rush 2112 uk tour

Rush Completes First U.K. Tour

Rpm weekly , july 9, 1977, transcribed by pwrwindows.

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All The Gifts Of Life: 40 Years Of Rush's '2112'

Adrien Begrand

Alex Lifeson (left) and Geddy Lee (with Neil Peart on drums) on stage in 1976 on the tour that followed the release of 2112 . Antonia Hille/Getty Images hide caption

Alex Lifeson (left) and Geddy Lee (with Neil Peart on drums) on stage in 1976 on the tour that followed the release of 2112 .

"It could have spelled the end for us."

Alex Lifeson is on the phone, calling from his Toronto home, thinking back to the time between Rush's third and fourth albums in the winter of 1975 and 1976. It's difficult to believe now, some 40-odd million albums sold later, but the Canadian rock trio was at a crossroads then. After a pair of decently received albums, 1974's Rush and 1975's Fly By Night , follow-up Caress of Steel floundered both commercially and critically. Morale between guitarist Lifeson, bassist/singer Geddy Lee and drummer Neil Peart was low, and the pressure was on from American label Mercury Records to put out something as "relatable" as early hits "Working Man" and "Finding My Way." The writing was on the wall: Album number four was either going to break the band, or, well, break the band.

"I remember thinking," Lifeson says candidly, "'I had eight years of playing rock in a band, and it's awesome, I love it, and I don't want to compromise. If this will be the end, I dunno, I'll go back to working with my dad plumbing, or go back to school, or something else.' To me it was impossible to take a step backwards and do something we'd already done just to please a record company."

The story is the stuff of legend. Rush stubbornly stuck to their plan, following up an album that had an ambitious 20-minute conceptual piece with an album with an even more ambitious 20-minute conceptual piece. Structurally 2112 was very much similar to Caress of Steel , only the band's vision was clearer, their musical chops were stronger, the songwriting was more advanced. Best of all, they sounded grown up.

"'What are we going to do next?'" Lifeson remembers thinking. "'Are we going to do what they want us to do, which is basically the first album again? Or are we just going to say, 'Screw you, we're going to do what we want to do?' This was us giving them the finger. That's the way we looked at it right from the beginning. And then of course it turned into something else, something grander. We just wanted to let them know that they couldn't push us around."

For the first time Rush sounded truly assertive on record, like a band ready to conquer the rock world. Forty years after its April 1, 1976 release, 2112 is widely regarded as a classic album, a major influence on hard rock, progressive rock and heavy metal. Featuring the spellbinding sci-fi storytelling of the masterpiece title track and its five eclectic deep cuts that range from fun to introspective to ferocious, it was also the breakthrough Rush was so desperately in need of.

"My first reaction was, 'This is like a futuristic prog rock spaceship ride,'" says Timothy Tiernan, a shipyard worker in Newport, R.I. who was a pre-teen when he first heard 2112 in 1978. "It was like rock and roll storytelling. The more you listened, the more you tried to find hidden messages. The album tempo would be a roller coaster ride. One song would be mellow, and the next would blow your face off. Just the way they would tie three songs together was like nothing the fans had heard. I was hooked from the jump."

In late 1975, Rush was convinced it had struck paydirt with Caress of Steel , Lee, Lifeson and Peart emerging from the sessions with producer Terry Brown immensely proud of what they had done. In retrospect, the album has its moments, such as the bracing heavy metal of "Bastille Day" and the more wistful tones of "Lakeside Park," but for all the admirable spirit of the 12-and-a-half-minute "The Necromancer" and the 20-minute "The Fountain of Lamneth," both tracks are bogged down by dense songwriting, not to mention some outrageously lofty fantasy lyrics courtesy of Peart.

"For me it sounds like the early experimental time for us, which is exactly what it was," Lifeson says. "Neil had just joined the band, we wanted to do something with a little more substance to it after Fly By Night , how he was writing lyrics, his contribution to what Geddy and I felt naturally, and the whole idea of us doing a concept 'side.' 'The Necromancer' was kind of a mini concept too, we broke it down into parts. With 'The Fountain of Lamneth,' it was a much meatier project. I think for us it was very satisfying on an artistic level. Obviously it wasn't a great success."

Critics had agreed. "I played the latest (and admittedly rather derivative) Rush album Caress of Steel in the office the other day, and unfortunately it received howls of derision," wrote influential British critic Geoff Barton in his review Sounds magazine. To this day Caress of Steel remains one of the only Rush albums not to be certified platinum in America, having taken nearly 20 years to achieve gold status.

"[ 2112 ] was a response to the indifference that [greeted] Caress of Steel ," Lifeson says. I think we were at a point where we were evolving. We were becoming better musicians, we were playing better, we were working towards having more of a signature Rush sound. When we got to '2112', we were all set for that.

As was the norm in the '70s, if a young band was energetic and willing to work, record companies had them crank out new music at an alarming rate by today's standards. The bulk of 2112 , which required meticulous attention to detail, especially on the title track, was written during the fall and winter of 1975, while the band was touring.

"I recall writing in arenas, in dressing rooms, in the car," Lifeson reminisces. "We were playing in between 220 and 250 shows a year. We didn't have the luxury we would have later on where we would go somewhere for a month and just concentrate on writing. It was all written on the fly. So it had quite a different feel to it in its construction and in the way we developed it. We already had all the pieces written, we'd rehearsed them at sound checks, we knew the album, we knew all the material."

The storyline is a simple one, refreshingly linear compared to such bloated rock operas as The Who's Tommy and Genesis's The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway : In the year 2112 the world is under totalitarian rule of the Solar Federation, and all art and culture is controlled by the priests from "The Temples of Syrinx." A young man discovers an ancient guitar, learns to play it and suggests to the priests that its music would greatly benefit humanity. Citing the guitar and the music it yielded as a reason the previous civilization failed, the priests destroy the guitar. Distraught, the young man kills himself as chaos reigns, an ominous booming overhead: "Attention all planets of the Solar Federation: We have assumed control."

"'2112' took you somewhere; you can see it all playing out in your mind's eye," writes Vancouver-based music writer Rob Hughes. "It's the stuff of a million bad student screenplays. I always interpreted the '2112' suite's ending as destruction preceding renewal. Sure, the hero has died, but his transgression has sparked anarchy, which in turn has signaled the elder race — the ones who escaped the planet to build an enlightened society — to return to claim their former home. The voice that announces, 'We have assumed control,' comes from neither the priests nor the hero. It's the voice of hope."

What attracted a lot of attention, especially from liberal-leaning music writers, was a statement inside the album's gatefold: " With acknowledgement to the genius of Ayn Rand ." The work of the Russian-born American novelist and philosopher was indeed an influence on Peart, particularly the 1938 dystopian novella Anthem and the 1943 philosophical novel The Fountainhead . Both books espoused individualism over collectivism, which especially rankled NME writer Barry Miles, who in a 1978 feature compared Rush's views to Nazism, ignorant of the fact that Lee's Jewish parents were concentration camp survivors. He went on to write condescendingly:

All the classic hallmarks of the right-wing are there: the pseudo-religious language ... which extends right down to the touring crew: road masters instead of road managers; the use of a quasi-mystical symbol — the naked man confronting the red star of socialism (at least I suppose that's what it's supposed to be). It's all there. They are actually very nice guys. They don't sit there in jack boots pulling the wings off flies. They are polite, charming even, naïve — roaming the concert circuits preaching what to me seems like proto-fascism like a leper without a bell.

"What Neil found in [Rand's] writing was not so much about her libertarian views," Lifeson explains. "What he's always got from her writing is that it's about the power of the individual, to do great things, to rely on yourself, nobody's there to do anything for you. You have to do it on your own, you have to craft what you want to do, and to the best that you can. That's really what it's about: You don't owe anybody anything for your hard work. That's what permeates all this writing, that sensibility. Those two books were probably more important to him in terms of how he found inspiration for the lyrics, but ultimately it was that very individual spirit."

"Ayn Rand's outlook is motivating, even comforting, when you're in ninth grade and surrounded by your idiot classmates," says Hughes, who recalls that after listening to the album he went running to the library to read Rand's books, "but at that age you're trying on and burning through ideas faster than sneakers. When I listen to 2112 now, it reminds me of those restless years of figuring out how to negotiate the world and the people in it. Just as I can look back and see what a breakthrough 2112 was for Rush, I can remember being that naïve kid about to make a few breakthroughs himself. The biggest lesson that 2112 imparted was that you can improve yourself without compromising your true nature."

Essentially a seven-part suite comprised of song fragments and reprised musical themes, what sets "2112" apart from Rush's earlier epic-length experimentation like "The Fountain of Lamneth" and Fly By Night 's "By-Tor and the Snow Dog" is its accessibility. The exploration of dynamics, atmospherics and program music was a huge creative breakthrough for Rush, and the ambition and synthesis of styles would help the album appeal to a wider audience, one that could appreciate both the technical chops and the pop hooks. "I love that Rush combines total prog-nerd wankery with music that's actually catchy," writes Amanda Falke, a musician and software engineer based in Portland, Ore. "Rush may sound nerdy, but at heart they're pop musicians. There is a warmth and presence to their music that very few bands have."

In the title suite's third chapter, "Discovery," the listener hears the babbling sound of a stream, as well as the protagonist picking up the old guitar. Lifeson plucks and strums awkwardly, completely out of tune, and gradually tunes the acoustic guitar ("How does he tune the guitar and learn to play it so fast?" Lifeson jokes), ultimately working his way to a pretty chord sequence. "What can this strange device be?" Lee sings plaintively. "When I touch it, it gives forth a sound."

"We wanted it to feel like we were in a cave," Lifeson explains. "It's not a rock delivery. Sonically there's lots of reverb, there's the water trickling down the creek that's inside the cave. It became more visual, cinematic in a way, and that stuck with us for a long time. Now we had a structure that was working for us, that we felt confident with and were interested in."

It has been stated of more than one young rock musician that the two essential attributes are ignorance and arrogance. At the age of 22, Lifeson and his bandmates had learned to ditch convention in favor of experimentation. Gone was the overt Cream worship of the first album. In its place on 2112 was supreme self-assurance as well as youthful bravado. Coupled with the restraint and discipline that comes with artistic maturation, it was a perfect combination.

"We'd been touring so much, we really felt comfortable in our skin as a band," Lifeson recalls. "If I listen to '2112' now, playing it on the last number of tours, there are some really interesting musical parts. There's lots of bluesy stuff on that, and maybe because of that there's a purity about it that grabs you. It's not too heady. It's a little more from the gut. With that record as well, there was the economy of it. That was important. It's more approachable than Caress of Steel ."

"When it comes to space-age nerdy prog rock with massive compositions, Rush did it first, and they did it best on 2112 ," Falke writes. But she insists there's something more to Rush than technical innovation and sci-fi concepts: "Rush also has something most heavy bands today lack: vulnerability. The ending of '2112' (the song) is incredibly triumphant, and you only get that with the dynamics that result from total vulnerability in your music. That's so inspiring."

Alex Lifeson (center) with Neal Peart (left) and Geddy Lee at Rush's 2013 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Kevin Winter/Getty Images hide caption

Lifeson says the band pulled from many sources on the way to finding its own sound. "We were all fans of Genesis, Yes, King Crimson. Pink Floyd as well. But we really wanted to do our own thing. We've found a lot of inspiration in a lot of different areas, from reggae, to country, to pop, to heavy metal. And that's always been a cool thing about us. We haven't been truly an overly progressive metal type band. We mix things up there, lots of ups and downs, lots of dynamics. We don't always play balls to the wall. We don't always try to make everything super complicated."

For an album that's been embraced as a "classic," the flipside of 2112 never gets as much attention as the song "2112" itself. You have the proto-stoner rock of "A Passage to Bangkok," the surreal, startlingly refined "Twilight Zone," Lifeson's wistful "Lessons" and Lee's melancholy "Tears" and the raucous "Something For Nothing," which reprises the individualist sentiment of the title track.

"'Twilight Zone' was a difficult one," Lifeson muses. "There are a lot of weird time changes in it. The positioning of the guitar was awkward and uncomfortable. It wasn't as easy to do as some of the other things. 'Bangkok' is a really fun song for us to do, it's our homage to smoking pot around the world, finding the best that you can."

Following its release, attention to 2112 grew slowly. Eventually it charted as high as No. 61 on Billboard' s album chart. But although the momentum was slow initially, it started to snowball to the point where the band would be an upper-tier arena and stadium act for the rest of their career. Every Rush album released since has charted higher — after 1980, every studio album but one has peaked in the chart's top 20.

"Everything was slow but steady," Lifeson says, but " 2112 bought us our independence. [Mercury] never, ever bothered us with material or studio work. They just left it up to us. They figured, 'Okay, they know what they're doing, and it works for them. As long as we're popping the cash register open, we're happy.'"

Rush on stage at the 2013 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony. Kevin Winter/Getty Images hide caption

Rush on stage at the 2013 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony.

The album has continued to win new fans. Drummer Taylor Hawkins of the band Foo Fighters, who played with Rush on stage when the band was finally inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013, says he came to the band as an adolescent half a decade after 2112 was released, and began working his way backward through its discography. "The overture grabbed me," he says. "I liked the fact that it was really hard rock. I loved Yes and Genesis when I was 10 or 12, but most of those prog bands were not really heavy. Not like 2112 , which mixed heavy metal with technical stuff. It's so clear that they were such a huge influence on Metallica, that kind of technical metal at the time. I just loved that. It was as hard as Sabbath or Zeppelin, but the technicality was on a whole other level. That was the first time they put it all together."

Canadian illustrator Danille Gauvin, who has made artwork for nearly two dozen metal albums since 2009, describes 2112 , which she encountered in 2005, as "an enabling factor for a hungry mind fascinated by horror, science fiction or fantasy." The fact that the band was also a homegrown was a bonus. "I cannot stress enough how the Canadian midwest can be very isolating for anyone growing up admiring the visual masterpieces of [designers] Roger Dean, Rodney Matthews, Richard Corben," she writes. "It was a place that did not take seriously the pursuit of art and design as anything but a childish fancy. 2112 did what great rock, and indeed great art, continually does in an infectious quality. It persuades you from feeling alone in your strangeness, and to celebrate it by making your own work."

Looking back on the album 40 years after its release, Lifeson says, " I'm very happy with it. Of course, I want to re-do the whole thing, just like all our records. When I go back and listen to the original record, I feel really proud of it. I can still remember how I felt at the time we were making it, and how important it seemed, and how satisfied we all were when it came together. We felt we played really well on it, and the recording experience was fantastic. We were such a real team holed up in that studio of Terry's.

"When other bands cite us as an inspiration or an influence, [the theme of 2112 is] what they're talking about, more than anything. I've often read when we're mentioned as an influence for a band they'll say, 'We're big Rush fans, because they did it on their own, they did it their own way, and that told me that I could do the same thing. If I stick with it, persevere, I can do things the way I want them to be.'"

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Watch Rush Dominate on ‘2112’ Tour With New 4K Concert Footage

Rush 's status as an indomitable live act is common knowledge among rock fans, and they can witness the power trio at the peak of its powers in newly restored concert footage from 1976's  2112 tour.

You can see the footage, captured on June 18, 1976, at Ontario's Oshawa Civic Auditorium, below.

The video comes courtesy of Speedy's Films, the YouTube channel paying tribute to late photographer and videographer Jim "Speedy" Kelly. Previous concert restorations include Pink Floyd in 1975, Alice Cooper in 1973 and Van Halen in 1978.

"With painstaking attention to detail, we have meticulously restored and transferred this concert footage from the original 8mm reels, bringing you an immersive visual and audio experience like never before," reads the video description.

Indeed, Rush sounds positively monstrous in the eight-minute video, which comprises snippets of various songs. (Because Super 8 film cartridges could hold about only three minutes of footage apiece, the entire show wasn't recorded.) Geddy Lee delivers his skyscraping vocals with effortless aplomb, as Alex Lifeson rips blistering guitar solos and Neil Peart throws down thunderous grooves while still making room for some flashy drumstick twirls.

The  2112 album and tour were pivotal for Rush, whose career seemed dead in the water after their underperforming third album, 1975's  Caress of Steel . Instead, the trio released  2112 in March 1976 to critical acclaim and commercial success. It peaked at No. 5 in the band's native Canada and No. 61 on the Billboard 200, granting Rush their U.S. breakthrough.

"I think it's one of the most important pieces of work that we've done," Lifeson told Rolling Stone in 2016. "I think the influence that it had on a lot of listeners, just judging from the comments I read in the mail and even comments from other bands that have been influenced by us, that's really a signature record for all of them. And that's a wonderful thing."

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‘2112’ can be considered many things – a band manifesto, a conceptual landmark, maybe even the birth of prog metal – but above all, it was the band’s play for creative independence.

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The year 1976 was a make-or-break time for Rush . It found them with ambition to spare, a growing cult audience, and a label that wasn’t sure what to do with them. It was time to pull together all of their disparate ideas into one major statement and they accomplish just that with their fourth studio album, 2112 .

This was the crucial turning point for the band, the album that changed Rush from just another three-piece hard rock band, and set them on the path to greater glories. 2112 can be considered many lofty things – a band manifesto, a conceptual landmark, maybe even the birth of prog metal – but above all, it was the band’s play for creative independence. Let’s take a classic off the shelf and take another look at 2112 how it came to be.

Listen to 2112 on Spotify and Apple Music .

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A prime influence of 2112 was three years of constant touring, which made the band sharp enough to carry out its grandest ideas. Every Rush album had been a departure: The first was solid hard rock, minus the intellectual streak, but with a couple of numbers (“Working Man,” “In the Mood”) that would stay in the setlist for keeps. With Fly by Night , drummer Neil Peart came in and broadened their musical reach by adding his own lyrical ambitions, informed at the time by a love of sci-fi.

Ambition went through the roof on the third album, Caress of Steel , which was apparently inspired by seeing Yes on their Topographic Oceans tour and sported two epics, one of which covered Side Two. A fan favorite in retrospect, it was a career-threatening flop at the time. So it left Rush with two choices: streamline everything and get more straightforward, or do another epic and make sure they got it right. Characteristically, they chose to do both on separate album sides, but it was the epic that really got noticed.

Recorded at Toronto Sound Studios, 2112 proved as accessible as it was ambitious. The side-long Caress track “Fountain of Lamneth” was brilliant but dense, requiring a few listens to get your head around. But the “2112 Overture” charges right out of the gate with an Alex Lifeson fanfare riff. It remains Rush’s longest studio track, clocking in at 20:34, but each section stands out on its own.

What influenced 2112?

Musically Rush was still enamored with prog rock – the band had discovered Genesis and King Crimson as well as Yes – but didn’t put themselves in that category. In their minds, they were still a hard-rock band, with Jimi Hendrix and Cream roots. So it’s no wonder they were also big fans of The Who, since Tommy and Quadrophenia both proved that a hard rock band could write epic pieces. Lifeson told Rolling Ston e in 2016 that the Who-like moments in 2112, especially the Pete Townshend-style strumming in the “Discovery” section, were no accident.

Also notable is the Tchaikovsky quote in the closing “Overture” solo that leads to a cannon blast (as it did in Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture”) which makes the opening lyrics, “And the meek shall inherit the earth,” all the more ironic. The album’s main lyrical influence proved more controversial. Drummer/lyricist Peart was a great admirer of the novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand (specifically her championing of the individual, not so much her right-leaning politics) and the lyric sheet carries a dedication to “the genius of Ayn Rand.”

What’s 2112 all about?

The title suite of Rush’s 2112 album is set in a totalitarian society where the evil priests of the Temples of Syrinx keep everyone in line. Stability is threatened when a young man finds a guitar, learns to make music on it, and believes the world needs to hear of his great discovery. After the priests of the temple destroy the guitar and send him packing, he envisions a world where music and creativity flourish. Knowing he’ll never see that world, he gives in to despair. The ending is left ambiguous: the singer may have committed suicide, but his struggle may have led to a toppling of the empire. After an instrumental finale with a vicious Lifeson solo, the listener is left with an ominous announcement, “We have assumed control.” A new beginning or a totalitarian clampdown? You decide.

The theme of the individual against totalitarianism was right out of the Ayn Rand playbook, but Rush personalized the story by giving it a young, idealistic hero – the same sort of misfit they’d salute in the later hit single “Subdivisions.”

As the band explained in the accompanying booklet to an anniversary reissue, there was personal relevance as well. The idea of being rebuffed for playing music was especially relevant to them since they were at risk of losing their record deal. Finally, the idea that a government would regulate artistic expression proved to be prophetic, since the days of stickered albums and the PMRC were only a few years away.

What is side two about?

The concept of Side Two of 2112 was…its lack of a concept. With its lighter mood and shorter songs (all under four minutes, if just barely) it almost sounds like a different band. Indeed, the first two songs were about the most down-to-earth topics Rush ever addressed: namely, smoking pot and watching TV. “A Passage to Bangkok” is something of a weed travelogue while “Twilight Zone” is about their love for that show.

Lifeson and Geddy Lee each take a rare turn writing lyrics, respectively on “Lessons” and “Tears,” both unusually gentle and reflective songs. With a Mellotron (played by Rush cover artist Hugh Syme ) and a warm vocal, the latter sounds more like a Black Sabbath ballad (see ‘Solitude” or “Changes”) than anything else by Rush. More characteristically, the closing “Something for Nothing” hints at a near future when Rush would cram an epic’s worth of changes into a concise piece. Of these five songs, only “Bangkok” would get played live after the 70s, while “Lessons” and “Tears” were never done at all. As a whole, Side Two is a lost gem in the Rush catalog.

What was the reaction to 2112?

In their native Canada, the album cemented Rush’s icon status. They launched a triumphant arena tour that was captured on the next album, All the World’s A Stage , but in America they were now just a bigger cult band, still opening for the likes of KISS and Blue Oyster Cult. 2112 hit the Billboard Top 200 albums chart and saved their career, but the days of platinum albums and US arena sellouts were yet to come. Even in its looser days, American FM radio wasn’t sure what to do with Rush, so it usually did nothing. Not until the next studio album, A Farewell to Kings , was there a track, “Closer to the Heart,” that it could get behind.

What’s its significance?

For many fans, 2112 is the one where they got on board. And while future albums, especially Permanent Waves and Moving Pictures , sold better and got more airplay, 2112 was the one that made three decades of further experiments possible. Rush never played a show without including some of it, usually the “Overture/Temples of Syrinx” section during the show-closing medley. Fans also rejoiced when the entire suite was played live in the 1996 Test for Echo tour – the only time the band played it through without omitting one of the quieter sections.

Famous fans also took the album to heart. The 2112 anniversary box set boasted cover versions by modern heroes of prog ( Steven Wilson ), post-grunge (Alice in Chains), and stadium rock (Foo Fighters) that showed just how far their influence went. Just as notably, Syme’s cover art established a key piece of Rush iconography: the “Starman” logo. Featuring a naked figure staring down the symbol of power, it represented the individual taking control. It’s their main Ayn Rand takeaway and a key part of what Rush was all about.

What direction did Rush’s music go in after 2112?

Musically, the band was just getting started. The next two studio albums, A Farewell to Kings and Hemispheres , were even more ambitious, with Geddy Lee now adding keyboards. The next big piece, “Cygnus XI,” was so epic that it spilled over onto both albums. That’s when Rush decided that long concept pieces were a dead end, and claimed the right to absorb whatever new music struck their interest. The next three decades would be a wild ride, but the Red Barchetta was revved up and ready to go.

2112 can be bought here .

April 3, 2021 at 8:02 am

3rd Paragraph. What is 2112 About.

50th Anniversary edition? When did that come out? 2026??? Don’t you mean the 40th Anniversary

April 9, 2021 at 8:27 pm

Thanks for the catch! We’ve updated the piece now.

April 3, 2021 at 3:27 pm

I think you mean 2112’s 45th anniversary, right? Also, I would argue that ‘Exit…Stage Left’ deserves a bigger article, as its 40th anniversary just passed by (most of the concert recordings were on March 27th, 1981, Montreal). Now THAT was a performance for the ages. Nothing pre-recorded, no tracks, no playback. Just three twenty-something geniuses at their best, literally “in the zone” (the 1-2-3 punch of Broon’s Bane-The Trees-Xanadu is simply sublime). IMHO, the best live performance of any band, of any genre, anytime, anywhere.

Gonzalo Donoso

April 3, 2021 at 7:05 pm

Exactamente, sublime,virtuosa, potente y con solo 3 músicos excepcionales que a sus 28 años,ya eran iconos del rock en toda su dimensión.

February 10, 2024 at 7:26 am

Overture does not end with a canon blast. It is a thunder sheet. I doubt they would use that as a canon blast. What do I now?

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Rush: 'Our fans feel vindicated'

It’s nearly 30 years since Rush had a UK hit single. How, then, are they more popular – and, whisper it, cooler – than ever before? By Rob Fitzpatrick

T he queue outside the Cineworld just south of Piccadilly Circus in central London is about 300 yards long and made up largely of white men aged between 30 and 50, but if you look closely you'll spot a few rogue elements. Such as women: there are, perhaps, five or six dotted among the men. Most appear to have been dragged along, but a couple look like they actually might be here of their own volition. Near the front of the queue there is a group of three young, turbaned Sikhs, and there are a few Japanese fans who may, or may not, be tourists. But in the main this is a river of middle-aged white blokes, and so I, a middle-aged white bloke, join it. Happily.

We are all here for a special screening of a film called Beyond the Lighted Stage, a documentary about Rush , a Canadian rock group who last had a single in the UK top 40 in 1983, yet are now selling out bigger venues – often stadiums – in more parts of the world than they ever have done before. What makes tonight special for Rush fans is that Geddy Lee, the group's lead singer and bassist, will be taking part in a Q&A directly after the film. To get us in the mood and break the ice, tonight's compere asks how many of us have seen the film before. Every single person – every last one – in the room puts their hand up, and a Mexican wave of laughter spreads across the room. The crowd relaxes into their seats and waits for the lights to go down. Five hundred outsiders have suddenly become a lot less outsiderly.

Rush, and Rush fans, are long used to being the butt of the joke – kimono-wearing, book-learning, heavily moustachioed Canadian prog-rock overlords never seemed likely to be at the cutting edge of cool. But what's really interesting is how their fan archetype – that nerdy, computer-club, Dungeons and Dragons-playing, comic-reading, sci-fi geek – has moved from the margins right into the very heart of the mainstream. Rush have been uncool for so long that they are, finally, perhaps the coolest band in the world.

"We've been vindicated!" laughs guitarist Alex Lifeson down the phone from his home in Toronto a few days later. "A lot of fans feel vindicated, too. There is a segment of our audience that are outsiders and some have grown into power and influence, but that bond they feel to us is still there. It's very, very deep and I don't think it's like that for a lot of other bands."

Lifeson and Lee were the long-haired, music-obsessed children of Serbian and Jewish immigrants when they met at Fisherville Junior High in Toronto in 1967. They had both persuaded their parents to buy them guitars: Lee had a thing for Steve Marriott, but they both loved Led Zeppelin. They both wanted to play in a loud rock'n'roll band.

"We also both wanted to play really fast," laughs Lee, sitting in the sunlit conservatory of a London hotel the morning after the screening. "That was really important. We wanted to play stuff that was hard to play. We're not so different now."

The band's first album was released independently in 1974, and it ran all the way from ballsy, Zep-like rockers to more ballsy, Zep-like rockers. It was only when John Rutsey, their original drummer, left a few months later because of illness that Rush began to morph into this most remarkable of groups. His replacement was Neil Peart, whose family ran a farm equipment business – the gangly teen was more interested in Buddy Rich, Keith Moon and Duke Elllington's drummer, Louie Bellson, than in tractors. The band signed to Mercury Records and, after just two weeks getting to know each other, they played their first gig together in front of 11,000 Uriah Heep fans, and began to tour in earnest. Peart, unused to the tedium of touring, would read obsessively and soon the science fiction and autobiography and "junior philosophy" he was consuming turned into lyrics for his new band.

On the band's debut LP Lee had sung: "Running here, I'm running there/ I'm looking for the girls." By early 1975 – on their second album, Fly By Night – he was tackling the words Peart had started writing for him: "His nemesis is waiting at the gate/ The snow dog, ermine glowing, in the damp night, coal-black eyes shimmering with hate." Oddly, brilliantly, it's the latter he sounds most comfortable singing. The trouble was that Rush's record company preferred the former. Just eight months later the band released their third LP, Caress of Steel – a fantastically lyrical and at times maddeningly overwrought album. It tanked, and the series of shows the played to promote it became known as the Down the Tubes tour.

"That was a depressing time," Lee says. "You'd pull up at a venue and they didn't even expect you there; it was humiliation after humiliation. Your shoulders start to slump, and you wonder why you're playing a rock club in Oklahoma City on a wet Tuesday night. The label and the management wanted us to follow a straight path, but we went hard left. We were convinced we would be dropped and end up back home playing bars."

Instead the band locked everyone out and wrote 2112, an album whose entire first side was taken up by a concept piece about a brutally dystopian future in which a group of elite priests exert total control over the meek and mediocre: excellence and individualism have been traded in for a numb, cowardly security. One man finds an old guitar, is fascinated by the sounds it makes and begs the priests to let the people make their own music. They respond by crushing the guitar beneath their feet. A voice at the track's end intones: "Attention all planets of the Solar Federation: we have assumed control."

The sleevenotes offered thanks to the rightwing novelist Ayn Rand, while critics also detected nods to Dostoevsky and Nietzsche. Peart's ultra-libertarian stance was construed by the NME, never one to shy away from a ludicrous argument, as being dangerously close to Nazism, despite Rand – and Lee – being Jewish. "I believe in the sanctity of the individual," Peart said later. "In freedom of action without harming anyone else." While this debate raged on, in England at least, Rush displayed their desire for individual freedom on 2112's sleeve where they were pictured wearing silk kimonos, in what they admit in Beyond the Lighted Stage was an attempt to have an image, any image. As a young fan I found that picture a far more powerful message and, to this day, I've never met a Rush fan who ever gave two hoots for Rand or objectivism, but I know plenty for whom Rush's brilliantly openhearted, unafraid ludicrousness was just as much of a draw as their staggering technical aptitude.

"We were pretty goofy," Lee says. "We came up through a generation where you admired bands who had a stage look. But we didn't have a stylist, and our management was no use."

But it worked out well, Rush were never less than striking.

"You're very kind," he laughs, "but sometimes it was more freaky. There were visual crimes. My huge glasses. When I had my hair tied back all the time. That was so bad. But my wife let me out of the house like that and she's actually really fashionable – she makes her living in the fashion business."

Has she ever banned an outfit outright?

"Oh god, yeah," he laughs. "Plenty. But we were always connected to our times, that's for sure."

The release of 2112 turned Rush into stars, and they kept up their epic scope for two more albums – during which time Peart rewrote Coleridge's Kubla Khan for the song Xanadu, another of the band's signature numbers – then as the 70s became the 80s Rush changed again, just as dramatically as they had when Peart joined. Hair was cut, and so were song lengths. Synths appeared. Lee was listening to Ultravox and Simple Minds, while the influence of the Police and Talking Heads was all over 1980's Permanent Waves and its massive hit single, Spirit of Radio. The follow-up, 1981's Moving Pictures, is still the band's most successful record and had its own huge hit in Tom Sawyer, a song iconic enough to have been cut-up and refigured as intro music at Beastie Boys gigs, and remembered so affectionately it became a recurring theme in the 2009 bromance I Love You, Man.

"There was something special about that record," Lifeson says. "Moving Pictures still makes me get into a groove, I love the way it feels. But I'm not nostalgic for old times. I'd love to have that hair again and be 40 pounds lighter, but it's a tradeoff. If we were at the end of our careers, I might feel differently."

But, of course, they're not. During the 80s the band went took a peculiarly synth-heavy direction (too synth-heavy, some would say – including, it turned out, Lifeson). They were turned down flat when they offered a young band called Nirvana a tour in the very early 90s. Roll the Bones, from 1991, included a rap, and 1993's (hugely successful) Counterparts touched on grunge and included a song calling for more personal understanding of Aids. But it looked as if it would all fall apart when, in 1997, Peart's only daughter was killed in a car accident. Ten months later, his wife died of cancer. While caring for her, Peart started learning to cook, a process documented in strangely moving fashion on his own website, in which he offers thanks to Marks & Spencer for putting instructions on preprepared meals. The band didn't play live for five years, during which time Peart – who now has a new wife and a 16-month old daughter – covered more than 55,000 miles riding across the US on his BMW motorcycle. "These days we're judicious with our tour planning," Lifeson says. "Neil doesn't want to be away too much."

After 37 years, Rush are still recording new material and still finding new places to play ("In South America they cry when they meet you," Lee says). More importantly, they're still friends.

"That's totally it," Lee says. "That's what Rush means, and that's the satisfying thing for all of us."

Back in his home office high above Toronto, Lifeson laughs out loud. "There are very, very few bands that get along anything like as well as we do. In fact, thinking about all the bands I've ever met, I really don't think there are any."

Rush tour the UK from 14-25 May. The deluxe edition of Moving Pictures is released on 11 April by Mercury.

The Many Faces of Rush, one song at a time

The Zeppelin copyists

Finding My Way (1973)

Dating from the days when Rush were a Toronto bar-band, barely out of their teens, Finding My Way could just as well have been called Finding Led Zeppelin's Way. This, featuring original, feather-cut, glam-friendly drummer John Rutsey, is gloriously in hock to Robert Plant's paint-stripping howl and Jimmy Page's amped-up, hair-shaking, blues-rock riffology. "I'm coming," yells Geddy Lee dizzily, over a sweat-drizzled guitar break. "Ooh babe, I said I'm running/ Oww babe I said I'm coming to get you mama …" .

The prog epicists

Xanadu (1977)

Perhaps the most Ultra-Rush Rush epic in the whole epic Rush canon, Xanadu is an 11-minute work of wonder that skips easily between fantasy-metal bombast, oscillating analogue-synth noodle-doodle, ambient guitar experimentalism and double kick-drum diddling prog-jazz. "To find the sacred river Alph, to walk the caves of ice," sings Lee. "Oh, I will dine on honey dew and drink the milk of paradise/ Yeah! Paradise!" The only song known to man to be inspired by Samuel Taylor Coleridge's 1798 poem Kubla Khan while still being intrinsically groovy enough to offer up a super-tasty breakbeat (beginning around 3:08 on the live clip linked above). Frankly, you can keep your punk rock.

The hitmakers

Red Barchetta (1981)

From deep within the beating heart of their chart-hogging, hit-making era, this is as perfect and beautiful a pop song as the band would ever write. Based on the short story A Nice Morning Drive by Richard S Foster, Red Barchetta imagines a world where the internal combustion engine is banned and everyone knocks about in eco-friendly "gleaming alloy air cars" – apart from our hero, who visits his uncle's country house to drive the fantastically preserved Ferrari 550 Barchetta the old chap's been keeping under wraps for 50 years. Includes the none-more-Julian-and-Sandy line: "Tyres spitting gravel, I commit my weekly crime."

The synthrock years

Distant Early Warning (1984)

From the band's under-celebrated wedge-haircut, ponytail and pastel-coloured jacket era, this is a neat summation of what modern rock bands thought were good ideas in 1984. The band had been toying with Police-like clipped prog-reggae styles since 1980's monster hit The Spirit of Radio, but this was something else, rather like Talking Heads in Dub, only nothing like that at all. Big and spacey and full of ringing chords and digital synths, it has a powerfully dynamic, post-punk chorus that you will wake up singing for weeks afterwards. Neat tip of the lyrical hat to William Faulkner's 1936 novel Absalom, Absalom! too, obviously.

The power trio returns

One Little Victory 2002

Not quite a full return to the band's satin'n'tat sound of 1973 – there are some superfan-teasing big prog chords thrown in early on – but this was certainly some sort of reimagining of their original, stack-heeled power-trio wonderfulness. The band had been on hiatus for nearly six years following the deaths of Peart's daughter and, soon after, his wife. No one – least of all the band themselves – thought there was any chance they could ever really come back. Then they did. And they found themselves bigger than they had ever been.

The road to Xanadu: Neil Peart on the birth of Rush's first great epic song

From the time I was a schoolboy, I loved reading. I remember going to the local public library every Tuesday evening (perhaps the only time it was open at night) for a fresh supply of books. Writing also afflicted me early; at age seven, I wrote a poem called The Little Red Fox that ran on for a couple of pages of doggerel rhyme. I'm told it was displayed in the halls of Gracefield school, Toronto, for some years after – not remarkable for its quality, but for its volume (similar criticisms have been levelled at my drumming over the years).

To give the seven-year-old rhymester his due, there is one couplet I remember fondly from the middle of the poem, when the hunters are coming after the fox: "The fox woke up so early in the morn/ (You would too if you heard that horn!)"

I realise now that by the time I reached high-school English classes, it was necessary to sacrifice one novel, one play and one poem – vivisect them – to give me the tools to properly appreciate a thousand other novels, plays, and poems. Thus, A Tale of Two Cities, Julius Caesar, and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner were slaughtered on the altar of literary dissection, and will never live for me again.

Too bad about that – but a worthwhile sacrifice, of course.

As for the Rush song Xanadu, and its debt to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, it's kind of strange how that came about.

Back in 1975, while my bandmates Geddy and Alex were mixing our first live album, All the World's a Stage (talk about literary references!), with co-producer Terry Brown, I took a few days away to work on some lyrics for new songs.

The title and initial theme of Xanadu were actually inspired by the film Citizen Kane. I had planned to attempt something with its dark mood and subtle psychology. Of course the opening lines of Kubla Khan were quoted at the beginning of Citizen Kane, so I looked up the poem just for research – "context".

However, after reading the poem, I was overwhelmed by its imagery and emotional power. More or less against my will, I found the song being taken over by the poem, in a way that has never happened before or since. For that reason, the finished song has never been my favourite piece of work, lyrically – too derivative – but it made a good musical vehicle for one of our first "extended works".

Also, it was portentous that I added the "adventure travel" aspect to the song's story way back then – "I scaled the frozen mountaintops of eastern lands unknown/ Time and man alone/ Searching for the lost Xanadu" – before I'd ever traveled farther than the arenas and rock clubs of North America.

It is also noteworthy that I portrayed the idea of immortality as a grim fate, a curse, because the first lyrics I ever wrote, at about age 17, were for a song by the band I was in, JR Flood, called Retribution. (When I told my mother about the song, and the title, she cracked: "Who are you writing for – college professors?" That was rich, said to a high-school-dropout wannabe drummer. In later years, having attained success with Rush, I once heard a disparaging remark: "Rush is what happens when you let the drummer write the songs." Pretty funny – though of course I'm not entirely to blame; I only write the lyrics.)

Retribution was a first-person story about a soul trapped in immortality as a punishment, foreshadowing the character I made up for Xanadu. It is further ironic that a dominant theme in Citizen Kane is the opposite: mortality as a punishment – symbolised by Kane's dying word: "Rosebud."

But in terms of the influence of Coleridge on my lyrics, I am much more fond of a less obvious reference, a line in our song Animate, from Counterparts (1994): "Daughter of a demon lover."

It pays homage to these powerful lines from Kubla Khan: "As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted/ By woman wailing for her demon lover!"

Now that's rock!

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Rush’s 2112 set for blue vinyl release

Rush’s classic 1976 album 2112 to be released on limited edition blue vinyl later this month

Rush’s classic 1976 album 2112 is to be released on limited edition blue vinyl later this month.

The special edition of the landmark record will be limited to just 5000 copies worldwide and will be pressed on to heavyweight 180g opaque blue vinyl. It will arrive on April 27.

It’s now available for pre-order direct from the band’s online store , with those getting in early receiving a bonus 2112 keyring.

The record was remastered by Sean Magee at Abbey Road Studios in 2015 and is said to feature a “red star of the federation hologram on side two run-out groove.”

2112 was reissued in 2016 as a deluxe edition to celebrate it’s 40th anniversary .

Last month, Rush released a lyric video for A Farewell To Kings , which was taken from the 40th anniversary edition of the album of the same name, while in January, guitarist Alex Lifeson confirmed that the band had no plans to tour or record together in the future.

He said: "It’s been a little over two years since Rush last toured. We have no plans to tour or record any more. We’re basically done. After 41 years, we felt it was enough.”

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Rush’s last studio album was 2012’s Clockwork Angels .

Scott has spent 35 years in newspapers, magazines and online as an editor, production editor, sub-editor, designer, writer and reviewer. Scott joined our news desk in the summer of 2014 before moving to the e-commerce team in 2020. Scott keeps Louder’s buyer’s guides up to date, writes about the best deals for music fans, keeps on top of the latest tech releases and reviews headphones, speakers, earplugs and more. Over the last 10 years, Scott has written more than 11,000 articles across Louder, Classic Rock, Metal Hammer and Prog. He's previously written for publications including IGN, the Sunday Mirror, Daily Record and The Herald newspapers, covering everything from daily news and weekly features, to tech reviews, video games, travel and whisky. Scott's favourite bands are Fields Of The Nephilim, The Cure, New Model Army, All About Eve, The Mission, Cocteau Twins, Drab Majesty, Marillion and Rush.

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2112 Tour (1976)

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RUSH 2112 Tour (Very rare original 1977 UK 10-page 8" x 11�" full colour concert tour programme, packed with photos, discography, UK tour dates and an article by Sounds' Geoff Barton. Apart from a few very very light signs of age on the coverthis copy is in superb near mint condition, now hard to find in such a great condition).

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