RUSH
rock band | formed 1968
Formed inToronto, Ontario, Canada
Biographyby Stuart Berman
Since the early 1970s, Rush have reigned as Canada’s pre-eminent power trio, celebrated for their musical wizardry, profound socio-political lyricism and defiantly independent spirit. A progressive rock band in every sense of the term, Rush are the rare group whose popularity and influence have compounded as they’ve continually reinvented their sound. With some 40 million albums sold worldwide, and their arena-filling acumen still intact well into the 21st century, the band has come to define our national identity as much as Hockey Night in Canada, Tim Hortons and inferiority complexes.
IN DEPTH
The evolution of Rush is the evolution of post-hippie rock itself, having formed as a heavy blooze act in the late ’60s, thrived in the progressive-rock era of the 1970s, and adapted to the futurist new-wave sounds of the ’80s, before being reborn once again as godfathers of modern alternative rock and metal in the ’90s and beyond. Throughout it all, they’ve nurtured a rabidly devoted international cult of fans that have stuck with them through every dramatic stylistic shift—kimonos, skinny ties, mullets and all. (And who knows: if someone ever figures out how to channel communal air drumming into an alternative power source, Rush could very well save the world.)
At the same time, they’ve always been an especially polarizing band—there is no such thing as a neutral opinion on Rush. The most persistently damning stereotype is that Rush fandom is a boys-only club, a reasonable conclusion to draw if you were to just compare the men’s and women’s restroom lineups at one of their concerts (or watch the 2009 Paul Rudd/Jason Segel comedy, I Love You Man, wherein the main characters’ mutual adoration of Rush forms the cornerstone of their modern bromance). And yet the band arguably owes its career to Cleveland DJ Donna Halper, whose heavy rotation of 1974’s “Working Man” first gave the struggling Toronto group a foothold in the lucrative but, at the time, impenetrable American market.
With Neil Peart replacing John Rutsey behind the kit for 1975’s Fly By Night, Rush acquired not just an incomparably skilled drummer who could keep pace with Geddy Lee’s jazz-worthy basslines and Alex Lifeson’s proto-metal riffage, but a visionary lyricist who could craft conceptual narratives as intricate and dramatic as the band’s prog-rock overtures. The band’s string of late-’70s masterworks—2112 (1976), A Farewell to Kings (1977), and Hemispheres (1978)—were defined by multi-sectional suites that ate up entire album sides, performed in time signatures that are mathematically impossible to calculate. But while Rush’s instrumental prowess is unparalleled—this is a band where guitar god Lifeson somehow comes out looking like the underrated one—the church-belled balladry of 1977’s “Closer to Heart” proved they could excel within the strictures of the pop single.
And that quality would become all the more evident as the band successfully transitioned into the ’80s, couching such thesis-worthy topics as urban planning (1982’s “Subdivisions”) and the threat of nuclear war (1984’s “Distant Early Warning”) into synth-smoothed pop songs. After reasserting their metallic muscle during the grungy ’90s (and cultivating a new generation of fans through the endorsements of alt-rock progeny like Nine Inch Nails, Tool and Foo Fighters), Rush marked their fourth decade with some of their most lyrically weighty works to date, including 2007’s Iraq war-inspired Snakes and Arrows and 2012’s steampunk odyssey Clockwork Angels. At the same time, the band have been eager to poke fun at their studious image: latter day tours have shown them to be the funniest sketch-comedy troupe this country has produced since The Kids in the Hall, thanks to short-film intros that see the trio satirize their history through absurdist costumed role play.
Complex yet accessible, accomplished yet self-effacing, unabashedly nerdy yet spectacularly popular, Rush is Canada’s forever-conflicted essence wrapped up in a gatefold double-LP sleeve. As one of their most famous proverbs declares, you have but two options in this life: “be cool or be cast out.” Rush stands as a paragon of all that is possible when you embrace the latter option.
Since the early 1970s, Rush have reigned as Canada’s pre-eminent power trio, celebrated for their musical wizardry, profound socio-political lyricism and defiantly independent spirit. A progressive rock band in every sense of the term, Rush are the rare group whose popularity and influence have compounded as they’ve continually reinvented their sound. With some 40 million albums sold worldwide, and their arena-filling acumen still intact well into the 21st century, the band has come to define our national identity as much as Hockey Night in Canada, Tim Hortons and inferiority complexes.
IN DEPTH
The evolution of Rush is the evolution of post-hippie rock itself, having formed as a heavy blooze act in the late ’60s, thrived in the progressive-rock era of the 1970s, and adapted to the futurist new-wave sounds of the ’80s, before being reborn once again as godfathers of modern alternative rock and metal in the ’90s and beyond. Throughout it all, they’ve nurtured a rabidly devoted international cult of fans that have stuck with them through every dramatic stylistic shift—kimonos, skinny ties, mullets and all. (And who knows: if someone ever figures out how to channel communal air drumming into an alternative power source, Rush could very well save the world.)
At the same time, they’ve always been an especially polarizing band—there is no such thing as a neutral opinion on Rush. The most persistently damning stereotype is that Rush fandom is a boys-only club, a reasonable conclusion to draw if you were to just compare the men’s and women’s restroom lineups at one of their concerts (or watch the 2009 Paul Rudd/Jason Segel comedy, I Love You Man, wherein the main characters’ mutual adoration of Rush forms the cornerstone of their modern bromance). And yet the band arguably owes its career to Cleveland DJ Donna Halper, whose heavy rotation of 1974’s “Working Man” first gave the struggling Toronto group a foothold in the lucrative but, at the time, impenetrable American market.
With Neil Peart replacing John Rutsey behind the kit for 1975’s Fly By Night, Rush acquired not just an incomparably skilled drummer who could keep pace with Geddy Lee’s jazz-worthy basslines and Alex Lifeson’s proto-metal riffage, but a visionary lyricist who could craft conceptual narratives as intricate and dramatic as the band’s prog-rock overtures. The band’s string of late-’70s masterworks—2112 (1976), A Farewell to Kings (1977), and Hemispheres (1978)—were defined by multi-sectional suites that ate up entire album sides, performed in time signatures that are mathematically impossible to calculate. But while Rush’s instrumental prowess is unparalleled—this is a band where guitar god Lifeson somehow comes out looking like the underrated one—the church-belled balladry of 1977’s “Closer to Heart” proved they could excel within the strictures of the pop single.
And that quality would become all the more evident as the band successfully transitioned into the ’80s, couching such thesis-worthy topics as urban planning (1982’s “Subdivisions”) and the threat of nuclear war (1984’s “Distant Early Warning”) into synth-smoothed pop songs. After reasserting their metallic muscle during the grungy ’90s (and cultivating a new generation of fans through the endorsements of alt-rock progeny like Nine Inch Nails, Tool and Foo Fighters), Rush marked their fourth decade with some of their most lyrically weighty works to date, including 2007’s Iraq war-inspired Snakes and Arrows and 2012’s steampunk odyssey Clockwork Angels. At the same time, the band have been eager to poke fun at their studious image: latter day tours have shown them to be the funniest sketch-comedy troupe this country has produced since The Kids in the Hall, thanks to short-film intros that see the trio satirize their history through absurdist costumed role play.
Complex yet accessible, accomplished yet self-effacing, unabashedly nerdy yet spectacularly popular, Rush is Canada’s forever-conflicted essence wrapped up in a gatefold double-LP sleeve. As one of their most famous proverbs declares, you have but two options in this life: “be cool or be cast out.” Rush stands as a paragon of all that is possible when you embrace the latter option.
Canadian Music Icon and Broadcaster | 1936 - 2018
Singer-Songwriter and TV Personality | born 1962