Martin Popoff - Limelight: Rush in the 80s

Get any pile of Rush fans together at, say, one of the many legendary RushCons over the years, and you can quickly elicit strong opinions on what parts of the bands 80s catalogue are valid and which are not.

It was an action-packed decade for the boys, as they finally found themselves, by dint of their own wiles and will, in the top quartile, not so much with Permanent Waves but for sure come Moving Pictures, a red-and-black record accepted as the bands masterpiece.

With Signals, Rush started challenging expectations. The 80s will mess with your head, and Rush took to messing about with all the decade had to offer, enthusiastically so, given the guys predilection toward explorations of modernity. Keyboards and hairstyles in tandem, Geddy, Alex and Neil took the mile when offered an inch, and by the time we get to Power Windows and Hold Your Fire, Rush was an astringent, high-strung pop band, trendy keys and synths in excess.

Most fans went along for the trip, and if they werent always happy with records like Presto, the concert halls were still filled, as the band had no problem delivering the power trio power the fans expected during a show, aided and abetted by a deep catalogue of hits more analog.

And the productivity was impressive as well. Most 70s bands couldnt hold a candle to Rushs tally of seven studio albums and two double live spreads in the 80s, even if the guys decided to notch back on the mega-tours. Rush were regulars in Europe, but, never a world band, they began to visit less frequently, also cutting back on how much of the U.S. and Canada they would hammer at repeatedly.

As you may or may not know, Limelight: Rush in the 80s is the follow-up tome to Anthem: Rush in the 70s. That book looked at the long ramp-up to the Zeppelin-esque debut album in 1974 and the arrival of a transformational force in the guise of Neil Peart, sadly and shockingly deceased from brain cancer just as that book was getting ready to go to print. Peart, of course, became heralded as one of the greatest rock drummers of all time and certainly one of the most air drummed as early as his third record with the band, 2112. Anthem then examined the bands first live album, followed by A Farewell to Kings and Hemispheres, and all of a sudden, the 70s are over and its time for something fresh, including technological innovations as well as the rise of MTV and the age of video.

Limelight: Rush in the 80s is the story of these subsequent years, beginning a couple of weeks into the haties (as voiced by Morrissey) with the robust if brief Permanent Waves and bowing out in November of 1989 with Presto, a record that bucked so many trends, the band found themselves kind of marginalized, or more positively, defiantly singular, sounding like no one else while still essentially playing a form of mainstream pop.

Along the way, we hear from the myriad producers Geddy, Alex and Neil brought into the circle, not so much desperately but avidly, curiously, looking for inspiration from industry peers. Essentially what Peter Collins and Rupert Hine (and slightly less so Peter Henderson) brought was pop modernity, with the guys all too happy to push buttons on the latest toys to craft a sound more in keeping with what they saw as valid and au courant, the music of grown-ups. A contentious dynamic of the book, which I argue is borne out in the music and lyrics, is that the band was seeking the respect of folks they thought were smart, folks who had good taste. You may look at that as a negative, or you might see that as the guys enthusiastically participating in the hustle and bustle of the modern world, growing intellectually, not conceding that they themselves couldnt be new world men.

And becoming new world men meant that Geddy, Alex and Neil would develop interests outside of music, because, after all, wasnt music itself moving toward the idea of multimedia? Toward this end, toward becoming well rounded in effect, Renaissance men as the 80s wore on, the guys pulled back from touring, spending more time on family, travel and other creative pursuits. The business of Rush is very different in this book versus the first one, reflected in the vast difference between A Show of Hands and All the Worlds a Stage.

But this isnt the end of our story. Because of course Rush didnt stop at Presto, even if the band had slowed. More joy and much more heartbreak were to star-cross the lives of Geddy, Alex and Neil, and the story wouldnt be complete if we didnt march forward and meet the heroes of our tale at their own individual completions. Stay tuned as we continue this loud and loving march through time toward a conclusion that now, with the recent passing of the Professor, is very, very different and darker than when this trilogy began.

Martin Popoff