During Peart’s solos you’ll see fathers hoist their awestruck children onto their shoulders to witness the mastery at hand. A lot more women than you’d expect, shattering the myth that Rush is a boys’ club. Everyone’s on the same level, three, maybe even four generations represented. If you go to a Rush concert today, you’ll see one of the more convivial environments you’ll ever witness at a rock show. Cool people need not apply, and there’s something immensely appealing about that. It’s unapologetically nerdy music, but it’s also welcoming. Rush might be what Lee whimsically describes as “the world’s biggest cult band,” but never has Rush ever been cool. Goodness knows they never landed on the Village Voice’s annual Pazz & Jop critics’ poll. Although the band received a couple mildly positive reviews from Rolling Stone, they were never given a proper feature in the 1970s or ’80s. Not once did the band rely on music tastemakers to spread the word. It’s supposed to be.īefore Iron Maiden, Metallica, and Slayer attracted global popularity with little to no help from radio or mainstream music press, Rush set the standard.
It’s serious, but more importantly, it’s fun. The music can seem arch at times, but Rush always remember to laugh a little. Self-indulgent but always self-aware, a sense of levity has always served as a welcome undercurrent in the band’s work, whether making fun of their friends in KISS in a song in 1975, subtitling an instrumental “an exercise in self-indulgence,” the visual puns of the Moving Pictures cover art, or the band’s increasingly absurd and hilarious short films that precede each concert. Not many bands can write an instrumental that compels a crowd of 40,000 people to sing along to it, but Rush have written several.Īdditionally, Rush have always been incredibly grounded. Unlike so many progressive metal bands today, Rush has always known that even prog rock is pointless if it doesn’t have a hook. Despite the musical chops on display, though, songcraft always comes first. Peart, the only rock drummer alive for whom everyone remains in their seat when it’s time for his drum solo. The technical skill of the three musicians is staggering: Lifeson’s expressive, versatile guitar playing, Lee’s impressive dexterity on bass and keyboards - often at the same time - and not the least of which, the inimitable Mr. Rush has dabbled in new wave, electronic music, pop, reggae, and world music, the wide array of instruments all three employ redefining what a rock trio could accomplish onstage. There’s so much more to the band than that - more musical and thematic variety than many are willing to acknowledge. Reviled by critics - or worse, completely ignored - for a good portion of their career, Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, and Neil Peart have defied odds time and again, the music showing a remarkable amorphous quality, changing with the times yet never pandering, retaining an astounding level of popularity to this day.Īlthough the band’s groundbreaking combination of heavy metal and progressive rock was what made it famous in the first place, appealing greatly to the teenaged hesher crowd in the ’70s while the critical elite scoffed, to call Rush a “progressive power trio” today is like calling Bob Dylan a protest singer. For a band that has sold more than 40 million albums worldwide, whose streak of consecutive gold and platinum records is topped only by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, trying to nail down the exact reason why Canadian trio Rush is so adored by so many is never easy.