manager. Shortly after this, SRO started negotiating a new record deal – with Atlantic Records. While Val may have helped the process, there were many other reasons for the decision – not least the refreshing attitude of the label’s founder, Ahmet Ertegun. “We got to get you playing jazz,” said Ahmet. “We are NOT a typical band,” said Geddy. “We’re regarded as difficult because we have low-key lifestyles. We went to Atlantic because they are more music orientated. We just needed a fresh start!”

There was the inevitable litigation between Phonogram and Atlantic for the rights to previous recordings, but that was for the management to deal with – the boys had music to make.

It was 1989, and as the decade came to a close much had been happening with music, with post-rock, post-goth and post-hair-metal bands such as U2, The Cult and Guns ‘n’ Roses all demonstrating (in their own ways) that it was time for things to come down to earth. “Suddenly nobody cared anymore about any new keyboard, the whole music industry suddenly moved back to raw guitars, live drums,” says Paul Northfield. “Guns ‘n’ Roses came back in to fashion and we moved back to a whole sensitivity of raw-energy playing.”

Inevitably, some of this was rubbing off on the trio that now found themselves a decade and a half into their careers. As Alex started preparations at his home studio, he happily decided less was more, meaning no keyboards and minimal effects. “I made a rule that I’m not gonna plug into a single synthesizer or keyboard, though I use a Roland G-10 for drum patterns,” he said. “The stuff that I’ve been doing just on my own has been really raw, no chorus on guitars, no echoes.” It wasn’t just about keyboards, but to get away from effects in general, as he put it, his “10-year dependency on chorus” that had first started with ‘A Farewell To Kings’.

Geddy was also stripping things back, and the starting point was his bass. “Keyboards can be quite a passive writing tool, and we wanted something more forceful and less pastoral,” said Geddy. “I wrote a lot more on bass, which reminded me of the old days when there was nothing more to write on.” This was a genuine rebellion, and not just a whim: “I was getting sick and tired of working with computers and synthesizers,” said Geddy, who set out a similar agenda for the vocals. “I wanted to focus on writing very strong vocal melodies first,” he explained. “In my mind there was a lot of emphasis on what the melody would be and how to layer the harmonies and I really experimented in that area.”

While Alex and Geddy were getting fired up however, Neil was becoming a little introspective. Not least, following his extensive travels, he feared for his ability to perform at the expected levels. He needn’t have worried: “After so many years of playing, and especially so many years of touring, the muscle memory is intense,” said Neil. “All I really had to do was get some calluses back on my hands. It was nowhere near as difficult as I thought it was going to be.”

Having erased any doubts about whether he could play, his mind turned to how he was playing: increasingly he had been finding that his consummate capabilities were starting to feel more like a constraint. “I spent 20 years on technique and on learning the finer points of keeping good time, developing tempo and shadings of rhythmic feel, and keeping my mind open to other ethnic music and other drummers,” he said. “When I finally became confident in my playing, all of these things finally came together. I had to step back from that 20-year quest for knowledge and ask myself, do I really enjoy using all this stuff?” As with Neil’s Jeff Berlin experiences, it helped to work outside his normal framework. “I have a friend who writes TV and film music, for instance. He was writing a lot of slide guitar stuff with old blues patterns, and he called me to play on it,” he said. “I had to play a lot of brushes, and all I did was what he told me. It was great. There was no weight on my shoulders, no responsibility, easy.”

Following the time at home, the trio headed off to Chalet Studio, in the countryside northeast of Toronto, to work out some ideas and to tune back into each others’ thought processes. Run by David Chester, Chalet was an old, white, board-clad farm house, surrounded by farmland. The main studio was in a converted barn, big and glassy like Le Studio, with beautiful views that were offset only slightly by the nuclear reactors on the skyline.

The band quickly settled into its favourite phase – writing together – this time using the guitar as the starting point rather than the keys. “On past albums we tended to write a lot with keyboards and then apply the other instruments afterwards,” said Neil. “We thought it would be more interesting to be a bit more linear and do the writing around the guitar framework, and thinking of it as an ensemble as guitar, bass, and drums. Not be reactionary – we don’t omit keyboards as a point of principle. To the contrary, we will probably use keyboards as much as ever, but the focus will be different.”

For Alex, for now, this was enough of a step. “I think we’ve ended the development of keyboards and texture,” said Alex. “We needed to try it. We were quite happy with it, but now it’s time to move on to something else, and what we needed to do was take a step back and re-examine what the core of the band was, and what’s always fired us along.” Bass, drums and guitar – sounds good, and they weren’t the only ones to think so.

When it came to fixing a producer, the boys were reluctant to give up Peter Collins, but they didn’t have to make the decision – Peter made it for them. “He told us that he felt his own career needed more variety and scope, and reluctantly bowed out,” said Neil. That was a bit of a fib, from Peter’s perspective anyway, as he wasn’t sure he’d been that good for the band. ‘Hold Your Fire’ had been moderately successful, but had not done as well as previous albums and Peter blamed himself. “I felt badly for them at that point, that I had somehow let them down,” says Peter. “Geddy did call me, and I said maybe it would be better for them if they went with somebody else.”

Disappointedly, the hunt for a producer began again. At this time they started with a shortlist, and near the top was Rupert Hine, who they’d approached a couple of albums before; Neil also had a taste for Rupert’s own albums. Rupert was a natural fit, thinks Paul Northfield. “He would have fitted sonically and ideas-wise in a very good way, if they had ever wanted a fourth member of the band.” All the same Rupert had turned down the opportunity previously, and this time he still wasn’t sure what he could bring to this hard rock band. “A couple of people that represented them at the time, thwarted me on that argument by saying, well, I produced Saga,” says Rupert.

Finally, the producer took a listen to their more recent output. “I realised there was nothing actually very obviously heavy rock about them at all,” he says. Indeed, relative to his expectations of what they should sound like, as well as what was happening in music at the time, he was aghast. “All I seemed to be listening to, was keyboards, keyboards, keyboards, keyboards, bass and drums, and I suppose there must have been some guitar in there. It was beginning to be a bit dated.” From a keyboard player himself, this was saying something.

Still, as Rupert realised he had more in common with Rush than he had expected, he thought it might be worth a crack, agreeing to meet the guys at the rehearsal studio. As he listened to the rough cuts, Rupert started to laugh, recalled Neil, “We looked at each other, eyebrows raised as if to say: he thinks our songs are funny? Evidently it was a laugh of pleasure; he stayed ‘til the end.” As far as the musicianship was concerned, Rupert was astounded, in particular with Neil’s capabilities. “When we first played the tape, he thought I overdubbed the whole thing,” said Neil. Not likely!

Like his predecessor Peter, Rupert was both a conceptual producer and a forthright individual, and he needed to say certain things before he committed to the project. First there were Geddy’s vocals. “I had a thing about those up on the ceiling, heavy metal, squeaky voices,” he says. “They set my teeth on edge.” He sat down with Geddy and they talked it through. “Quite shockingly and tremendously invitingly, Geddy said, so, what are you saying, what would you do to change that? And he said, after missing a beat, apart from firing the singer!” Half jokingly, Rupert suggested singing the songs a whole octave down. “You wouldn’t even have to change the key!” Both Rupert and Geddy were well aware of the potential dangers of changing style. “It was a dangerous thing to discuss,” says Rupert. “I knew they might lose legions of fans, who only bought the records because Geddy was up there in the Robert Plant range and that’s what they loved. It wouldn’t sound like Geddy Lee anymore.” Geddy, again very bravely, said, “Well, why don’t we experiment, it’ll be something new.”

Second there was that keyboard thing. “I said, given that you were probably last doing power trio stuff when you were much heavier, it might be really cool to hear the kind of thing you’ve been doing in recent years, but stripped back to being guitar, bass and drums.” This was an easy one for the band to agree – then it was the band’s turn to state its position. “Neil said, we don’t talk about singles, and we don’t talk about radio,” says Rupert. “That’s pretty empowering to a producer.” The band also wanted to meet Rupert’s engineer, Stephen Tayler, flying him in for the purpose.

Having agreed the approach and settling on a production team, the decision was made. “We were united in our rebellion,” said Geddy.

In the confinement of his room, Neil worked out the lyrics to ‘Presto’ – an appropriately allegorical title for the fresh new style the band was planning to pull out of the hat – as well as ‘The Pass’ and ‘Red Tide’. Meanwhile, Geddy and Alex used a drum machine as a surrogate, sometimes with little consideration for how a drummer might play the piece. Not least for ‘Scars’: “They put all kinds of percussion on the track, including congas, timbales, and bongos,” said Neil. “We talked about bringing in a percussionist to play in addition to the drum pattern I might play.” Geddy and Alex suggested he try playing it himself, using his pads: ever one for a challenge, he did. “I was playing eight different pads with my hands in a pattern, while I played snare and bass drum parts with my feet,” he said. “I was using paradiddles with my hands to get the accents in the right place and on the right pads. Then I had to organise the different sounds on the pads correctly so they would fall in the order I wanted them to. Then I had to arrange all of that into a series of rhythmic patterns, not just one. It was more than a day’s work before I even played a note.”

A week before the band decamped to the studio proper, it was time to get Rupert Hine and Stephen Tayler involved. Rupert couldn’t believe the lengthy timescales. “I have never spent more than three months making an album in my entire life,” says Rupert, who strongly suggested the band reduce the amount of studio time they had booked. “Blimey, gee, we can’t do that!” they said, or words to that effect – finally they agreed to book no longer than six months. Following a week finishing off pre- production work, it was time to return to Le Studio at Morin Heights. The winter was already setting in, recalls Rupert, “The famous lake behind the studio was frozen over, although I never quite fancied going and testing it!”

Stephen Tayler’s first job was to deal with the sonic setups, in particular for the drums. “Being such a word master, Neil was really into describing what he wanted to hear in a very powerful way,” says Stephen. “Some musicians, particularly ones who are very hands on, might come up and say, well do you know I really think that tom-tom needs a little bit more 4k, but Neil wasn’t really like that. He would come and say, ‘I want the tom-tom to sound more “green”’, and that is incredibly helpful, it’s more descriptive than somebody else trying to imagine the technique required to achieve what they want to hear.” As Stephen and Neil found a way of communicating, a level of trust developed between them. “Then they all seemed more than happy to just forget about that side of it and let him handle it,” says Rupert. “So they left Stephen very much to handle the sounds.”

The band stuck with Peter Collins’s method of recording each instrument separately. Musical arrangements were kept simple, encouraged by the shorter timescales and helped by Rupert’s coaxing for the boys to let go. “When we record we tend to go after perfect performances,” explained Geddy. “We get so perfectly tight in synch that when we fall short, it hits our ear like an error.” But, he admitted, few others could hear the difference. Gently but determinedly, Rupert prised them out of the detail and into the groove. “Rupert’s sensibility as to when a performance is feeling in a groove and when one is a little too stiff, was the most helpful,” remarked Geddy, who adopted the phrase, “Perfect is the enemy of good.” “They were very, very impressed by the way backing track sessions came together sonically,” says Rupert. “They got visibly very excited about that, it was quite noticeable.”

In parallel, Rupert had noticed how Geddy and Neil had democratised Alex’s performances. “There’s a very Virgoan side to both Geddy and Neil, sort of fastidious,” says Rupert. “Alex is an intuitive player, much better left blundering around on his own; he’d naturally like to keep the comedy of errors, the happy accidents. The amount of control they showed, felt like it was holding Alex down. What had started being supportive had grown to being slightly invasive – Alex was almost being provoked into having to substantiate any of his ideas verbally, and in advance of actually doing them.”

Neil and Geddy brought out the best and the worst of Alex. By pushing him forward, they were also playing on his open character, his desire to please those around him. “Alex has got a huge, very open heart, and it was as if, as soon as he had played, any criticism would be immediately taken on board,” says Rupert. “He’d try to deal with it, as if he was totally unaware that it might be filling in the things that he might just fill in for himself.” Alex didn’t want to rock the boat, “I’m a little bit lazy and I like … I like things to be smooth,” he would remark. Rupert moved to reorganise things, ensuring at least that Alex had the space he needed to express himself.

At the same time, Rupert and Geddy worked on the vocal approach. “We wanted it to be more of a singer’s album,” said Geddy. “It was very helpful to have someone who was so versed in songwriting.” Geddy tried the lower range, and found it was good. “When you’re in the conversational range, you’re much more easily able to express yourself,” says Rupert. “He did appreciate that, once he got over the slight awkwardness. He was feeling a bit odd, I think he felt too exposed.” In the end Geddy did not lower his voice on every track, but he did on several.

There were few of the trickier times of previous albums – the dynamic between band members wasn’t perfect, but it was perfectly acceptable. Resident engineer Simon Pressey remembers the studio sessions as a constant stream of good times. “Working with Rush isn’t really work, it’s an opportunity to do what you love, and do it as well as you can,” says Simon. “We had many great laughs, meals, jokes, excellent moments, generous spirit and lasting memories. Be it building a scale model of Iraq out of snow with Alex (during the first Gulf invasion), learning the power of self-discipline by example from Neil or being treated as an equal by Geddy and the ensuing rush of confidence that allowed me to rise to the occasion. With Rush, I learned to laugh at myself and make the most of the moment.” It helped that there seemed to be a constant flow of birthday parties. “Rupert’s and my birthdays are not far apart, not the same year, so we kept on having birthday celebrations!” says Stephen.

As the album progressed, some of the hard-fought principles began to waver. There were a number of gaps, empty spaces that seemed to be crying out to be filled – by keyboards. “In the end, we couldn’t resist using them for colour,” said Geddy. Even Alex’s resistance waned. “When we’d start working we’d go along, and I’d go along with things. Even if I wasn’t quite sure that I was feeling right about a particular decision or not, quite often I’d just go along with it.” This created textures which Alex took as competition, which perhaps explains some of the very clean, bright guitar sounds he used. “We were peaking on our keyboard explorations at that time, so I gravitated to a sound that was a little more biting to get through that.” Additional keys were played by Jason Sniderman, an old friend of Geddy’s.

The end often justifies the means, and the whole band was very pleased with the resulting album (despite there being no instrumental, to Neil’s chagrin). All felt ‘The Pass’ was one of the best songs they’d ever written – Neil’s lyrics, Geddy’s arrangements and Alex’s guitars all came together to show where the band could go from here. “‘Presto’ is kind of a renewal to me,” said Geddy. “It’s a renewal of energy and a positive outlook, in musical terms and in personal terms, both in my place in the band and my feeling about recording.”

Having booked six months in the studio, the album was completed in four. “All the studio time put together didn’t exceed three months,” says Rupert. “They thought it was a miracle!” The band were delighted but Rupert, who had refrained from being too hands-on, felt slightly bemused. “I had to proclaim, I’m not sure I have really been worth the money…” Neil’s response was pointed. “Yeah, but you were there when we had questions. It’s not a question of quantity, it’s about being there at the right time.”

Mixing time had been booked at The Farmyard, a UK studio that was co-owned by Rupert. “We heard part way through the recording that his partner had sold the studio and that it was not going to be available,” says Stephen. “This was a bit of a blow, Rupert and I had done all our projects for about the previous 8 years in this one place, it was like home, and Rupert had really sold the concept of coming over to England.” Quickly the pair had to find somewhere else to mix, and they opted for the Metropolis, in London. “It literally had just opened, and on paper and judging by phone calls it sounded great,” says Stephen. “That was a bit of a risk, us going into a place we didn’t know. Actually it turned out really, really, well. We were very happy.”

Following the mixing sessions in September 1989, Neil popped back to Togo, Ghana and the Ivory Coast for another cycling jaunt while Atlantic set about making the most of their new signing. ‘Presto’ was released on 18 November to reasonable if not overwhelming success in both the US and the UK charts, reaching #20 and #27 respectively. All the same the release by this newly invigorated band, indicated how important the music still was to Rush, despite selling over a million albums a year and, it was claimed, earning $10 million just by sitting still.

The boys gave themselves a few weeks off for Christmas, and after the break they were even looking forward to going on tour! However, despite best efforts and the three-piece approach to writing, the band was still unsure it could reproduce its newer sounds on stage. “We weren’t sure that we could pull off all the vocal and keyboard parts,” explained Geddy, “In the end we figured our fans would rather see us struggle with technology than get another guy in.” The determination to preserve the integrity of the three-piece went way beyond the bounds of duty – many other, equally competent bands, such as Genesis, had no such qualms – but the same factor that had kept the threesome together was unable to contemplate the use of outsiders. “We didn’t want to disrupt our chemistry,” said Alex, who had his own fair share of triggered samples.

Following the New Year, preparations for the tour began in earnest. By now the band was playing mainly arenas, and the sets had to be created and co- ordinated accordingly. As Howard, Nick, Robert and the rest of the crew put together the sets and co-ordinated the equipment rosters, so Alex, Geddy and Neil rehearsed the new material until it was up to performance standard.

Off they went on 15 February 1990, this time with 70 dates booked; with them for the first time was photographer Andrew MacNaughtan, acting as their personal assistant. “It was the chance of a lifetime, to go on the road with a rock and roll band,” he says. The reality quickly replaced any fantasy, however. “I can unequivocally state that they are the most boring band on the road,” says Andrew. “We would leave the concert, get on the bus, eat hotdogs, watch a movie and go to bed. They’re three boring guys, there isn’t chicks, there isn’t parties, it’s not them!”

When the ‘Presto’ tour came to a close at the end of June 1990, the band had earned $16 million, a quarter of which was made on merchandise sales. The band celebrated with the crew by going – bowling. “We’ve learned that touring can still be fun if it’s done properly and you have the right attitude about it,” explained Alex.

At the close of the tour, for a change, the band were gagging to get back into the studio: so much so, the threesome arranged to reunite before the official end of the break. The less meticulous approach, a combination of the band’s reaction to the past, Rupert’s intervention and a reflection of the musical trends of the times, was indication enough that the band found its groove. “I think part of it was because we’re finally comfortable with the notion that Rush is all we need to satisfy ourselves musically,” remarked Neil. “I think it was something we always knew, but nobody ever dared to verbalize it until Geddy expressed it to me when we were writing the album.”

With all this said, the band felt they could push the envelope further. The efficiency of ‘Presto’ had been an insight into what the band could achieve, and they were convinced they could do better next time. They hadn’t seen nothin’.