Abstract
With particular attention to the first decade of their career, this chapter examines the way Rush are at once popular and obscure, cool and uncool, a position on the sidelines that resonates with a critical Canadian perspective on American culture. While music fandom depends on passionate affiliation, Rush, who do not fit the standard rock and roll image, insist on a more dispassionate examination of what one stands for. They show a compulsion to see both, or more, sides of any issue, which may be called particularly Canadian. American heroes, or heroes of any kind, are treated at once with admiration and scepticism. Values that equally belong to American culture and to rock ‘n’ roll, such as individualism, rebellion, and freedom, are thoroughly queried; not rejected, but examined to find the balance of pros and cons. Idealistically confronting the problems of idealism, Rush powerfully acknowledge, in songs like ‘2112’, all that stands against diverse individual expression, while also, in songs like ‘Closer to the Heart’, seeing the benefits of benevolent leadership.
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Notes
- 1.
The ego deflation that is part of their good relationship shows in their nicknames for each other: Dirk, Lerxt and Pratt.
- 2.
Geddy Lee remarks, ‘because our gigs are so hard to play, and the playing was so important to us, it kept us in line’ (Contents Under Pressure 64).
- 3.
Including in their Rock & Roll Hall of Fame biography, which also describes them as ‘completely removed from the mainstream music scene’. They were only inducted in 2013, and for many years before that, it was a commonplace remark that Rush deserved a place in the Hall of Fame but were unfairly neglected due to their cult status.
- 4.
Bowman’s essay on Rush’s Canadianness initially approaches the issue statistically, demonstrating their greater recognition in Canada than the US, even though they have impressive international record sales. Along with some cultural and political discussion, he also details a number of specific Canadian references in Rush songs, such as ‘YYZ’ being named after the call letters of the Toronto airport and musically based on their morse code (299–301).
- 5.
This is counter to many readings of Rush as identifiably conservative, from Barry Miles’ notorious nasty interview in the NME in 1978 calling them ‘right-wing’ and even ‘proto-fascist’, to Durrell Bowman’s positive argument for a ‘post-counterculture’ that finds Rush sympathetic (‘Permanent Change’). He ultimately considers Rush ‘libertarian’, but I would argue that is too reactionary a stance in its own way to suit Rush, who are quite willing to represent the positive potential of authority and communality.
- 6.
‘Tom Sawyer’, on Moving Pictures.
- 7.
‘Conclusion to the First Edition of Literary History of Canada’.
- 8.
In ‘Cygnus X-1: Book One – The Voyage’ (on A Farewell to Kings), this figure is a space traveller who daringly explores, and gets sucked into, a black hole, ‘Headlong into mystery’, then (in ‘Hemispheres’), ‘Spiralled through that timeless space/To this immortal place’. His ship is suitably called the Rocinante.
- 9.
A good deal of Canada’s electricity is generated by water power, so much so that the electricity bill is called the ‘hydro’ bill in Ontario. Canada produces a surplus of electrical energy, the majority of which goes to the United States, while Canada also imports a smaller amount of electricity from the US (Bordeleau). This is the flipside of the larger economic picture: being a captive market for the US involves the US being a primary buyer of what Canada has to sell.
- 10.
See Smolko for discussion of Rush’s ‘ambivalent attitude towards technology’, in Aristotelian and Marxist terms; he argues that Rush advocates a technology that is not alienated from its creators or the materials used. He also examines Rush’s own use of musical technology.
- 11.
As in the version from the Hammersmith Odeon in 1978, included on Different Stages Live; the Python reference is to the ‘Travel Agent’ sketch from episode 31 in 1972 (Monty Python 592–593).
- 12.
Bowman argues that ‘Rush mainly demonstrates “Canadianness” by combining such British and American influences as progressive rock, hard rock, and individualism’ (‘How Is Rush Canadian?’ 287).
- 13.
In ‘By-Tor and the Snow Dog’, on Fly By Night.
- 14.
Rush also have a Rand-inspired song entitled ‘Anthem’ on Fly By Night.
- 15.
Weinstein and Weinstein write an article ‘to vindicate Peart’s repeated claim that he is “no one’s disciple”’ against accusations of being what he himself calls a ‘Randroid’ (273–274). They trace differences between Rand’s Anthem and ‘2112’, and agree that ‘the contrast between the gifts of electricity and of music is telling: technological progress versus personal artistic expression’ (284). They also point out that Rush’s Priests merely dismiss the invention, while Rand’s Scholars ‘react with horror and fury’ and call for ‘severe punishment’ (284).
- 16.
Weinstein and Weinstein point out insightfully that, unlike in Rand’s Anthem, the main character in ‘2112’ does not have a specified gender. I like this suggestion, and Lee’s vocals always allow for imagining a female voice. However, there are not a lot of women in Rush songs, and it’s an unfortunate commonplace that, despite a number of shining examples, there are rather fewer female than male guitarists.
- 17.
They were awarded with the Order of Canada individually rather than as a group, but all given the same citation. I have referenced the citation for Peart since I am focusing on his lyrics.
- 18.
As Bowman analyses this passage, ‘Essentially, on a distant planet, the protagonist rediscovers the sum total of Western major-minor tonality in about thirty seconds’ (196).
- 19.
The Caress of Steel tour is also called the ‘Down the Tubes Tour’; see the main Tours page of Power Windows.
- 20.
For classic formulations of this concept, see Gibbon and Porter. The phrase ‘melting pot’ is used in ‘Beneath, Between and Behind’ (on Fly By Night), a critique of the failed promise of the American revolution.
- 21.
On A Farewell to Kings. Peart co-wrote the lyrics with Peter Talbot.
- 22.
He said this in 1969. See O’Malley and Thompson.
- 23.
Bowman, in ‘How Is Rush Canadian?’, gives a brief discussion of the ‘CanCon’ regulations and their implementation (287–288). He also reads ‘The Trees’ as a commentary on Canada-US relations (Maples as Canadian, Oaks as American), and specifically a critique of CanCon, musically as well as lyrically: he shows how the progression of the song, characterized by ‘contrary motions’, ironically treats ‘artificial balance’ and externally imposed equality (293–297).
- 24.
Take for instance Tommy Douglas, leader of ‘North America’s first socialist government’, popularly voted the ‘Greatest Canadian’ in a CBC poll (see Neilson Bonikowsky).
- 25.
However, only the Canadian Oxford Dictionary makes a distinction between the land thus subdivided and the housing development built thereon, as two different (subdivided!) definitions of the word; Webster’s says the word denotes the land.
- 26.
Compare Reuland: in ‘Limelight’, ‘performance falsifies relationships’ and ‘attenuates the self; preserving the self requires’ performance ‘with an ironic, skeptical distance. Rush’s aesthetics of replicability thus erects a barrier against falsification and inauthenticity…the replication of the trio’s difficult music cannot be faked’ (72–73).
- 27.
McDonald uses the song as a touchstone in his study of Rush and the middle class, and (somewhat depressingly) insists, ‘Rush’s Willowdale was scarcely different from any number of suburban communities throughout Canada and the United States’ (3). As his discussion proceeds, it increasingly elides ‘North American’ into ‘American’.
- 28.
On Permanent Waves.
- 29.
The song’s title derives from a Toronto station, CFNY, which calls itself ‘The Spirit of Radio’.
- 30.
From the information on the album collected in the Discography at Permanent Waves.
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Connolly, T. (2017). ‘Mean, Mean Pride’: Rush’s Critique of American Cool. In: Connolly, T., Iino, T. (eds) Canadian Music and American Culture. Pop Music, Culture and Identity. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50023-2_6
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