Revisited:
The
Rolling Stones'
Ron Wood

Rush on the Web:

Rush
discography at Amazon.com

Rush -- Official Site

RUSH Vapor Trails

Atlantic Records -- Rush

Fly by Night Rush MIDI Page

World of Rush

Geddy Lee -- Official
Site

Music Books
Video

March 7 - March 21, 2003

The World Remains
Their Stage

Rush are known in some circles as a thinking person's band,
and in retrospect, the group's reputation for smarts appears to extend beyond
its musical and lyrical complexity. Through the years, the timing of Rush's
concert collections has tended to coincide with peaks or turning points in the
Canadian trio's career, therefore suggesting that they were released after much
thought rather than at random. That seemingly was the case with 1976's All
the World's a Stage, 1981's Exit . . . Stage Left, 1988's A Show
of Hands and 1998's Different Stages/Live; only time will tell if the
same holds true for the group's upcoming DVD, which will focus on a concert
recorded in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, this past Nov. 23 -- the final date of
Rush's most recent tour.

The path that Rush traveled in the five or so years prior
to the jaunt was by no means easy. Drummer-lyricist Neil Peart was musically
inactive following the deaths of his 19-year-old daughter in 1997 and wife
Jackie in 1998. Peart, bassist-vocalist Geddy Lee and guitarist Alex Lifeson
finally reconvened in early 2001 to begin work on a new studio album.

According to Peart, the band worked for more than a year on
Vapor Trails, which debuted at No. 6 on the Billboard 200 in the
magazine's June 1, 2002, issue. First single "One Little Victory" spent 13 weeks
on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks chart, peaking at No. 10 in May,
while "Secret Touch" lasted nine weeks, topping out at No. 25 in August. The
band supported Trails with a lengthy jaunt that ran from late June to
late November.

Rush have spent part of their post-tour downtime putting
together the as-yet-untitled DVD, which is expected out in the spring. On Feb.
27, Rush were inducted into the Canadian Music Industry Hall of Fame, an honor
that rarely has been bestowed on music artists. Beyond that, the trio has no
immediate plans to tour or record. To help tide the time until the next Rush
release, fans may want to check out The Spirit of Radio: Greatest Hits
(1974-1987), a 16-track CD covering the band's years on the Mercury label
that hit shelves Feb. 11.

Lee recently sat down with us to discuss the new
compilation, the recent tour, the upcoming DVD and the future of the band.

Best We Can

Geddy Lee: [The Spirit of Radio: Greatest Hits
(1974-1987) is] one of those things that's in your contract after you leave
a label, [which has] the right to release compilations and you can either
cooperate or not cooperate. And our attitude is that it's only going to serve
our fans' interests if we cooperate and try to make it as good a package as we
can. So, [Mercury] wanted to release the most radio-friendly songs we've had
over that particular period of time. So, we just got involved and made sure it
was good packaging and everything sounded good. That's the extent of our
involvement . . . I think this is kind of a collection of songs that were kind
of the more popular songs from their given albums during the time they were
released. I would like, at some point, to get a little more involved in a more
unusual collection of songs that we could release in different packages.

Stuck It Out

[Caress of Steel, the only one of Rush's first 12 albums not
represented on the new compilation], weirded people out -- record-company
people, I think. I know when we did that album, it was not very well-received by
the record company and, of course, it wasn't very successful commercially. But
there's some great weird material on that album that real hard-core fans love,
like 'Necromancer' and 'I Think I'm Going Bald' and 'Bastille Day' . . . It was
a tough time for us as a band because the record didn't go over very well. We
were really struggling to stay alive when we were touring that record. We were
kind of climbing up with the first album and Fly by Night, and with that
record, we started going [backward] and playing small clubs. It was really a
tough tour and a tough time to stick with it. I think we even thought about
calling it quits during that time, but we decided that if we're going to go
down, we'll go down fighting. Our next [studio] record was 2112, and sure
enough, that was the best thing that ever happened to us.

How It Is

Rush albums don't please all Rush fans. There's a certain core of our
fans [who] are happy to have a new release and are excited by what we do, but
there's also a percentage of our fans that come and go, depending on the style
of every given record. We don't seem to be able to stay with the same style very
long; we're just naturally nomadic in our musical aspirations. We wander around
a little bit. But the core's always there. Obviously, my voice is fairly
identifiable, so that's an attribute you can count on. Sometimes I sing in a
lower register, which not all fans are pleased about. The complexity of our
arrangements is kind of a signature of our band. [Lifeson's] guitar sound is
quite unique. So I guess the instrumentation, the level of musicianship, remains
the same. But the style of songwriting shifts from record to record.

Chemistry

People always ask me, 'What's the key to longevity?' From the inside
looking out, longevity is possible if you have a willingness to experiment and
move. If you just do the same thing over and over and over, you're going to get
bored and you're going to sound insincere, and pretty soon your audience will
pick up on that. I think our fans know us well enough to know that we're going
to experiment, and we're not afraid. Some of those experiments aren't
successful. You have to be willing to fail in public to move forward or to learn
from it. I've always maintained that you learn a lot more from your failed
experiments than your successful ones. Of course, the other keys to that mean
that you have to have an audience in the first place, and an audience that's
curious enough to allow that of you. We're fortunate to have such a supportive
fan base. It gives us confidence to push forward.

Emotional Detector

[The Vapor Trails tour definitely] was the best tour we've done,
from my point of view, in terms of level of energy, consistency of performance
quality and sheer enjoyment exchange between audience and band. We had a great
time playing, and the crowd was so amazing and so positive that I think we were
really pleased to be back, and I think we appreciated the opportunity to play
again . . . We worked really hard up until the day of the first show. The first
show was quite an emotional moment for the three of us, especially for [Peart].
It had been a long road back for him. I don't think that was fully accomplished
until we did our first show with human beings out there watching. The show that
we did was in Hartford [Conn.], I believe, and it was a really special night for
us. I think it may have been the only time the three of us hugged each other
after a gig and said, 'Wow.' That was just an amazing experience.

One Little DVD

We're pushing ahead and mixing the sound and editing picture [for the
DVD], so when that's all put together, it'll be quite a cool package. There's
going to be a lot of extra things we're going to include. It should be really
neat . . . It was [Rush's] first time in Brazil. I don't know why, but we just
didn't realize that we had so many fans. Thousands upon thousands of people
showed up for all these shows. We did three shows there -- in Porto Alegre, in
São Paulo and in Rio de Janeiro. Rio was the last show and we filmed that. We
had about 40-45,000 people at that show . . . It was quite an amazing event. The
crowd was simply amazing . . . So vociferous. They were having so much fun; they
were singing every word of every song. Even songs that were instrumental, they
would sing along with them and write their own parts for them. It was like a
combination rock & roll/soccer crowd.

[The DVD will feature] a three-hour show [and] a documentary . . . on
the whole trip to Brazil. There was a videographer with us the whole time.
There's going to be some special-camera-angles things, stuff from the past.
We're still working out a lot of the details.

Time and Motion

I
think [there's a future for the band] . . . We're still bathing a little in the
afterglow of the [Vapor Trails] tour. I wish we could have gone to more
cities, and I know we neglected our fans in Europe this time again. That doesn't
really sit well with me, but after seven months of touring and another two
months of rehearsal before that, we were pooped. We had to stop. It bodes well
for the future. It'll be interesting to get back together after a nice, long
break and see if we have anything left to do it again with.

Interview by Sal Cirrincione

Choose an Artist -
Archive Spotlight  5/03 Aerosmith  2/02
Aerosmith  3/01
Aerosmith's
Joey Kramer  7/02 Allman
Brothers Band  2/03 Bad
Company  6/02 Bad
Company  6/01 Bill
Wyman  9/01 Billy
Idol  11/01 Black
Crowes  9/02 Boston  12/02
CSNY  1/02
Dave
Davies  5/02 Don
Henley  3/02 Eddie
Money  12/01 ELO  8/01
Elton
John  2/02 Eric
Clapton  4/01 Fleetwood
Mac's Mick Fleetwood  1/03 Foreigner  6/02
George
Harrison (1943-2001)   11/01 George
Thorogood  4/03 Graham
Nash  9/02 Grand
Funk Railroad   12/01 Guess
Who  9/01 Guns N'
Roses  11/02 Jackson
Browne   10/02 James
Gang  2/01 Jeff
Beck  3/01 John
Entwistle (1944-2002)  6/02 John
Fogerty  10/01 John
Paul Jones  4/02 Kansas  8/02
Mark
Knopfler  1/03 Mick
Fleetwood  10/01 Mick
Jagger & Paul McCartney  11/01 Ozzy
Osbourne   11/01 Paul
McCartney  11/02 Paul
McCartney  4/02 Paul
McCartney  5/01 Pink
Floyd  5/03 Queen  5/01
Ray
Manzarek  3/02 Ringo
Starr  4/03 Ringo
Starr   7/01 Robby
Krieger  2/01 Robert
Plant  10/02 Roger
Daltrey  8/01 Rush  3/03
Rush  5/02
Scorpions  2/03
Steely
Dan  3/03 Steely
Dan  4/01 Steve
Miller  7/02 Stevie
Nicks  6/01 Styx  11/02
The
Rolling Stones  5/02 Tom
Petty  7/01 Tour
Spectacular 2001  6/01 U2  12/02
Yes  8/02
ZZ
Top  5/03 ZZ
Top  1/02

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