Prog Head, this should make you feel good.
I first saw Rush in 1970, when Mike Rutsey was the drummer.
Alex and Geddy were rich boys from Toronto, doing a Led Zep tribute, half of their repertoire.
They also were one of the first rock bands in Ontario to use a big, three-way bin P.A. system,
with arena style lighting, with roadies working around them as they played.
Alex just played guitar while roadies did everything except play his Crybaby pedal for him.
Alex and Geddy both had the same suits on, Alex in pink satin and Geddy in pale blue.
That was pants and suit jackets with big cuffs with frilly white shirts underneath, and long long hair,
when men around here were growing out their hair for the first time.
When they weren't onstage, they stood beside it, as if they were guarding their equipment,
standing there with their arms folded before them.
It was a $2 cover charge in this downtown Hamilton bar, so I went over to say hi.
They were very approachable, both shaking my hand, when some musicians don't do that,
not just because of any arrogance, but not wanting someone to try some strength thing on them,
bar life being rough around here.
Geddy played a Rickenbacker, a fragile bass for road work, surprising me with that.
Mike Rutsey, who you can only say was a John Bonham style drummer, and very, very good,
had what looked like a beat up, small set of drums.
He was sitting at the bar, wearing a t-shirt and scruffy jeans, so I sat beside him and we talked.
I knew King Bisquit Boy and Crowbar, two Hamilton bands that played at our Welland high school a lot,
and other high schools in Welland.
They're the bands that Dan Ackroyd grew up with, using some of their songs for the "Blues Brothers" movies.
When Alex and Geddy came to the St. Catharines Musicians Union, looking for a new drummer,
they were looking for Bill Smith, well known in the Niagara Peninsula, both hard rock and progressive rock.
But he was pushed out the back of a moving van coming back from a gig in Fort Erie,
and wasn't playing, so they took the recommendation of Steve Boyuk, union head, and went to see Neal Peart.
Neal was a Keith Moon clone, setting his drums up on a slanted riser, with a fan beside him blowing his hair.
After playing around locally, he moved to England for many months, trying to make it there, and came back.
His parents owned a big furnace business for building contractors and Neil had the money.
When Bullrush, a band he was in, played a matinee at the Atlas Hotel in Welland, where I always went to jam,
he sat behind his drums with his arms folded, sticks up in the air, and wouldn't let anyone else get behind them.
He was great to jam with, playing with everyone else who got up.
He had long hair like a lions' mane with a big moustache curled up around the ends, and was over 6'2", very tall for a drummer.
His first wife managed the "Sam the Record Man" store in Welland, and he hung around there to be with her.
I'd see him in the store and talk with him. His cousin Mike worked there and drummed in a new wave, pop-rock band we started.
When Rush first came out with Neal on drums, one of their first gigs was at the Welland Arena,
Neal coming back big as a concert act for the Welland Rose Festival, an annual event that still goes on.
But the festival organizers, yes, this is Welland, ripped them off by not paying them all the money,
equipment was stolen from inside the arena and equipment was stolen out of the truck out back.
When they drove away Neal was giving everyone the finger and Geddy was yelling we're never coming back.
Too bad, because as you know, they only got better and bigger.
I'm not surprised they're retiring, as a touring Rush band.
One sign that Rush was becoming more of a party, or trip down memory lane,
was them starting to do cover tunes, pop cover tunes, as part of their set.
Knowing Geddy as going from imitating Robert Plant to being Geddy,
if he was doing cover tunes I would say do some Neil Young, even if I'm not a big fan.
They could have done a beat heavy version of one of his early slow songs,
for a big hit, for sure. I'm thinking before "Needle and the Damage Done".
It can't be easy being Rush now, having to use all those samples and pre-sets,
if not Geddy standing behind a keyboard with his bass strapped on and using bass pedals,
just to play some oldies.
When Alex made news by getting arrested for some kind of bar fight in Florida,
a long time ago, you knew he was changing.
Geddy was mean to Neal when Neal came back from his motorcycle riding, after his wife died.
He would make him come and practice every day like it was a day job,
forcing him to keep playing and playing while he stood their conducting him,
angry that his five year absence forced the band to stop touring and recording.
You know it's not going to last forever when people start acting like that.
Neal was racing from gig to gig on his bike at speeds over a hundred miles an hour,
with a roadie riding along, and for me, that's not only taking a chance on scraping your hands,
that's taking a chance with your life. That's almost suicidal for me, never knowing that deep stress.
What made Rush big in the rock music business, what their true, enduring contribution is,
was when they realized they were making albums but not having any hit singles.
And to make more money for themselves,
they decided to take their best songs and put them out again as a double live album,
as new product, the first hard rock band to do that, and their first Billboard chart seller.
And yes, I know the club manager and folk singer who posed nude for that one album cover.
He never got naked for me, or the audience in his brothers' bar, Winchesters.
When we were high school students, I got him a gig playing at an afternoon auditorium music show,
at our high school in Welland. I got another St. Catharines musician, Jamie Schneider, at the same time.
Jamie went on to play violin and acoustic on a Nova Scotia television show.
The only time I ever played Rush tunes was in the only hard rock trio I was ever in.
The bassist wanted to do "Fly by Night" and "In the Mood", so we did.
"Logistical difficulties", yeah... you could say that about Rush too.
When Alex got fat and started wearing, uh, street clothes, a shirt and jeans,
you know he was giving up.
Just because Rush kept it together and kept touring and putting out albums,
liking to travel around the world, and fly to Paris for some nice wine and a supper,
they became the third biggest selling rock band in the world, after the Beatles and Stones.
Out of the three of them, I can only see Geddy as coming out in another band.
I haven't seen him for years, but I respect him the most for staying in good physical shape.
I'd be interested in knowing if he has to shout to talk, singing out loud for all these years.
"Fly by night, away from here, living day to day"... yeah... they certainly did that their way.
This is the first time I heard that Rush was retiring, and it does make me feel a little sad,
because they've been such a huge presence here, for almost all of my life.
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