A funny thing happened to prolific rock historian Martin Popoff on his way to completing his sweeping trilogy of the progressive rock band Rush: it felt like a 9 to 5, punch the clock, job. Considering how much material he’s authored on Rush, it’s not surprising that he would feel that way. However, since this is likely his last book on the history of the group, that feeling of work will fade fast as there are no more tales to tell about the band — well, at least the grand narrative sense. But what of this tale he’s wrought? Well, knowing that one of three members of Rush is no longer alive, the final decades of the band feel like, to quote from its primary lyricist and drummer Neil Peart, “A smile on the edge of sadness.” The reason is not only his untimely death on January 7, 2020, due to brain cancer, but also because in the mid-90s Rush was this close to calling it a career after Peart’s daughter and common-law wife died about ten months apart from each other. The fact that the band carried on after that dark period is surprising. The fact that they carried on and produced three pretty solid late-career albums is astounding for a group that had been together for decades.
However, Rush in 1991 was a band that still had the synth sheen from their mid to late ’80s albums clinging to them during a period when the rock landscape was going through a seismic shift. That shift, of course, was the rise of what would eventually be called grunge. Upcoming bands from Seattle and other parts of North America were channeling a punk/DIY sensibility and fusing it with an aggressive, but melodic form of rock music that really connected with a large swath of mostly white kids from the suburbs — the same demographic that latched onto Rush in the ’70s and ’80s. Did Rush embrace those changes and fold them into their music? Not on Roll The Bones. That 1991 album was more guitar-heavy than the previous three records, but it still relied on keyboards and a bright, and somewhat thin production sound that signaled the group was out of step for the time, but clearly in step with their core values of doing what they wanted and not following a trend. Does that mean The Boys were so out of touch that they stayed away from new styles of rock music? Not in the least. Indeed, Popoff highlights Rush’s tour with Primus in support of Roll The Bones. Specifically, the way in which bassist/singer/songwriter Les Claypool and the other members of his band forged strong friendships with the guys in Rush. Claypool even recounts a time in 1993 when Alex Lifeson invited Primus over for dinner and wine at his house. The group proceeded to get completely blotto after Alex decided to really fuel up the guys with vodka shots: “And we’re doing shots and everyone is getting a little loopy, and somehow it came up that Ler, Larry, needed a haircut, our guitar player from Primus. And he’s like, “Oh, we just need a bowl!” So we get a bowl out, we put the bowl on his head, and Alex is trying to cut his hair. And it’s a glass bowl and it slips off his head onto the ground and it shatters and cuts Alex’s foot.” Well, they ended up in Alex’s hot tub getting drunker throughout the night. By morning, they were in a recording studio wherein Claypool admits that “I was so drunk, I couldn’t play bass. I’ve never been so drunk that I couldn’t at least play something.” Now, getting drunk with Alex Lifeson is one thing, but for Claypool, he was half in the bag with the lead guitarist of the first band he ever saw in concert — a concert he described as a religious experience. I bring this up because Claypool is one of many Rush fans who grew into a successful career fronting his own band. But it wasn’t just musicians who cited Rush as musical heroes. Filmmakers, TV producers, actors, and other cultural influencers who aged into positions of power didn’t forget their teenage heroes from Canada either. Indeed, by the mid to late 2000s, Rush seemed to be popping up as a pop-cultural reference with greater regularity. Suddenly, it seemed, Rush fans were coming out of the shadows and proclaiming their love for the band in ways that seem obvious to some (namely other bands), and less obvious to others (Stephen Colbert and Paul Rudd).
However, Driven is not really a love letter to the band. Popoff is much more opinionated in this book than he was in the previous two. He’s upfront about his less than enthusiastic view of Roll The Bones agreeing with Rush bassist Geddy Lee that the record sounded brittle, or that Test for Echo left him cold. Be that as it may, Popoff is quick to note that despite his reticence to Roll the Bones, Geddy Lee thinks it’s one of Rush’s best albums — and the antithesis of grunge. On that last point, you’ll get no argument here.
Counterparts in 1993 was, in a way, an attempt to correct Rush’s sonic misstep on Roll The Bones. Some of the heaviest sounding songs (“Animate,” “Double Agent,” and “Stick It Out”) clearly pay homage to what younger generations of musicians were doing in the realm of hard rock. However, the rest of the album tends to pull away from that heaviness and toward a middling safe zone that was closer to the brittle sound on Roll The Bones. There’s no doubt that the politics of making a record are often tricky — especially when there’s a new element in the mix trying to pull a band or artist in a different direction. That person on Counterparts was recording engineer, Kevin Shirley. Shirley wanted Rush to get back to a heavy sound so they could appeal to a wider audience. During the recording of Counterparts, he was able to implement various techniques to achieve that heavy sound. However, when it came to mixing the album, Geddy and Neil wanted a less aggressive sound — which they got. It was, after all, Rush’s album and not Shirley’s, so in the end, it reflected their tastes. What’s also clear is the making of Counterparts was not entirely a happy experience. Perhaps Shirley’s opinionated demeanor clashed with Rush at times, but by the end of the tour, Lee wanted a break from the rock circus after his second child was born. So, the guys went their separate ways for a couple of years. Peart decided to take drum lessons from a master teacher, Freddie Gruber. The result was a slightly jazzier style of playing and a loss of Peart’s signature drum sound as he changed to DW drums. Alex Lifeson wrote, performed, and produced a solo album, Victor — a record Popoff describes as sounding like Rush, but I don’t think so.
When the band regrouped to record Test For Echo in early 1996, they hired back Peter Collins as producer and the guys resumed their roles in crafting new songs. However, time away did have an effect on Lifeson. Alex’s experience making his solo record gave him a level of confidence he felt was lacking in his playing. So, when he came into the sessions for Test For Echo he wasn’t quite sure that being in Rush was his thing anymore: “I was still buoyant by what I’d just accomplished with my record, and I didn’t know if I wanted to get back into the same old thing that Rush represented. Ged and I spent that first week just talking…We kind of left it as, ‘Let’s see how the first couple of weeks go, and if my heart is not in it, I have to say I can’t.’ Whatever reticence Alex had evaporated after the band wrote four to five songs in the space of two weeks. Once the record was released and they hit the road to promote it, the tour became noted as being the first without an opening band. “An Evening With Rush” turned out to be a marathon with two sets — the first one ending with “2112” being played in its entirety. Overall, it was a pretty great tour in support of a mediocre Rush album.
And then…
August 10, 1997. The day that Peart’s only daughter at the time died in a solo vehicle car crash…and on June 20, 1998, his common-law wife died from cancer.
Peart said he was effectively retired from Rush after burying his wife. Nothing official was ever announced about the band breaking up, but looking at the live album Different Stages, it’s hard not to think this was a big thank you from Rush to their fans. The three-disc album features songs from the Test for Echo and Counterparts tour, plus a live recording Geddy found the master tapes of in a closet from the A Farewell To Kings tour. Both live sets were bundled into a package that stands a record showing the band at — what they thought at the time — its career end and a few years before they became superstars.
In the years after Different Stages was released, it was looking like Rush was no more. Peart dropped out and embarked on a motorcycle journey as a way to mourn and cope with the loss of his family. Alex said he had lost interest in music after Peart’s family died, but Geddy wasn’t ready to hang up his bass and call it a day. Instead, he released a solo album (My Favorite Headache) in 2000. By that time, Peart was a different guy. He was living in L.A., remarried, and getting restless. Perhaps there was something about seeing his old bandmates “moving on” that spurred Peart to pick up the phone and say he was ready to work again.
It took 14 months of studio time, but the band released Vapor Trails in May 2002 — a comeback album that features songs about grief, tragedy, fear, and overcoming. It’s a dark and troubling record lyrically, but musically Rush sounds very un-Rush on many songs. Credit some epic jams between Geddy and Alex that had rules like “no solos” and Alex bringing in some guitar sounds that were more textural than rhythmic. The slow pace of recording and producing this record took a bit of a toll on members. Working for 14 months on one album is not the norm for Rush, so by the time they mastered the recording, almost everyone had lost perspective on the thing — which resulted in Vapor Trails succumbing to the dreaded loudness wars. Pushing the volume levels past the max meant parts of the album sounded distorted (like a blown speaker) and many of the subtleties layered into the multitrack recordings got kind of buried under what one of my Popdose colleagues Chris Holmes called “sonic sludge.” Still, the record had some really powerful songs and was integral to getting the band back to a robust touring cycle that certainly pleased fans, but started to take a physical toll on the band as the years progressed.
The rest of Driven chronicles the band’s final studio albums (Snakes & Arrows and Clockwork Angels), plus the R30, Time Machine, R40, and the tours in support of the records. The workingmen were truly that from 2002 to 2015. There aren’t many bands who can do three-hour shows on tour after tour. But Geddy, Alex, and Neil from their late 40s to their early 60s did just that for roughly 13 years. And there aren’t many bands with that kind of staying power, and a lot of that has to do with Rush’s fans. They are an obsessively dedicated bunch who have a lot in common with Grateful Dead fans — though the musical styles are light years apart. And while the Grateful Dead tends to appeal to Baby Boomers (though, not entirely), Rush is kind of a Gen X band (though, not entirely). There’s something about the musical themes that Peart wrote about, and the music that Lee and Lifeson composed, that coalesced around the world views of some born between the mid-’60s and the early ’80s. Maybe it’s being so-called latchkey kids, or children of the first wave of divorces, or a whole host of other large social forces that shaped generational attitudes, but clearly, there was something about Peart’s left-libertarian lyrics that touched a chord. Perhaps it wasn’t so much about politics as it was about doing your own thing without pressure from parents and society to choose safe, sensible, stable careers and lives. No doubt many folks did just that, but because Peart was somebody’s hero who liked to live life to the fullest (or so it seemed), his example of being more than one of the best rock drummers and a noted lyricist showed a lot of his fans that you don’t have to be the best in your field to embrace and experience the wonders of the world (as he would write in the song “Anthem”). Sometimes, just getting on a bike and exploring parts of where you already live can lead to discovering things that may have been overlooked.
Perhaps that’s why for many it felt like both a shock and a great sense of unfairness that brain cancer hit Peart shortly after he retired from Rush, from drumming, and from the music business. Here was a guy who followed his passion for drumming, lucked out by joining a band on the verge of catching a huge career break, tried lyric writing (and excelled at it) because no one else wanted the job, suffered the ups and downs of being in an extremely niche band that had poor record sales, then released a strange concept album (2112) that became a kind of hit, and finally became an A-list act by 1981…and rode that train right to the end in 2015. For a guy who grew to loathe touring, the relief of never having to do it again must have felt great after such a long career. Popoff touches on some of this toward the end of the book but leaves many details of Peart’s post-Rush years out of the narrative. Rolling Stone magazine ran a revealing piece where Geddy, Alex, and Peart’s wife Carrie, and manager Ray talk about Neil’s illness and what it was like after he was diagnosed with brain cancer. It’s a sad article, and even though almost every Rush fan knew Peart was very protective of his privacy, I think it was helpful for fans to understand what he was going through from his initial diagnosis to his final days.
Endings are often sad occasions, and so it is with Martin Popoff’s Driven. It’s not that he ends the book on a somber note, but rather his wonderfully detailed history of Rush closes out the story of a band that has meant so much to its fans (myself included). Beyond Alex and Geddy’s post-Rush life and career, there doesn’t seem to be much left in the proverbial archive to mine for book-length projects. That means for those whose thirst for new information about Rush is often unquenchable, this may be the last oasis before the desert that lies ahead.
