Since the Canadian power rock trio Rush took their final bow at the L.A. Forum on August 1, 2015, the demand for Rush-related material hasn’t waned. Podcasts, album reissues, and merchandise from the band’s website never seems to be in short supply. Indeed, with the untimely death of Neil Peart on January 7, 2020, interest in the band has grown more — as it often does when sudden deaths of artists occur.
Into this market comes Martin Popoff’s Anthem: Rush in the 70s. While the band’s 2010 documentary Rush: Beyond The Lighted Stage covered the band’s career in great detail, Popoff (who also worked on the film), was able to mine the unused portions of interviews used in the film for a deeper dive into the band’s beginnings to the completion of their 1978 album, Hemispheres. What makes this book stand out from other Rush biographies is Popoff’s decision to tell a more complete story of the band’s inception, through the John Rutsey years, the making of the first record, and finally replacing Rutsey with Neil Peart in 1974. This narrative has been told before, but not with this kind of detail. I’ve been a fan of Rush since 1981, but the years when John Rutsey was essentially leading the band remained an era that was marginalized in its history. What I found illuminating was what kind of person Rustey was (he died on May 11, 2008, from a heart attack that was likely related to diabetes). His drumming on the Rush’s first self-titled record was good, but nothing like the complexity Neil Peart would bring to the band’s sound. However, he was definitely a showman, and the de facto leader of the group — as evidenced by this early video:
Alex and Geddy look a little lost, and that’s probably because they were. They admit in those early years that they looked to John to lead the band — both as a frontman and lyricist. And while Rutsey did take the lead in introducing songs and the other members of the group, he could often get moody and play favorites among his friends and bandmates. Also, he wasn’t the most dependable person in the trio. Taking the lead in writing lyrics for the band — while Alex and Geddy wrote the music — wasn’t something he may not have been suited for. That, combined with a bit of a lazy streak that led to him being a flake as a lyric writer. When the band went into the studio to record their first album, Geddy was waiting for lyrics to sing to the music he and Alex crafted. When John proclaimed that he wasn’t satisfied with what he’d written and and ripped up his creations, the task fell to Geddy — who took a couple of hours to rough out some lyrics. Now, in many band relationships, the camaraderie among the players is often soured by big personalities and power plays. Geddy says so much at one point saying that Rutsey’s poor health and lack of interest in touring were big factors in moving on without him. Plus, as Alex noted: “[John] was quite aloof from us in those days.”
By the time Neil “The New Guy” Peart shows up for a band audition weeks before their first tour opening for Uriah Heep, Popoff is about 116 pages into the story. It’s that deep backstory on Rush that’s missing from the history of the band — and it was by far one of the more fascinating parts of the book. Rock music had diversified into a number of subgenres around the time Rush was doing the bar circuit. Hard rock, metal, glam, and progressive bands had already established themselves, so Rush was, in a sense, coming up in their wake. Blues-based rock was certainly a must for the audience Rush was playing to in Toronto — but the music was limited. Alex and Geddy, being young and impressionable, were open to the challenge of learning to play with more complexity and sophistication — while still being deeply rooted in a hard rock sound. That’s why you hear Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Yes, and Genesis influences in their music — and probably why the band was mistaken for Led Zeppelin when “Working Man” made its debut on WMMS in Cleaveland, Ohio.
Overall, it was that dedication to fusing styles while pushing to get better as a band that made Rush unique album after album. I won’t go into long descriptions of each chapter in the book, but for Rush fans looking for more information on the band, Popoff’s history is one of the most detailed biographies about the band I’ve read. Considering their story has been told often, it was a genuine surprise Popoff was able to feature as much new information about the making of Rush’s albums in the 1970s as he did. From Fly By Night, through the experimentation of Caress of Steel that led to 2112, then shifting directions with A Farewell to Kings, and finally driven to near exhaustion with Hemispheres, the members of Rush worked with machine-like efficiency during a decade where the album, tour, album, tour, album, tour schedule would break many bands (and did). But for Rush, each new project presented an opportunity for them to grow and become better musicians. Geddy, Neil, and Alex had a relentless drive to be accomplished musicians first during a decade when being rock stars was the ideal for many of the biggest bands of that time. It’s that commitment to their art rather than to the spectacle of a show is what endeared Rush to their fans.
It’s clear Rush didn’t bother so much with the sex and drugs as much as they focused on the rock-n-roll. And while most of their records during this period are pretty weird at times, it’s that weirdness that makes their records kind of timeless. Sure, some of the lyrics and music sound very dated, but Rush is one of the few bands of their generation to explore lyrical themes that many of their contemporaries didn’t. Kiss was singing about sex, cold gin, being gods of thunder, and like. Aerosmith was walking this way, harmonizing over sweet emotions, and singing about big ten-inch records. Styx was on the cusp on the Dennis DeYoung era, but still had some progressive rock fuel left in the tank. REO Speedwagon, Kansas, Boston — all in Rush’s cohort — were experiencing either success or struggling to find their niche. However, none of these bands were focusing on the themes that Rush was in the 1970s. Sure, it made them outliers, but it also carved out space where the freak and geeks of the world could identify with a band whose music articulated how they saw the world — for better or worse.
Popoff uses the source material very effectively to underscore Rush’s creative libertarian streak that pushed them to try new things on their own terms. It didn’t always work — and even Neil Peart is quoted saying that he wishes Rush’s first record was Moving Pictures. However, the untapped information that Popoff draws upon does, in a way, demonstrate why Peart would feel the band hadn’t hit their stride until 1980-81. When you’re young, finding your way in the world, and making ambitious (and sometimes misguided) choices, it’s easy to see warts one wishes didn’t exist in the work of that time. But without those early experiments, Rush wouldn’t have been able to grow as a band and create something as assured as Moving Pictures.
In the end, I admit to being kind of sad when I finished Anthem: Rush in the ’70s (mostly because I was really enjoying the ride). I’m looking forward to reading about the era that many Gen Xers were introduced to Rush: the 1980s. Indeed, that was the decade that cemented Rush as a superstar band in terms of album and concert ticket sales. But the 1980s was also the decade where the band took conscious steps not to repeat themselves musically in ways that alienated some fans during “The Synth Years.” Yet, it was those years that saw the biggest stylistic changes in Rush’s music. Between 1980 to 1989, the band morphed from the hard rock of the 1970s toward new wave during their most prolific decade.
It’s that decade that’s the subject of Popoff’s next book.
