Table of contents for RUSH in RUSH

By any measure, Rush are one of the greatest rock bands of all time. Their music is uncompromising and unapologetic, their technical skill top-tier and their longevity rarely matched. Their fan base is a vast, loyal and still-growing collection of enlightened souls who prefer to lead rather than follow. Since their formation in 1968, Rush refused to adhere to whatever hit-making formula happened to be in vogue at any particular moment. Instead, they blazed their own path forward—a creative journey that resulted in epic masterpieces with cryptic lyrics inspired by Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, undanceable odd-time signatures that obscured the beat, and solos that led to a well-earned reputation as musicians’ musicians. Bands including The Smashing Pumpkins, Metallica, Rage Against the Machine and Foo Fighters all cite Rush as a…

Alex LIFESON was born Aleksandar Živojinović on Aug. 27, 1953, in Fernie, British Columbia, to Nenad and Melanija Živojinović. After Nenad, a miner, hurt his back, they moved to Toronto, where Lifeson’s love affair with music began. Upon receiving a Kent classical guitar for Christmas when he was 12, Lifeson learned to play by ear, emulating what he heard on the radio. He later got a Canora electric that he painted to look like Eric Clapton’s psychedelic “The Fool” SG. Clapton, along with other founding fathers of blues rock such as Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page, were Lifeson’s guitar heroes. Page was a particularly strong influence. “His style was very much what I wanted to achieve, and for a long time I copied his riffs—played the same sorts of things,…

A white CORVETTE PULLED UP to Dalziel Equipment in St. Catharines on the south shore of Lake Ontario, where co-owner Glen Peart’s son Neil, the parts manager, was working behind the counter. Corvettes coming to a farming-equipment shop was rare, so the Pearts knew something was up. Their intuition turned out to be right: Rush had arrived to take Neil—who was drumming for a local band called J.R. Flood—out to lunch, at which they invited him to audition. Neil was conflicted. He didn’t want to leave his family’s business, especially as it entered the busy season. But his father gave him his blessing to give it a try. He could always come back—his job behind the parts counter would wait for him. Peart loaded up his mom’s Ford Pinto and…

STUDIO ALBUMS RUSH, 1974 After “Working Man” received airplay on Cleveland’s WMMS-FM things changed forever. Mercury Records signed the band soon after. FLY BY NIGHT, 1975 The world’s introduction to new drummer-lyricist Neil Peart, with longer, multipart songs and fantasy-themed lyrics. CARESS OF STEEL, 1975 Rush’s blues-based, hard-rock style was replaced with all-out prog, and the album flopped. 2112, 1976 Undeterred by the disappointing sales performance of Caress of Steel, Rush went even more prog with a title track that’s a little more than 20 minutes. A FAREWELL TO KINGS, 1977 Recording in Wales, Rush incorporated new instruments such as bells, chimes and a Minimoog analog synthesizer. HEMISPHERES, 1978 Featuring the epic nine-minute, 12-section instrumental “La Villa Strangiato,” which required more than 40 takes to get right. PERMANENT WAVES, 1980 Rush’s first album…

Geddy LEE and Alex LIFESON started making music together at Fisherville Junior High School in Toronto. “We were kids then, but we had conviction,” Lee told Hit Parader in 1986. “We went through different periods. There was the Cream period, the Bluesbreakers period, the Who period. But we always tried to do originals to put everything we had into the music.” For a Canadian act, the journey from formation to fame wasn’t vastly different from what performers went through in the United States. But it wasn’t exactly the same, either. The path forward started, of course, with talent. Canada had more than its share, going back to the late 1950s. When rock ’n’ roll was still shaking off naysayers who thought it might be a short-term fad, Arkansas-born singer Ronnie…

When the LEGAL DRINKING AGE in Canada was lowered from 21 to 18 in 1971, Rush graduated from playing basement venues to bars and clubs. Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson had just turned 18, and this was a major turning point for the band. “Rather than just playing one or two high schools at the weekend, and maybe three or four gigs in the course of a month,” Lifeson recalled in the 1984 book Success Under Pressure, “we were playing six days a week, with matinees on Saturdays—week after week after week! We never stopped. You’d do a rotation: play one club one week and then a series of others, before ending up at the first one six weeks later. There was never really a shortage of work and pretty…

With UNMATCHED SKILL, Neil Ellwood Peart is arguably the greatest rock drummer of all time. He also served double duty as Rush’s primary lyricist. Born on Sept. 12, 1952, in Hamilton, Ontario, Peart started drum lessons at 13. His early influences were Gene Krupa, Keith Moon, John Bonham, Ginger Baker and Mitch Mitchell. Peart’s formative years were primarily spent playing in rock bands, but he also fell in love with R&B, particularly the music of James Brown, Wilson Pickett and Otis Redding—which helps explain the origin of the occasional funk elements in Rush’s catalog. “He sat down behind this kit and pummeled the drums, and us,” Geddy Lee told The Guardian in 2018 when asked about Peart’s 1974 audition. “I’d never heard a drummer like that, someone with that power…

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Before STARTING a career that would end up spanning more than five decades with more than 40 million records sold worldwide, Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson were boyhood pals living in the Toronto neighborhood of Willowdale. They shared a love of music, the experience of being raised in immigrant households and the harsh realities of not feeling “cool.” Lee (born Gary Lee Weinrib) was, in his words, a “nebbish” kid, who faced the constant threat of getting beat up for being one of the neighborhood’s few Jewish families. Lee’s parents, Morris Weinrib and Mary “Manya” Rubinstein, were Holocaust survivors who immigrated to Canada after World War II, arriving with $10 in their pockets. Lifeson (born Aleksandar Živojinović) had a similar family experience. His parents, Nenad and Melanija Živojinović, were Serbian…

In an INTERVIEW with RollingStone.com in 2015, Geddy Lee explained how he came to the instrument that made him famous. “I had this attitude that nobody chooses to be a bass player,” he said. “The rest of the band decides that you’re gonna be the bass player—and that’s how it was for me. I was playing guitar in a basement band and our bass player’s mother wouldn’t let him play in the band anymore, so we had no bass player. So they all looked at me and said, ‘You play bass,’ I said, ‘Well, I don’t have a bass.’ They said, ‘Well, go ask your mother if she’ll lend you some money.’ “My mom loaned me 30 bucks. I worked it off in her variety store on Saturdays and I…

With a CAREER SPANNING more than five decades and upwards of 40 million albums sold, Rush are one of the most influential rock bands of all time. Both musicians and fans appreciate how good they were. It just took a long time for a lot of critics to catch up. “If I had to pick a favorite band of all time, it would be Rush,” Dream Theater guitarist John Petrucci told Guitar World in 2014. “Once I discovered 2112, it opened me up to this whole concept that rock music could be bigger than just a tune—that it could be used as a vehicle to tell a story or to transport you to some other world. “I was also blown away by how a three-piece band could sound so majestic and…