Rush - Chemistry

Under Pressure

For continuity’s sake, the band decided to stay local – to work on new material at the Horseshoe Valley rehearsal studios in Southern Ontario, before heading to the now- familiar Le Studio. Early in the writing sessions it became clear that the album wasn’t going to be about bluebirds and posies. “We went for more of an aggressive sound,” said Alex, who had more than a little tension to get out of his system.

For Neil, any implied tension was more of a reaction to what he saw around him. “The mid-80s were difficult times, economically, and people were losing jobs, having trouble getting work, having relationship problems and all that,” he said. Every morning at breakfast, Neil would read the Toronto daily papers before he spent time on the lyrics. “The world looked dark,” he said, so a dark album it became, with dark lyrics and as importantly, dark music. Uncertainty about the future was a global phenomenon, somehow reflecting the mid-life situation Rush found itself in – the issues of the day became an opportunity for transference, with Neil’s conceptual lyrics reflecting what he saw as well as externalising the band’s own fears about the future.

Musically speaking, the only direction the band knew to take was in reaction to ‘Signals’, balancing new with old. Things had moved on in the 18 months since they’d last been in the studio however, not least in the domain of the keyboard. “We went into the studio with a whole different arsenal of studio equipment,” said Neil. “The synthesizers that they have now that can take any sound in the world, synthesize it and modulate it for you, and it’s just… ridiculous!” Ridiculously tempting for Geddy, who continued to seek inspiration from the ivories. “Of all the instruments that I play at home, I end up playing keyboards more than anything because it’s such a challenge,” he said. “It’s also more satisfying than playing bass on my own. A bass is a lonely instrument on its own, but with synthesizers, you can put up a sound and bathe yourself in it. Who needs anyone else?”

The result was that Geddy was writing far more on keyboards than with guitar, transposing what he had written for the stringed instruments. Or not – Geddy and the others weren’t going to restrict access to the keys. “At times their role is to enhance a fundamental three-piece sound, but at other times they come to the forefront – theirs must be the primary sound,” he explained. “I don’t think any of us are content to be a guitar-oriented band any more; not with all the music that’s going on now and with all the refreshing sounds that are being made.” Geddy took one lesson from the last tour – to write in a way that could be played live. “Almost every time I had a right- hand keyboard part, I would write a bass pattern for the left hand, even if it was basic, just to get into the habit of doing it,” said Geddy. “That way I could set up different bass sounds too.”

Neil was also trying out a few electronic items, not least a Simmons drum kit, but he wasn’t convinced it could replace a “real” set. “You want to know about the new technology, what it can do, if it can do anything for you, and at least know either way,” he said of electronic drums. “There just isn’t near the satisfaction or the involvement with them. I feel like I’m hitting them, but I don’t feel like I’m with them the way I do with my real drums.” Before going into the studio proper, at the end of September 1983 Rush played a series of high profile gigs at New York’s Radio City Music Hall. “We figured we’d take a big chance,” remarked Neil. “We hadn’t played live at that time for about three months through all the writing and holidays and so on, and we were going to go right out of that period onto one of the biggest, most prestigious stages in the world.” As well as debuting some new material (with Alex improvising solos on the fly), the band also attempted a number of new equipment setups. “It was fairly risky, but I think it worked out very well. I think that we were all kind of dizzy when we got out of it.” Not so well for UK band Marillion who were playing support – they hadn’t before experienced the zeal of Rush fans.

Following the gigs and buoyed up by the live experience, the band returned to Horseshoe Valley to complete pre-production. Two weeks before the band decamped to Morin Heights to start recording however, calamity struck. Steve Lillywhite called and said he wasn’t comfortable working with Rush after all. With little time left before the allotted studio time at Morin Heights, the band and SRO worked on filling the gap, jokingly borrowing an action figure (named “Roger Kneebend”) from Geddy’s son Julian, and adopting him as surrogate producer.

After almost 50 interviews, the band happened upon Peter Henderson, a UK- based producer/engineer who had cut his teeth working with Paul McCartney and Supertramp. Time was running short when Peter was invited over to see whether he gelled with the guys. “We spent three days together at a rehearsal complex,” says Peter. “A day was spent talking and chatting, and a couple of days playing tennis!” Peter was highly competent, amicable and congenial, and most of all he was available – so he got the call. “We really hadn’t found what we were looking for, but we couldn’t wait any longer and had to get on with the record,” Geddy remarked.

When Peter arrived, the band had already created demo versions of ‘The Enemy Within’ and ‘Distant Early Warning’9: there was just time for a final week in pre- production before the ensemble headed off to Morin Heights. “Everything was written,” says Peter, who found the whole situation a little alien. “It was a strange juxtaposition. Rush came from working with one guy, I came from working with one band – I wasn’t that confident, and it took a bit of time to get the band’s trust.” For Peter it was like jumping onto a moving train – inevitably he took time to get up to speed.

Peter saw that he had little choice but fit in with the band’s chosen approach. Not that the band made him unwelcome, far from it – in their own way of course. “Alex was immediately outgoing, warm, incredibly funny, easy to get on with,” says Peter. “Geddy was a lot more retiring – harder to please, but as you get to know him he’s incredibly nice. Neil was the hardest one to know, it took a lot of time before I bonded with him.” In watching how they dealt with others, Peter really understood how things were. “They treated everybody so respectfully – the fans, the technical crew,” he says. “I’d never seen that before – fans would call up and they’d be on the phone for an hour!”

On arrival at Le Studio, the four fellows were greeted by resident engineer Paul Northfield, together with assistants Frank Opolko and Robert Di Gioia. “I remember hearing those demos and thinking, why are they re-recording?” says Frank, who was experiencing the band’s attention to detail for the first time. It quickly became clear to Frank that this was not going to be a picnic – he would have to earn his place. “Alex could be sullen and hard to talk to,” says Frank. Geddy also was quiet: “although he said little in the studio his presence was great – you did your best.”

And so, to business. First the band played as a threesome to a click-track, to get the drum tracks down. “Neil did his drum parts fairly quickly and efficiently. Almost machine-like – like the man himself!” says Frank. “There was not one wasted drum pass – always solidly locked to Geddy’s amazing snakey bass lines. It was very hypnotic to follow these two.” Nothing was foregone in pursuit of perfection. “Neil would play up to ten takes then we’d splice the two inch tape together,” explains Peter. “Neil’s view was that Alex and Geddy could have as many goes as they wanted to get the best take so why couldn’t he.”

Then, it was time for the bass proper, the demo-standard licks replaced by near-perfection. “Geddy would spend a day on one song, doing it over and over again,” says Peter. “The first take would be fantastic, 95% correct, there was a degree of obsessiveness to get everything perfect. Sometimes I couldn’t hear the difference.” Every note was carefully placed, “It was like he had the whole picture of the music in his head and produced bits of this musical puzzle only at the appropriate time,” says Frank. “Understated repeated notes would take on a life only after weeks of overdubbing other parts.”

Peter found it difficult to see what he could add to such a highly tuned environment – the idea of telling the band to do things different was beyond his ken. Comparisons were inevitable with his previous experiences. “With Supertramp, there were five musicians, and we were trying to get the freshest, most energetic take, and then you’d patch it,” he explains. Rush’s approach was totally different – Geddy and Neil at least, appeared methodical to the point of clinicality. Over time Peter found it difficult to avoid adopting more of an engineering role – not just because it was a comfort zone, but also because the band’s demands on the engineers were great. Once Geddy’s bass parts had been done it was time to work on guitars and keyboards, and this time, Alex was given first bite of the cherry. Only the keyboard pads – short musical segments – were done first. Alex flew into his parts with joyous gusto. “With Alex we kept a lot of what he had done on the basic tracks,” says Peter. “He was very quick and would really perform every take. He always had a fantastic sound.”

As Alex worked on his parts and Geddy oversaw the production process, Neil was spending his spare time cross country skiing or working on the artwork with Hugh. As was by now a tradition, when Hugh came over to meet with Neil and the others, he played with a few ideas with the band – this time adding a synthesised intro to ‘Distant Early Warning’, which would become the first song on the final cut. Together with the cover, the band had to decide a title, and they settled on ‘Grace Under Pressure’ first and foremost because of the subject matter. The title fitted both the general mood of the album, and the atmosphere in the studio.

It was becoming apparent however, that the title was equally apt for the descending fog of tension in the studio. Geddy’s personality led him to adopt more of a producer’s role than the other two, resulting in a situation Alex found a little too overbearing. “Geddy was always directing things – he wanted what was right for the song,” says Peter. “Alex would try different things, sometimes Geddy wouldn’t like the direction and Alex would get frustrated at that.” At one point, things degenerated to the point that Alex and Geddy stopped speaking altogether, but still they struggled on. “I found their way of dealing with each other fascinating,” says Frank. “Instead of confronting each other directly – they would write things down on bits of paper (which I would find the day after) and gradually the tension lifted…” All the same, Peter noticed, the band still worked hard to maintain themselves as a unit. “With other bands, there was always so much back-biting,” says Peter. “I never heard them talking badly about one another. They’re all so different, but they were always very supportive of each other.”

Jim Burgess (from the aptly named ‘Saved by Technology’) came in to help set up Geddy’s new PPG synthesizer and assist with a bit of programming, as did Le Studio resident Paul Northfield. Finally the vocals were laid on top of everything else. The recording process was complete but there remained the mixing – which was always a challenge, particularly for Geddy, who by this stage was virtually burned out. “I’m so close to everything,” he explained. “I know every part of every instrument so intimately, and yet I have to act as if I’ve never heard those parts before.” The process became unnecessarily drawn out as the tracks were remixed and rearranged on the SSL mixing desks, a couple of tracks taking up to 5 days as the band and producer tried to achieve a consensus on what worked. “Almost every sound and musical phrase was discussed – argued over and repeated and repeated,” says Frank. “I know this because I would have to keep track of all the analog 2” tapes - and there were over 40!”

For Peter, the mixing process remains his one regret. “I wasn’t satisfied with the final sound,” he says. “I had been used to recording with Neve’s warmer sound and it was my first experience of working on an SSL. The album is musically great, but the mix is too thin, the drums are too quiet.” It was difficult to tell at the time however – by that stage, everyone was shot. “We had cabin fever by the end,” said Geddy. “You get to a dangerous state, you want to finish the record because you want to get out of there.”

“Even during the end of our 5 months I thought that very little had changed,” says then-rookie Frank, who found Alex lightened up a bit once it was all over. “He and I drank vodka on the last day of the session. I still think he tried to kill me by getting me to keep up – although they tell me I had a good time.” Geddy went to assist Bob Ludwig in mastering, and rejected two test pressings before he was satisfied enough to move on. “I don’t think I could have liked it given the circumstances,” said Geddy. “As soon as the record was done, I wanted to get away from it – and I’ve rarely listened to it since, because it’s attached to too many difficult memories.”

While Peter had the technical skills for the job, as things turned out, he wasn’t to be the man who could drag the band from its doldrums. “Peter worked really hard and gave 150 percent, but at the end we were left feeling cheated,” said Geddy. “We went through this wrenching experience and felt that we still hadn’t found what we were looking for.” “Perhaps they needed someone with more experience, who had worked with lots of different people,” says Peter. “I think the band was going through a growing up period where they had to take charge of all the details, musically and otherwise,” says Frank. “They were never rude about it – just insistent. I thought that Peter was great and his quiet manner sometimes was off-putting for the band. They were used to guys who had ‘great’ ideas… Peter was a great engineer – but the ‘BIG’ production idea just wasn’t in his bag of tricks. In any event, had anybody suggested big changes, they would have been kicked out of the room!”

If there was one thing the band took away from the experience, it was the need for a producer who could stand up to them. “I don’t think we could ever produce ourselves,” commented Geddy. Perhaps Rush didn’t need a producer, they needed a therapist.

‘Grace Under Pressure’ was released 12 April, 1984, an appropriately dark year for such an album. The title was autobiographical, but there was little grace about the process, or the result. “It was kind of like childbirth, but instead of 20 hours, it was six months of non-stop labour,” said Alex. Unfortunately, it didn’t click with the buying public. Neil surmised it thus: “People do not want to hear about sadness when the world is so gloomy.”

Neil, who had not been quite so affected by the gestation as the two schoolmates, saw the album as a major watershed, like ‘2112’ and ‘Moving Pictures’ before it. “Neil thinks that ‘Grace Under Pressure’ is another solidification point, but I don’t agree with him,” said Geddy. “I think we’re still on the way to some other place.” Not least, the balance between technology and the organic three-piece was yet to be struck.

Accomplished director David Mallet was brought in to direct a video for ‘Distant Early Warning’, filmed at the swanky new Limehouse Docks studios in London UK. “It was not a good time in London,” says Hugh, who was also working on the videos. “It was probably notable that the Libyan Embassy being under siege and the death of the police woman had taken place that week.” The Kubrickesque video was the band’s first real effort to produce something that would be suitable for MTV. “David shot the thing and made it believable,” said Geddy. “We saw it as being this big production. He would say look guys, leave it to me, it may not be realistic, but I can promise you it will be surrealistic.”

“David Mallet was a treat to work with,” says Hugh, who was not quite so happy with the quality of the final result, it being recorded entirely on video and not film. “I am almost reticent to say that I had much to do with the video of ‘Distant Early Warning’ but I did,” he says. This being the video generation, a number of other videos were made at later dates: Tim Pope directed ‘Afterimage’, and Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel of Cucumber Productions, who had done some animations for live shows prior to ‘Grace Under Pressure’, also directed ‘The Body Electric’ and ‘The Enemy Within’. The “little piece of science fiction frippery” that was the video for ‘The Body Electric’11 was loosely based (once again) on Ayn Rand’s ‘Anthem’.

Rush released ‘Distant Early Warning’ as a single, to a generally receptive audience: it reached Number 3 in the Billboard album rock chart on 28 April. The pull-through onto previous albums was tangible: on 12 October, ‘Moving Pictures’ went double platinum. Six months later, it had doubled that figure.

Thankfully, rehearsals for the inevitable tour were less traumatic than for ‘Signals’ – the band was better prepared, the songs were more tour-friendly and the technology was more reliable. One older song to benefit was ‘Witch Hunt’. “We felt that we could never reproduce it live so we never played it,” said Geddy. “Then just on a whim, we tried it in rehearsal and it sounded fine. We’d grown so much since writing it and had acquired all these new keyboards that it works now.” Incorporating all manner of triggers, Neil’s new Simmons kit took much of the strain. “Neil has just gotten into things you plug in as opposed to things you just set up and hit,” said technician Tony Geranios.

Following a dress rehearsal on 7 May, Rush were off again. David Mallet was along for the ride, directing the footage for a planned live video. The tour machine carried the fellows forward by momentum rather than the euphoria of success, and not for the first time, the idea of a split was discussed. As always however, the chemistry on stage and the social time on and off the buses reinforced the trio, and nobody had the heart to buck the routine and call it a day; besides, they hadn’t been brought up to be quitters. The schedule was more relaxed than previously – the band only played up to five nights in a week, and took a week off out of every four on the road so there was time to stretch out a little, for each of the players to re-establish why exactly they were doing it at all.

It wasn’t just Geddy and Alex – Neil was also equating his own playing with the law of diminishing returns. “It was easy when we first got together - we weren’t that good and I wasn’t that good, so it was easy for us to improve, and we improved by leaps and bounds,” he said. “Where I used to have five or six new rhythmic areas that I would explore during the tour, now I might have one or two.”

On the tour, the band finally caved and agreed to play a couple of festival dates, at the Dallas and Houston Texas Jam festivals. “The band were huge in Texas,” says Bruce Cole. Rush played to 60,000 people, something the band had never wanted – but higher powers work in mysterious ways. The band had classed itself as a hockey team rather than a baseball team, but the world hadn’t listened.

Following the last date of the North American leg of the tour, on 9 November, a jet plane took the players off to a four-night stint in Japan and a couple more dates in Hawaii. To make the most of the trip, Neil headed off to North East China for three weeks on his bike – from cruising small town America at 15 miles an hour, Neil was going international. It was an opportunity to meet new people (not least, other cyclists), to cut himself off from the environment he’d grown to despise, and more – as well as visiting the Great Wall, Neil found lyrical inspiration as he mounted the staircase of the Buddhist holy mountain Tai Shan, jotting down a song in its honour when he reached the top. Neil came back to Canada all excited about some temple blocks and small cymbals he had seen, and sent his tech Larry Allen off to try to source them.

Back home once again, it was time for some hard decisions. Frustrations within the band were at an all-time peak and none of the three players were in any position to take the lead: that just wouldn’t be Rush. Having eliminated all other options, once again the band came to the conclusion that the “right” producer (whatever that meant) could be the answer. At the very least, for the sake of the band’s own sanity it was not worth trying to go back into the studio without having somebody new at the helm. Over and over, the phrase “objective ear” came up: it would not be enough to have somebody who was stylistically tuned to the band’s musical direction; the players also needed somebody with the courage of their convictions, and the necessary detachment, to steer the show back on track when necessary.

Many of the dates of the ‘Grace Under Pressure’ tour had been played with Gary Moore second on the billing: when he heard of the band’s predicament, the blues player took the opportunity to introduce the band to his own producer, Peter Collins. “I remember Gary raving about how good Peter was, but he hadn’t done anything vaguely resembling our music,” said Geddy. All the same, Peter was clearly a crossover producer, not least in giving a commercial edge to Gary himself.

Perhaps, just perhaps, he could be the right man for the job.