Endlessly Rocking/ Endlessly Ranting: Rush: Album by Album

I began this post with one about opening ("unboxing") this book, but now I've finished my reading and I'm back to set my full review to paper.

Rush leaving their final show from their final tour and breaking my heart a little.

As I noted in the other post, Popoff's latest offering is aesthetically pleasing. It doesn't present much in the way of rare photographs, but the photographs and memorabilia on the side complement the text well. He also managed to find some very insightful commentators. I was especially taken with Douglas Maher (so-called Rush historian - how does one get that title? Does a blue owl descend with a pentagram-stamped scroll declaring you such? Sign me up.). He commented on the cover for Grace Under Pressure, noting that it represented:

"... how fragile life is, being very graceful. And that's where the symbolism of the egg in the vise comes from, to represent how fragile life is, and how heightened the pressures of the world are around it. It's a chaotic scene, that gorgeous album cover that you see, done by Hugh Syme. You see this graceful being and it's kind of up for debate whether it's the android that is represented in [the song] 'The Body Electric' looking out onto this almost serene, placid ocean. And you see this drop of water, almost, that is there, and you see a chaotic storm that is brewing on top, and this guy is peeking out at you... and you get the real sense of how quick everything can change, just how fragile we all are and the circumstances in which we all live" (96).

There were plenty of music-centered comments as well, musicians discussing the challenges of learning to play Rush songs, being inspired by Rush, or the musical wizardry performed, usually by Alex, that the casual listener may not pick up on. My favorite comment was about Alex, who, I feel, often gets overlooked. "He's crystallizing suspended chords," says Toronto-based guitarist and music educator, Sean Kelly, who also calls the solo from "Limelight," ""gorgeous," "floating," "melodic," (72). I'll join him in his praise by noting that it's the only rock & roll guitar solo that makes me wish for the body of a ballerina so that I could spin around and around as it played, tangling myself in its notes.

 

The solo kicks in at 2:36

And for all of those good things, the book still managed to really get on my nerves.

Part of this is a personal problem. As a dangerously obsessive Rush fan, I'm always excited to see a new book come out and I usually buy them... but then I find myself getting miffed because what I'm reading doesn't really have that much to do with Rush at all. It's commentary built of the point of view of other Rush fans (some of them experts due to their proximity to the band or a career in journalism or whatever) and when it comes down to brass tacks I don't see why the point of view of other fans should count over mine. Maybe that's arrogant of me... So, issue #1 is that I wasn't hearing anything about Rush -- I was just hearing someone's opinion about a song or an album or a point in the band's career.

Issue #2: Popoff still can't get himself out of his work. In my earlier post I noted that one of the smartest things he did with this book was to bring in other voices. Well... sort of. When you get into the actual text, it turns out that his interview questions are extremely leading, so he's still dominating the conversation and organizing the text, he just has someone else saying, "Yes, 'La Villa Strangiato' is a stellar instrumental." The second voice adds authority, I guess?

Issues #3: Get an editor! I don't know if this is Popoff's issue or not, but these were face-to-face interviews and they're transcribed in all of their halting (um, er, well,) glory. I don't think interviews should be polished to the point that the individual voices are lost, but this would have been a far better read if the text were cleaned up a bit.

Issue #4: Please know what you're talking about, people! I respect that the interviews covered the personal prejudices and pleasures of the people being interviewed, but some of them needed to do their homework. For example, there's a whole discussion about what the song "Cinderella Man," could possibly mean. Well, the song is based on the Gary Cooper movie Mr. Deeds Goes to Town; it literally describes aspects of the plot. I don't think we need a literary critic here! There were other, similar moments and while I respect that authors may mean more than they know (the intentional fallacy) and respect that many of Neil Peart's lyrics are deep enough to allow for a wide variety of interpretations, some things are pretty clear.


Issues #5: State your prejudices up front, please! I belong to a weird subset of Rush fans in that I came to the albums out of order (my first two songs were a Two-for-Tuesday rock block on Eagle 107.5: "Subdivisions" and "Freewill" and I declared upon hearing them, "That's my band!" as if it were a political or national affiliation). Because of this, I never felt betrayed when Rush took a left turn into 80s New Wave or included rapping on Roll the Bones. It was all Rush to me.

Which is not to say I don't have preferences. I probably do listen to the 80s albums a little less and there are songs I still don't love... but I don't match up to most Rush fans, and I'm very tired by a philosophical debate loosely summed up in the forum post phrase, "Old Rush Good, New Rush Bad." Rush fans are, of course, entitled to like whatever version of Rush they want (although I think they're crazy when they insist that Geddy can, in fact, hit the notes in Hemispheres. I love and respect my singer but the gods in the song didn't really do something magical to his vocal chords. All of his magic is his own and it has limits.) With that being said, I wish such fans would warn me ahead of time so I would know that albums that I really like (the Atlantic Era - shudder) always get so little ink... and most of that negative. By the time the book reaches Test for Echo Popoff refers to the band as holding has-been status (which he revises, I guess, for Vapor Trails) and putting out an album because they should rather than because they had something to say. He's entitled to his opinion, of course, but I'm glad to have this space to speak mine and to declare that I like the much-maligned Presto (the solo in the title track is one of my favorites), I like Roll the Bones (it's nice to see Rush be irreverent and funny) and I like Test for Echo ("Carve away the stone" with its whispers of "Sisyphus" in the background always gets me, as do the lyrics of "Resist" and the heavy bass in "Driven" - a testament of Alex's love for Geddy, the desperation in "Color of Right"...).

So, book finished, I sit back to wait for the biography of Geddy or the biography of Alex or the next Rush book that will start this cycle back up again. But I don't like leaving on a sour note, so I offer this Rush recommendation in place of the books I've been maligning:

The photographs in this work were taken by Peart's wife, Carrie Nuttall, and they go show the rigors of drumming as well as the beauty that accompanies a life of creating art. Of course, I can't help but selfishly wish she had photographed the entire band, but this one is still a pleasure to read.