Chapter 2
A Night in Zion
1980—1982
Permanent Waves (released January 1, 1980) found the American public embracing Rush as never before. The first track, “The Spirit of Radio,” opens with a soaring guitar riff so precise and so cleanly produced that it makes the band sound as though giving us their very first effort. Though some questioned the direction of their music away from long epics and traditional progressive rock structures, Rush’s progressivism was truly progressive.
Living up to the true meaning of the oft-maligned word ‘progressive,’ we have consciously tried to get better—on our instruments, and in our songwriting, arranging, and performing. However, we have learned that such a path is never linear.93
And, in a very Peartian way, the song exudes warmth while also offering a philosophic meditation on excellence.
Invisible airwaves crackle with life
Bright antennae bristle with the energy
Emotional feedback on a timeless wavelength
Bearing a gift beyond price, almost free
All this machinery making modern music
Can still be open hearted
Not so coldly charted
It’s really just a question of your honesty, yeah
Your honesty
One likes to believe in the freedom of music
But glittering prizes and endless compromises
Shatter the illusion of integrity
“Spirit of Radio” is nothing if not an explosion of energy. As progressive as anything made before, the song offers a compact version of progression, even throwing in bits of Simon and Garfunkel as well as reggae. What would have taken ten minutes in Rush 2.1 takes only five minutes in Rush 2.2.
One of the most prominent musicians in progressive rock today, Andy Tillison of The Tangent, offers the best analysis of the song: “The song that drew me in the most was ‘The Spirit of Radio.’ This song hits me on a few levels lyrically, the most simple of which is my love of radio itself.” For Tillison, the song succeeds on every level. “Lifeson’s guitar at the beginning of the song with its delicate swirling phasing effect and sparkling pattern is a perfect prelude to the opening Peart-salvo “Begin the day with a friendly voice.” As a professor of music technology, this English progger believes the song demands one imagine Peart as a boy, discovering the world. “The line that suddenly pokes out of the song “All this machinery making modern music can still be open hearted” was an affirmation of everything I wanted to do in life,” he continues. The song in its lyrics and music bridged the old and the new, allowing one to flow from the other without erasing the past. “As I have written my own music over the past 35 years, that ‘permission granted,’ that manifesto or ideal has never been far from my mind. That electronic technology, like all other technologies as far back as the technology of language itself, will be best served up by the human element that can drive the machine.” Ultimately, Tillison claims, the song demands the free will and agency of the artist over the material of her or his art. “The lines that follow are equally important, the fact that at root level it’s really ‘Just a question of your honesty’ is another encouragement to the artist to spread his/her wings in the new technological backdrop—and the line “Glittering prizes and endless compromises shatter the illusion of integrity, yeah!”—well this line is so beautifully cautionary, whether it’s aimed at the Grammys, the weekly music charts, or the egocentric DJs at the hub of the celebrity culture of the ’70s—the era of the song itself.” That Peart understood all of this when so young astounds Tillison.94 In every way, the track sees Rush embracing an important role, the soul of rock, in the 1980s.
Designed by Hugh Syme, the cover of Permanent Waves reveals a disastrous mess of sorts as a beautiful Donna Reed-like woman walks in the middle of it with Stoic confidence. She is, Peart admitted later, symbolic of the band. Through the popular fades of disco, reggae, and punk, Rush would chart their own course, doing so while embracing transcendent ideals. “That cover picture signifies,” he continues, “forging on regardless, being completely uninvolved with all the chaos and ridiculous nonsense that’s going on around us.” While any Rush fan could have said this already about the band, it is good to see the band confidently admit as much. Additionally, “she represents the spirit of music and the spirit of radio, a symbol of perfect integrity and truth and beauty.”95
Socrates could not have stated it better.
In the second track, “Freewill,” Peart again harkens back to his vital themes of individualism, perseverance, and acceptance of one’s failures and successes. Just as crisp as “Spirit of Radio,” but more direct in its straight forward rock-and-roll hooks and riffs, Lee sings with absolute conviction the band’s dedication to fighting the fates, never accepting second best.
You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice
You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill
I will choose a path that’s clear
I will choose free will
Few things anger or intrigue Peart as much as religion does, as noted in chapter one. It is a source of constant intrigue and constant frustration for him. As a libertarian, he naturally distrusts all authority, but he especially distrusts religious authorities.
Yet, while denying religious authorities any due, he does offer a “spiritual side” to his own beliefs. Following the theories of the Freudian psychologist and philosopher, Carl Jung, he notes: “I’m conscious of the gray zone between conscious and unconscious.” These connections, however, are not religious. “A lot of my songs talk about that moment between sleep and waking,” he continues. “If there is a spirit and soul in between the conscious and unconscious, mysterious connections come about.” As with all things in this world, Peart hopes to analyze and incorporate such aspects of his being rather than allow them to dominate him and control his actions.96 When pushed on the subject in 1994, Peart provided a classically Stoic response to faith.
Peart says he still employs considerable Biblical imagery in his lyrics “which I picked up as a child. I just encouraged my daughter to sign up for ‘world religions’ in high school. You should know those things. It is some people’s solution to a problem.”
Peart’s background is Protestant. He implies that he no longer is involved with organized religion. “If there is life after death, I’m prepared for it,” he says. “I think I’ve lived a good, responsible, moral life. But at the same time, only in service of my own idea of that. I think we are self-contained units of life and have to make the best of what we have here. Your job is to live a good life here and now. I hate the excuse ‘it doesn’t matter what your actions are here.’ Spirituality is often a way of problem solving for people. They have needs or questions they can’t answer and they accept religion to help them.”
The source of creativity for Peart, one of rock’s most intriguing lyricists, is excitement. “I get excited about things. The joy of creation is a small little spark,” he says. “Suddenly you realize it’s going to work. That’s the joy you get—that it’s going to work. Then you have to make it work. That takes another few days of craft. The little spark gets me interested.”97
Creativity is spiritual, though not in a religious sense, he claims.
When Peart speaks in such terms, it is almost impossible not to compare him with another genius of his generation, Steve Jobs. The two have much in common, at least in terms of individualism and relentless drive. In all things, whatever they might be (except for picking his official biographer), Jobs pursued excellence. Despite his embrace of eastern mysticism, various aspects of Hinduism, and Zen from a young age, Jobs’s god seems to have been whatever was perfect and creative in man. The creativity, though, the founder of Apple thought, could only be presented by and through the agency of particular men and women. The source of excellence and beauty, however, came from beyond. Tellingly, after Yo-Yo Ma performed privately for him in his own home, Jobs wept (he cried all of the time; he never hid any emotion, good or bad). “Your playing is the best argument I’ve ever heard for the existence of God, because I don’t really believe a human alone can do this.” Whatever their differences in actual theology, Jobs and Peart agreed on the genius of man, and each represented the highest form of individuality in the 1980s, pursuing excellence in all things.
More recently, “Faithless,” from the 2007 album, Snakes and Arrows, serves as a sort of coda to 1980’s “Freewill.” “That’s so long ago,” Peart stated in a 2007 interview, and “so much has happened to me in the meantime. And yet the basic simplicity of what I thought then is true.”98 He has, he argues, gotten along rather well in life without the need for faith.
Paradoxically, the final track of side one of Permanent Waves, “Jacob’s Ladder,” embraces a deeply religious—specifically Old Testament—theme, the interplay of nature and the divine as the patriarch Jacob dreams of a stairway to the gates of Heaven. In Jewish as well as Christian theology, a question remains as to just what the ladder is. That is, what allows Jacob to ascend? By far the most musically progressive of the tracks on the first side, “Jacob’s Ladder” employs martial beats and rhythms as it explores the godlike clash of weather systems and the dreams of men. “The clouds prepare for battle,” the lyrics run, a play not just on nature but on man challenging the power of the gods as well. As Hebraic as “Jacob’s Ladder” might be, it is also Promethean. As nature rages, man sees through its cracks. “Follow men’s eyes as they look to the skies/The shifting shafts of shining weave the fabric of their dreams.”
The first two tracks of side two, “Entre Nous” and “Different Strings,” explore a more chamberlike form of rock, offering acoustic passages and singer/songwriter—like lyrics. In the way he sings Neil’s lyrics, Geddy invites the listener into an intimate community of musicians and artists. “Who has come to slay the dragon?” the singer asks, quietly inviting the listener to take part in his own battles against his own personal demons.
Some songs just scream “let me reach perfection.” Every note, every pause, every ebb, every swell, every silence, and every word just gravitates towards its right place. It’s as though the cardinal and Platonic virtue of Justice becomes manifest, real and tangible in this world of shades, forms, and shadows. There probably are very few perfect tracks—tracks that never grow old and never cease to cause wonder. From the ’70s and ’80s, the following songs immediately spring to my mind as candidates: “The Battle of Evermore,” “Spirit of Eden,” “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed,” “Close to the Edge,” “In Your Eyes,” “Thick as a Brick,” “Cinema Show,” “Echoes,” and “The Killing Moon.”
Of all of these great possibilities from those two wild and woolly decades, the one song that comes closest to attaining perfection, such as perfection is understood in this rather bent world, is “Natural Science,” the final track on Rush’s Permanent Waves.
Originally, as is well known by Rush fans, Peart had hoped to write a saga, epic, or edda about the Court of King Arthur and especially about the character of Sir Gawain.
I had also been working on making a song out of a medieval epic from King Arthur’s time, called “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” It was a real story written around the 14th century, and I was trying to transform it while retaining its original form and style. Eventually it came to seem too awkwardly out of place with the other material we were working on, so we decided to shelve that project for the time being.…
With the departure of “Gawain” we had left ourselves nothing with which to replace him!
Something new began to take shape. It was the product of a whole host of unconnected experiences, books, images, thoughts, feelings, observations, and confirmed principles, that somehow took the form of “Natural Science” … forged from some bits from “Gawain,” some instrumental ideas that were still unused, and some parts newly written.99
Though he had decided against relying on science fiction as the sole way of telling stories, Peart still lingered in a bit of a myth/fantasy/Tolkien phase as he considered the lyrics for this song. Many of the ideas in “Natural Science,” at least musically, also came from a “mass of ideas called Uncle Tounouse.”100
At 9 minutes 17 seconds, “Natural Science” consists of three parts: Tide Pools; Hyperspace; and Permanent Waves. These might have also have been titled, less poetically, Nature; Science; and Integrity.
In Part I, “Tide Pools,” Peart offers a vision of community. Each person is born into a myriad of factors. As the great Irishman Edmund Burke once said before Parliament: “Dark and inscrutable are the ways in which we come into the world.” Each person is born into a family, an environment, a language, a set of morality, and a religious system (even if atheist). Each of these factors shapes and delimits our very beings, and we must—from our earliest infancy—learn to move from one realm into another. From our family to our school. We must transition, we must bridge, we must understand, and we must integrate our experiences. Such a world of communities brings us security, but it might also allow for an insular kind of inbreeding and sloth. Looking at all of the connections and interactions, though, overwhelms us.
Wheels within wheels in a spiral array
A pattern so grand and complex
Time after time we lose sight of the way
Our causes can’t see their effects
Part II, “Hyperspace,” reveals how dangerously insane an integrated, uniform culture might become. Peart’s vision of conformity here is not of a communist or fascist variety, but instead of a capitalist, consumerist variety. It might metastasize uncontrollably.
A mechanized world out of hand
Computerized clinic
For superior cynics
Who dance to a synthetic band
In their own image
Their world is fashioned—
No wonder they don’t understand
Part III, “Permanent Waves,” brings the story and listener to a stoic resignation, a realization that one must somehow and in some way recognize the limits as well as the advantages of an insular natural community and a hyper-collectivist consumerism, brought together by colossal bureaucracies of corporations, educational systems, and governments. The true man, whatever the odds against him, will survive.
The most endangered species
The honest man
Will still survive annihilation
Forming a world
State of integrity
Sensitive, open and strong
These are quintessentially Peartian themes, and he returns to them again and again in his lyrics. “Subdivisions,” for example, offers almost all of the same sentiments, but it does so in lyrics that are much more direct and concise. The lyrics for “Natural Science” remain far more poetic than intellectual as well as far more artistic than philosophical. And yet, they are poetic, intellectual, artistic, and philosophical all at once.
As always, reviewers offered mixed reviews of the album. “Permanent Waves will come as no great revelation to Rush fans, but should be recognized as a steady, definitive step in the band’s evolution,” Keith Sharp of Music Express wrote. He gave the album a 7/10.101 Rolling Stone even conceded, however grudgingly:
True, earlier LPs like Fly by Night and Caress of Steel bear the scars of the group’s naïveté. But now, within the scope of six short (for them) songs, Rush demonstrate a maturity that even their detractors may have to admire. On Permanent Waves, these guys appropriate the crippling riffs and sonic blasts of heavy metal, model their tortuous instrumental changes on Yes-style British art rock and fuse the two together with lyrics that—despite their occasional overreach—are still several refreshing steps above the moronic machismo and half-baked mysticism of many hard-rock airs.102
Yet, true to Rolling Stone fashion, only a few months later, the magazine referred to Rush as “Heavy Metal Sludge,” a teeny-bopper male fantasy band, equivalent to the then-heartthrob-musician and actor Shaun Cassidy. Cruelly, the review concluded:
For the record, those three are drummer Neil Peart, who writes all the band’s lyrics and takes fewer solos than might be expected; guitarist Alex Lifeson, whose mile-a-minute buzzing is more numbing than exciting; and bassist, keyboardist and singer Geddy Lee, whose amazingly high-pitched wailing often sounds like Mr. Bill singing heavy metal. If only Mr. Sluggo had been on hand to give these guys a couple of good whacks.103
RPM Weekly praised the album for its innovation and its incorporation of currently popular trends in music.104 Melody Maker offered the highest praise, noting that Rush could rest easy “in the knowledge they’ve once again scored a winner.”105
Rush’s next release, Moving Pictures (February 12, 1981), completes what Permanent Waves began, and the audience for Rush continued to grow by immense bounds. The iconic and perfect opening track, “Tom Sawyer,” presents yet another anthem of individualism, perhaps the greatest Rush would produce.
No his mind is not for rent
To any god or government
Always hopeful, yet discontent
He knows changes aren’t permanent
But change is
Much to the chagrin of the members of Rush, a number of American politicians—such as Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky—have adopted this song as their own personal anthem. Steve Rothery, the guitarist for the English progressive rock band, Marillion, understands the song’s importance best. “Tom Sawyer is probably my favourite Rush track of all time. It has all the elements that make them such a great band. With a great groove, several hooky riffs and a strong and anthemic vocal. The Moving Pictures album is by far and away my favourite album of theirs. And this is the prime cut from it.”106 The lyrics co-written with fellow Canadian and friend, Pye Dubois, Peart’s “Tom Sawyer” could be an autobiographically mythic statement. Certainly, it is the song most associated with Rush, seen equally as a statement of integrity and of arrogance. “Tom Sawyer” is probably the man most American males, at one time or another, would like to be. Peart’s Tom Sawyer is freed from all restraint but still chooses to do the right thing, no matter the cost. Tom Sawyer, at least in the song, is a sort of modern demi-god, fully in control of his destiny, even when that destiny turns against him.
Inspired by a 1973 short story by Richard Foster, “Red Barchetta” is a science-fiction dystopian short story, one that engages the themes of nostalgia, motion, speed, and defiance.107 In Peart’s version, the government has outlawed all personal transportation, but the protagonist takes his uncle’s “brilliant red Barchetta, from a better vanished time” out into the country. There, he encounters a government vehicle of enforcement, “a gleaming alloy air car,” and thus begins a deadly race. A second government vehicle joins the pursuit, but the hero breaks free, leaving the mobile leviathans at a bridge that cannot support their girth. The song ends with the uncle and nephew, seated next to the hearth of home, dreaming of possibilities. For Peart, few stories could have tickled more of his fancies: the oppressive government, the fast car, the motion, the independence, and the color red.
After the hard-rock, jazz-tinged instrumental, “YYZ,” the final track of side one is “Limelight.” In nothing less than a confession, Peart describes exactly how uncomfortable he has become with fame and all of its trappings and demands. He cannot, he laments, “pretend a stranger is a long-awaited friend.” To do so would reek of dishonesty, a trait Peart despises with all the force imaginable. And not surprisingly, friendship does not come easily to the drummer and lyricist, though his loyalties, when established, remain deep. Yet, he could not handle the obsession of fans who followed him off stage, to his hotel room, and even to his home. All of this behavior shocked him to no end. As he noted, he wanted to be good, not famous. He wanted recognition for his talents and hard work, not for his face. For most people, however, there is a very fine line between fame and excellence. “I love being appreciated. Being respected is awfully good. But anything beyond that just creeps me out,” Peart says. “Any sense of adulation is just so wrong.”108 His discomfort with fame seems to have grown as he ages.
Paradoxically, though Peart has put himself in the public eye for over four decades—in his music, his many books, and a nearly impossible number of interviews to count—he despises having his privacy and space invaded, having fans fawn over him, and having too much attention directed toward him. He wants to be known for his skills, his insights, and his intelligence, but not for what brand of shoes he wears or what he did on a certain day with his beautiful wife and daughter. Praise brings him embarrassment and uneasiness.
“Neil has a real struggle with fans,” Lee explains. “It’s not a personal thing, it’s a shyness thing. He’s not as able to be as relaxed around strangers as Alex or I am. He doesn’t mean to hurt anyone’s feelings by it. He’s not trying to be rude.”109
In a number of interviews, Peart has tried to explain his reluctance to be famous. “I can’t relate to people who have a one sided view of me, thinking that they’ve known me for all these years and they know everything about me.” Too many fans, he claims, have gone berserk around him.110 His anger stems not from arrogance about himself and his desire for privacy but from his own insecurities about being inadequate as a person.
And trying, the philosophy of Tryism, is the key to much about me, my attitude toward fans, other artists, and my own self-image. If I am uncomfortable with strangers making a fuss about me, and feel embarrassed by any show of admiration, people sometimes accuse me of thinking I am “too good.” In fact the opposite is true—I don’t believe I deserve that kind of attention. I have never thought I was very good at anything; I just tried hard. And nothing came easily. Having one’s childhood personality shaped by being inept at every sport is a cliché, but it had its effect on me. What else do people judge you by at that age?”111
Further,
That sense of self affects my outlook in so many ways, rooted in the deep-seated belief that I am nothing special, and anyone could do what I do, if they only tried. It may not be true, but it is how I feel, and thus I don’t overvalue what I do, or what I am. I hit things with sticks—big deal.112
Additionally, he resents the notion that he plays for his fans and their desires. This would be impossible, given the number of fans, but it would also diminish Peart’s personal integrity and, consequently, his very appeal to them. “If you think that we have to please the fans that like Iron Maiden and Saxon and AC/DC—I know I have nothing in common with those people, so I can’t possibly hope to be able to relate to them unless I play down or unless I talk down or think down.”113 For those who find his words inspirational, seeing him as a guru, Peart takes neither credit nor blame. “I’m in no control of a thing like that.” Does he like it? No. “But it’s not something I can do anything about.” Nobody, he stresses, has a right to him, or to any private aspect of him. He merely wants to be a “normal human being.”114 Fans, he says, “force us to protect ourselves. They force us to check into hotels under false names. They force us to have security guards to keep people away from us.”115 Peart remembers well the first time fans made him uncomfortable. He recounts this at length in his profound book, Roadshow, a travel memoir of Rush’s thirtieth-anniversary tour:
Our popularity increased slowly, more or less gradually, but still eventually brought strange changes in the way people around us behaved. One afternoon, before a show at a small arena in the Midwest around the spring of 1976, three or four of us from the band and crew were on a lawn outside the venue, throwing a Frisbee around. Young long-haired males began gathering, just staring at us, apparently fascinated by our Frisbee-playing. We exchanged looks, but kept throwing and catching. Then some of the watchers started yelling out our names, and calling others over, until there were dozens of people around us. That kind of appreciation was what we were out on the road working for, of course, but not so much for our Frisbee-playing, and as the crowd grew bigger, the fun seemed to go out of the game.116
If things were uncomfortable for Peart in the 1970s, his discomfort increased exponentially with the success of 1981’s Moving Pictures and Rush’s meteoric rise in the public eye in the early 1980s. Indeed, Peart remembers the entire year after its release with mixed emotions. “A lot of strange people came out of the woodwork” in the spring and summer of 1981, he remembers. “There was so much attention on us that was transitory.”117
In his memoir of fourteen months on what he calls “The Healing Road,” Ghost Rider, after the twin tragedies of the loss of his daughter and wife, Peart discovered something about his pre-1997 self:
In my former shallow, perhaps callous, world-view, I had enjoyed my life and appreciated my family and my friends, but I had often been annoyed by the feeling that everyone else just wanted something from me. But now life, which I had once idealized as a generous deity offering adventure and delight, had betrayed my faith viciously, and in the aftermath it was people who had held me up and held me together with unstinting care and unimagined affection.118
Of course, it was not just Peart who had problems with fans, though he was probably the most sensitive to the change in status and popularity. Lee and his family had to flee their home after fans stalked him in his neighborhood.119 “I don’t get tired of being in a band but I get tired of the name Rush,” the bass player stated in 1982. “I get tired of being popular.” He only wanted to be a great musician, not a star. “We’ve all gotten very protective,” he said in an interview with a British magazine. “We value our privacy a lot and I think we’ve learnt how to put up a wall between ourselves and other people at times.”120 Peart joked that Rush “could start a ‘Flake of the Week Club’ based on some of its mail.”
“Zealots who believe they’ve discovered the ‘message’ behind his words” especially frightened him.121 Just what these hidden messages were are not clear. Presumably, Peart meant claims of aliens rather than claims of libertarian individualism.
Track four, “The Camera Eye,” offers a John Dos Passos view of two cities, New York’s Manhattan and London. The most traditionally progressive of the tracks on Moving Pictures, “The Camera Eye,” at just under eleven minutes, remains the longest single Rush track from then until now.
Pavements may teem
With intense energy
But the city is calm
In this violent sea
Moody and introspective with punctuated energy, the music and lyrics offer an almost alienated and existentialist view of urban living. For all intents and purposes, it resembles “Natural Science” not just in length, but in themes as well. Here, in “The Camera Eye,” the cities, rather than the tide pools, provide the locales vital to life. Yet, the individual walks through them in a bit of a daze, as the energy of so many urbanites combines, fuses, and overwhelms.
The second track on side two, “Witch Hunt,” intrigued fans as Peart had mysteriously subtitled it “Part III of Fear.” Only slowly did fans realize that Rush was releasing the first three parts in backward order, a new segment released on three successive albums. A four-plus minute version of the famous cautionary western American novel about the dangers of mobs, The Oxbow Incident, “Witch Hunt” warns against the group action of evangelicals driven by a false and overbearing sense of morality. Musically as well as lyrically, “Witch Hunt” is fraught with suffocation and claustrophobia, but it is also profoundly cinematic, as is every song on Moving Pictures.
The righteous rise
With burning eyes
Of hatred and ill-will
Madmen fed on fear and lies
To beat and burn and kill
Quick to judge
Quick to anger
Slow to understand
Ignorance and prejudice
And fear walk hand in hand …
The final song, “Vital Signs,” more New Wave than anything else on the album, once again offers not only the perfect conclusion to this album but also a stunning segue to the next, 1982’s Signals. In grand contrast to the narrowness of the mob in “Witch Hunt,” “Vital Signs” opens a world of possibilities, especially for the creative individual: “Everybody got to elevate from the norm.” The listener moves from tightness of breath to free and ecstatic inhalations and exhalations. Though written quickly, the song and especially its lyrics reflect Peart’s well-considered theme that technology, rather than dominating human experience, might well mimic our human nature, thus remaining under our control. That is, Peart considers the possibility that the microchip works because it reflects our very human understanding of the natural order.
If Rush’s clout increased with Permanent Waves, it skyrocketed with Moving Pictures. This album not only became the iconic Rush album, it became one of the all-time classics of album rock, rock, and progressive rock radio. Sounds declared after Moving Pictures appeared that Rush were “peerless,” giving the album a perfect rating.122 Hit Parader, however, got it best:
With the success of Moving Pictures, Rush stands on the verge of claiming recognition as one of the premier hard rock bands. They have finally conquered whatever musical stigmas that have plagued their career. By infusing new ideas into their metallic style Rush has become the spearhead of heavy-metal’s creative evolution.123
Though Rolling Stone ignored the album, the fans did not. Two months after Moving Pictures appeared, the RIAA certified it gold. Two weeks later, the album hit platinum. Fourteen years later, it had hit Platinum four times, and it remains one of the best-selling albums of all time.124
The last album produced by the then-fourth-member of Rush, Terry Brown, Signals (September 9, 1982) marked yet again a major progression in the music of Rush as well as in Neil Peart’s lyrics. The pressure to produce something similar to the previous year’s Moving Pictures naturally proved immense, as they had never encountered such success. On the Moving Pictures tour alone, fan attendance doubled at concerts, and almost anyone in the American Midwest could hear one of three tracks from the album almost anytime on FM rock radio. But the three main members of Rush decided that a second Moving Pictures would be too easy. They had done that album, accomplished what they had sought to accomplish, and they wanted to take their music in new directions. In particular, Lee had become more and more interested in keyboards and composing on them. He never planned to become a “Keith Emerson,” but he loved the challenge the keyboards brought him.125 Not surprisingly, especially given Lee’s interest and the learning curve he needed to understand and overcome regarding synthesizers, the keys employed on the album had either 1) a deep, booming bass sound or 2) an airy, soaring feel. Lee remembers:
I was getting bored writing. I felt like we were falling into a pattern of how we were writing on bass, guitar and drums. Adding the keyboards was fascinating for me and I was learning more about writing music from a different angle.126
Further, he claims, the keyboards allowed Rush to expand beyond the power trio format without actually adding a new member of the band.127 With Signals and the following concerts to support it, Lifeson claimed he felt “almost re-born” with the new sound.128
As each of the members of Rush have stated many times about themselves, they were sponges, soaking up the best in current music as well as the best in traditional literature. In particular, the band had been listening to the moody prog electronica of Ultravox and Japan, the moody pop electronica of Orchestral Manoeuvers in the Dark (OMD) and Spandau Ballet, and other synthesizer-driven and drowned-in-layers-of-sound New Wave bands.129 “Just as with many new wave groups, we have the same spirit of rebellion against mercenary forces,” Peart stated in a phone interview.130 The pre-concert mixed tapes that Peart created explain much:
The cassettes from the Signals tour, in 1982, neatly hand-labeled on the spine, “Rush Radio,” and with my drawing of the fire-hydrant logo from the album cover, offered a selection of lesser-known songs from that era, by New Musik, Simple Minds, King Crimson, U2, Ultravox, Max Webster, Joe Jackson, Japan, Thinkman, Go, XTC, Talking Heads, Jimmy Cliff, a couple of Pete Townshend’s solo songs, Bill Bruford’s jazz-rock excursions, and the ponderously-named-but-ethereal-sounding Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark.131
Given such influences, Signals was the darkest and moodiest album from Rush thus far, as dense as rock albums come. And some rock appearing at the same time appalled Peart. In one interview, he complained about his former hero, Carl Palmer, then playing for the so-called “supergroup” Asia. “I don’t understand why any drummer would want to drop everything they learned like that and go back to kindergarten stuff.”132
Lee had similar thoughts, though without naming names. “It all sounds the same now. At one point it all came charging back and had a lot of energy, but it hasn’t really gone anywhere,” the bassist explained. “It’s just become a commercial thing, all pasteurized and homogenized. Anyone can pick up a book” and learn a few heavy metal chords.133
From the ominous opening notes of “Subdivisions,” the listener knows this is a Rush to be taken with deadly seriousness. No hobbits dwell here. There’s a Tom Sawyer lurking somewhere in the neighborhood, but even he avoids such heaviness of mood as found on the first side of the album. Lots of honest men, however, populate Signals. All of this gravitas hovers over the entire album, despite the rather whimsical cover of a dog ready to mark his territory on the neighborhood fire hydrant. Only a few months after its release, Peart explained that the album had “more to do with writing about people and less about ideas. Permanent Waves was probably our first album that was in touch with reality—it was about people dealing with technology instead of people dealing with some futuristic fantasy world or using symbols for people. Now I’m trying to make those symbols into real people and real conflicts in real people’s lives. I still want to write about ideals, I’m not interested in writing about the sewer of life.”134
The album as a whole revolves around a song cycle. In 1982, immediately after the release of the album, an insightful interviewer said: “Signals has a cyclical framework. It opens in suburbia, on the edge of ‘the far unlit unknown,’ contemplates escape in ‘The Analog Kid,’ explores universal imponderables—the essence of our humanity, sex, religion, old age—and ends with actual escape to the stars in ‘Countdown.’” Peart responded, presumably with a bit of surprise: “You noticed that. We were hoping no one would. It’s so unfashionable these days to construct grand concepts. We’re being closed mouthed about it. Some people, and I don’t expect there will be many, will be insightful enough to catch it.”135
The pounding synthesizer of “Subdivisions” introduces us to the alienated, creative individual, the one who fits into no groups.
Yeah, it’s a common background for each of us, and I kind of think it’s a background for a lot of our audience, too. For all its blandness, it’s so easy to satirize, which is a trap I wanted to avoid. It’s always been a constant stock joke or skit or something, to satirize the suburbs and mentality of it and all. And of course it’s just as diverse as people are really, when you come down to it. But it has its own set of values and set of background parameters about it, which as you say are very much unique to this contemporary society.136
The protagonist is the one shunned by all of the “cool kids,” those who through fortune or assertion consider themselves the “in crowd.”
Growing up it all seems so one-sided
Opinions all provided
The future pre-decided
Detached and subdivided
In the mass production zone
Nowhere is the dreamer
Or the misfit so alone
In no other song does Peart so dramatically attack the foundations of modernity and its attempt to create false realities in the name of comfort and conformity. His critique rings true, harkening back to much of the cultural criticism of the post—World War II West. Peart’s criticism, though concise, reflects the work of a number of the best cultural critics of the 1950s and 1960s, from C. Wright Mills to Thomas Merton to Russell Kirk to Jack Kerouac. In the mind of each of these critics, we conform to the patterns of corporate and corporatized society only at the cost of our individual souls.
Some will sell their dreams for small desires
Or lose the race to rats
Get caught in ticking traps
The second track, “The Analog Kid,” a Bradbury-esque look at youth, imagines the vivid and imagistic dreams of a boy, a younger Tom Sawyer, yet to be jaded by the horrors of the world. As he innocently fantasizes about the first beautiful girl he’s encountered, he
Lies in the grass, unmoving
Staring at the sky
His mother starts to call him
As a hawk goes soaring by
The boy pulls down his baseball cap
And covers up his eyes
If not a Tom Sawyer, at least a character straight out of the pages of Dandelion Wine or Something Wicked This Way Comes. Much of the story comes from Peart’s own infatuation with a girl from Ohio he met, appropriately enough, during the Summer of Love: 1967.137
With “Chemistry,” Peart shifts perspective, giving the listener a solid scientific look at the processes of the world, but with the protagonist of the previous song, wondering what connects A and B, C and D, and H and O. Surely, the song offers, in all of the chemical catalysts, collisions, and synergies, emotion and imagination plays a role, connecting that tangible with the intangible. Interestingly enough, given the title, the credits attribute the lyrics to all three members of Rush. Lifeson and Lee told Peart what words they wanted in the song, and Peart put the final product together.138
“Digital Man,” track four, considers the man of science, detached from the romance of nature, but longing for something greater than mere facts. He possesses a myriad of facts, but no connections to the highest things of life.
He’d love to spend the night in Zion
He’s been a long while in Babylon
He’d like a lover’s wings to fly on
To a tropic isle of Avalon
In the end, like everyone, he will exit this world, awaiting “a date in a black sedan.” Until then, he will exist as a man who understands everything and, really, nothing. In the official Signals Tour Book, Peart explained that he had written the “The Analog Kid” as a companion piece to “Digital Man.”
The first track of side two of Signals, “The Weapon,” is the second part of the Fear Trilogy (actually a tetralogy). Beginning with a play on President Franklin Roosevelt’s first inaugural speech during the Great Depression (“the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”), Peart again looks at the role of facts and the connections in story and mythology. We can, he notes, delude ourselves into believing we’re safe under the iron fist of the state or the soft promises of religion or the plush and brightly colored toys of the corporate world. The real man, the man of integrity, is however
… not afraid of your judgment
He knows of horrors worse than your Hell
He’s a little bit afraid of dying—
But he’s a lot more afraid of your lying
Those in power jealously guard their ability to create and instill fear, as they know it is what allows them to rule. The song employs ska as well as something approaching “disco.” “It’s an all-out production number that we can play live, so I’m sure all the ‘disco kids’ will soon be coming to our concerts,” Neil facetiously imagined. “Ha!”139
A song written at the last moment by the band, “New World Man” (aka “Project 3:57”), is exactly what the title claims, a consideration of the man of America. Here we have James Fennimore Cooper’s great frontier hero of New York, Natty Bumppo, ready to face challenges, ready to become better.
He’s a rebel and a runner
He’s a signal turning green
He’s a restless young romantic
Wants to run the big machine
As long as he learns from his mistakes, he will prosper.
Still, as “Losing It” reveals, one might very well fail to live up to one’s own potential. This might result from giving too much too soon, or from failing to live by one’s honesty, or by giving into one’s self-reservations. The song, in large part, is an homage to Hemingway and his tragic end. Would it be worse to have never tried or to have tried and failed? “For you—the blind who once could see—the bell tolls for thee.”
Ending on the most upbeat note possible, the final song, “Countdown,” narrates the historical launch of the NASA space shuttle Columbia. It is a paean to the explorers of the unknown and to the scientists who made it possible.
The new sound Rush brought to Signals confused friend and foe alike at the time of its release. Rolling Stone continued to insult even the idea of Rush with their typically nasty review. “Rush makes a strong argument for the view that advanced technology is not necessarily the same thing as progress,” the reviewer stated. “Unfortunately,” it continued, “they do so largely by screwing up.” In its short review, Rolling Stone claimed the album to be “their most poppish yet” but, having traded their progressive and art credentials (which the magazine had always hated), the album is “mostly a wasted effort” with the music sounding like nothing more than “static.”140 No rational person would have expected anything kind from Rolling Stone, but even friends of Rush found the album perplexing. Mark Putterford of Sounds called it a “weak, below par album,” filled with “DULL” songs.141 Kerrang! explained the changes as a part of Rush accepting the “mantle of middle age” but warned that true Rush fans would “be sorely disappointed.”142
93 Neil Peart, Foreword, to Joe Bergamini, Taking Center Stage: A Lifetime of Live Performance, Neil Peart (Milwaukee, WI: Hudson Music, 2012), 5.
94 Andy Tillison to author, personal correspondence, April 28, 2015.
95 Peart quoted in Robert Telleria, Rush Tribute: Merely Players (Kingston, ONT: Quarry Music Books, 2002), 156.
96 Rutkoski, “Interview: Neil Peart,” Rochester Freetime (April 27-May 11, 1994).
97 “Interview with Neil Peart,” Rag (May 1994).
98 Brad Wheeler, “A Rock-Solid Survivor in an Unpredictable World,” The Globe and Mail (April 28, 2007), R5.
99 Neil Peart, “Personal Waves, The Story of an Album” [taken from: http://www.2112.net/powerwindows/main/RushInspirations.htm]
100 Popoff, Contents Under Pressure, 76; http://rushvault.com/2011/02/05/natural-science/; and http://www.2112.net/powerwindows/main/PeWlyrics.htm%5D
101 Keith Sharp, review of Permanent Waves, Music Express (February 1980).
102 Permanent Waves review, Rolling Stone (March 1, 1980).
103 Steve Pond, “Rush’s Heavy-Metal Sludge,” Rolling Stone (May 15, 1980).
104 “Intense Early Reaction to Rush’s Permanent Waves,” RPM Weekly (February 9, 1980).
105 Steve Gett, Permanent Waves review, Melody Maker (February 2, 1980).
106 Steve Rothery, quoted in Malcom Dome, “Rush: R40,” Prog 52 (January 2015): 42
107 The original is Richard S. Foster, “A Nice Morning Drive,” Road and Track (November 1973), 148-150.
108 Neil Peart quoted in Beyond the Lighted Stage.
109 Geddy Lee quoted in Beyond the Lighted Stage.
110 Interview with Neil Peart, Innerview with Jim Ladd, June 11, 1981.
111 Peart, Roadshow, 84.
112 Peart, Roadshow, 85; and “Exclusive Interview with Neil Peart,” mikedolbear.com (January 2006).
113 Peart in Dave Dickson, “Spirit of Peart,” Kerrang! 44 (June 17–30/July 1-13, 1983).
114 Peart in Dave Dickson, “Spirit of Peart,” Kerrang! 44 (June 17–30/July 1-13, 1983); and Lifeson in Rich Sutton, “On the Edge of the Limelight,” Song Hits (November 1984). In the latter, Lifeson admits that all three members of Rush value their privacy, but “Neil the most.” See also Greg Quill, “Neil Peart: New World Man,” Music Express (September/October 1982).
115 “Interview: Neil Peart,” Modern Drummer (April 1984).
116 Peart, Roadshow, 14.
117 Peart quoted in Beyond the Lighted Stage.
118 Peart, Ghost Rider, 34.
119 On Lee and family fleeing, see Nicholas Jennings, “Rock N Roll Royalty,” Maclean’s (September 30, 1991).
120 Lee, quoted in Steve Gett, “Touring Britain is a Grind,” Kerrang! (October 21, 1982).
121 Basche, “Rush’s Simpler ‘Signals,’” Circus (November 30, 1982).
122 John Gill, “Take That, You Loon Panted Bigots,” Sounds (February 14, 1981).
123 Andy Secher, “Rush to Glory,” Hit Parader (April 1981).
124 Max Mobley, Rush FAQ: All That’s Left to Know About Rock’s Greatest Power Trio (Milwaukee, WI: Backbeat Records, 2014), 26.
125 Steve Gett, “New World Men,” Kerrang! 26 (October 7, 1982).
126 Lee quoted in Menon, Rush: An Oral History Uncensored.
127 Raj Bahadur, “Rush Takes Off: The Geddy Lee Interview,” Northeast Ohio Scene (October 28-November 3, 1982).
128 Lifeson quoted in Steve Gett,” New World Men,” Kerrang! 26 (October 7, 1982).
129 Brian Harrigan, “Lifeson’s Lifespan,” Melody Maker (November 7, 1981); and Derek Oliver, “Rush Release,” Melody Maker (May 5, 1984).
130 Steve Morse, “Sending New Signals, Rush on the Defense,” Boston Globe (December 6, 1982).
131 Peart, Traveling Music, 46. In 1982, Peart had especially praised Ultravox’s 1980 New Wave masterpiece, Vienna. See Philip Basche, “Rush’s Simpler Signals,” Circus (November 30, 1982).
132 Mark Newman, “Canadian Rock and U.S. Rock Similar, Peart Says,” Grand Rapids Press, November 7, 1982.
133 Basche, “Rush’s Simpler ‘Signals.’”
134 Pete Makowski, “Adrenalin Rush,” Sounds (December 18, 1982).
135 Greg Quill, “Neil Peart: New World Man,” Music Express (September/October 1982).
136 Interview with Neil Peart, “Signals Radio Premiere,” September 1982.
137 Peart, Roadshow, 124-125.
138 Peart, “Stories from Signals: Collected from the Drummer’s Diary,” Sounds (October 16, 1982).
139 Peart, “Stories from Signals: Collected from the Drummer’s Diary,” Sounds (October 16, 1982).
140 J.D. Considine, Signals Album Review, Rolling Stone (October 28, 1982).
141 Mark Putterford, “Semi Flawed Signals,” Sounds (September 11, 1982).
142 Dave Dickson, “A Rush of Old Age,” Kerrang! (September 23-October 6, 1982).