THE Ultimate Rock Band from Canada Celebrates a Half-Century
Rush was the first band I truly became a fan of. For music lovers who never crossed over into deep fan territory, let me explain what that feels like.
When a fanatic hears the band that defines an unidentified sector of their soul, something is released. Call it passion or obsession, but when it hits you, your next actions are determined. You’ll find a way, through toil or moxy, to obtain every album you can. You plan around one or all of the band’s concerts. The intensity may waver, but decades later, after listening to a song or an album hundreds or thousands of times, the emotion that hits when you play it feels damn close to the first time. This was Rush for me in 1981.
For my tenth birthday, I received a single-speaker JVC boombox and one cassette tape: Moving Pictures. That album, flipped side to side all summer, opened cerebral pathways I didn’t fully realize until I picked up a guitar a few years later. Rather than just the skill or swagger of one band member, each of the trio captured me in different ways. Geddy Lee sang with power and range while laying complex basslines underneath, tapping synths with a spare finger or a foot. Alex Lifeson wailed solos and voiced odd sustaining chords that showed me musical textures I hadn’t heard before. Neil Peart—well, do I really have to explain what about his playing could captivate a ten-year-old rock-loving kid? He put more drum fills into a bar of music than anyone, and you heard music in his drumming. A song like Tears from 2112 struck an emotional chord, while the live version of Broon’s Bane into The Trees from Exit… Stage Left gave me chills.
Beyond the music, there was a community found with other Rush fans, especially because of the division among rock fans, even here in their hometown of Toronto. Some people just couldn’t abide Rush, citing lyrical pretensions shrilled in screeches on songs judged complex for complexity’s sake. And then there were those of us who couldn’t get enough of that. And those of us who did shared in the joy this music brought us.
The band came to a logical stop after their final show of the R40 tour on August 1, 2015. But it was the tragic passing of Neil Peart on January 7, 2020, that put final closure on the possibility of Rush ever performing or recording again. Peart’s passing hit me hard so I tried to write about his impact. The only sure connection was that after seeing the band nine times between 1982 and 2015, there wouldn’t be a tenth.
Geddy Lee released his memoir, My Effin’ Life, in 2023, finely detailing his and Rush’s story. It was a fantastic read, not just for Rush fans. As a co-member of Lee’s in a small cohort of Toronto-based Jewish bassists, I was delighted to learn we delivered our bar mitzvah haftorahs from the same podium. That kind of connection comes easy and with Canadian reserve. Lee and Lifeson were often seen living life in Toronto, shopping at the Summerhill Staples or jamming with a cover band at the Orbit Room, mostly unbothered.
While the 50th year of Rush’s existence can’t be celebrated with all three members, fans are being treated to RUSH 50, a 50-track deluxe box set featuring fan-requested rarities and unreleased tracks spanning from their 1973 debut to their final 2015 performance. Record one, side one opens with Not Fade Away, with Lee’s voice so high my wife asked if the turntable was playing at 45 RPMs. Original drummer John Rutsey appears on this side, demonstrating their electric blues roots and similarities to bands like Cream and Led Zeppelin. Side two shows a startling difference in sound, not just due to Peart joining in 1974. The departure from blues began then, as they looked past influences toward the complexity of British progressive rock.
Interspersed throughout the box set, favourites are presented as live versions. On side three of LP 2, we meet the version of Rush that became iconic. In a make-or-break moment, the band and manager Ray Danniels ignored their label’s advice to write more Zep-style tracks and instead released the full-side concept opus 2112. The suite tells the story of a man in a dystopian, techno-religious society who discovers the need for a free world after finding an ancient electric guitar. Against the odds, the album charted and reshaped their reputation, moving them beyond the perception of being just another hard rock Canadian opener billed first of the night. Featuring The Overture and The Temples of Syrinx, the side also includes a live version of By-Tor and the Snow Dog, another storytime rocker with perhaps the most chuckle-worthy title in their catalogue.
Despite their thematic density, whether in Peart’s professorial lyrics or the intricacies of their compositions, the band’s sense of humour was always present. The accompanying 104-page hardcover book captures some of that humour. Assembled by long-time visual collaborator Hugh Syme and compilation producer Jeff Fura, the book includes 30 pieces of artwork rich with Easter eggs, puns, and fan-deep inside jokes. A favourite for many Toronto fans is the view from the Islands: the skyline seen through a weathered white picket fence titled Tom Sawyer. The book opens with a long-form piece by journalist David Fricke titled Working Men: Rush in America. His decades-long history with the band, writing for Rolling Stone and Circus magazines, gave him unique access to their rise and longevity.
Side six is a personal one for me. It starts with The Spirit of Radio, my first real awareness of the band. Side seven brings me into full early fandom with Moving Pictures highlights like Tom Sawyer, followed by live versions of Limelight, Vital Signs, and the Canadian instrumental classic, YYZ. The flipside brought me back to a night in November 1982, when I saw Rush at Maple Leaf Gardens on the Signals tour. My older brother and I climbed to our nosebleed seats so high we had to peer through a low shelf of cigarette and doobie smoke to see the band. It was only the third concert I’d ever seen, but the first I truly needed to attend. The music hit me hard in the chest, pushed out of massive speaker stacks and driven by then-novel visuals on a video screen.
From record five onward, we enter an era of Rush that faded from my regular listening. While I always returned to the classics, my musical tastes had shifted. Their post-Signals albums weren’t ones I owned. I was discovering new wave—U2, The Cure, The Smiths, The Clash—and hardcore and punk bands. Yes, at the time, Rush’s evolving sound fell just close enough to new wave for consideration. Their embrace of digital tech modernized their music to match the era, even as it alienated some hard rock purists.
Later hits like Big Money came with flashy computer graphics videos, while Time Stand Still featured their first major vocal collaborator since Geddy sang with Kim Mitchell on Battle Scar in 1980. In fact both bands all played together on the track. On Time Stand Still, Aimee Mann of Til’ Tuesday took the heads on the choruses. Aimee Mann is someone I’ve come to consider one of my generation’s greatest songwriters. I catch her shows whenever she’s in Toronto. One night at The Phoenix, someone called out for Time Stand Still. She gave a bad-smell expression but didn’t indulge the request.
Side ten breezes through Roll The Bones, Counterparts, Test For Echo, and Different Stages, the 1998 live album featuring Peart’s dazzling drum solo, The Rhythm Method. Side eleven reminded me of the excellent One Little Victory, then jumped back with a live version of Cygnus X-1 from Rush in Rio. I felt a twinge of melancholy listening to the final two records. Knowing the anthology ends with the final show, the ending is the ending. But their cover of The Seeker from 2008’s Feedback reminded me that Rush meant many things, and one of them was fun, enough to release an album covering the songs that inspired their early days that they played in Yonge St. bars and on high school cafetorium stages.
The last studio tracks jump between Snakes and Arrows and Clockwork Angels. I don’t know these albums well. There’s a chance that the live version of Jacob’s Ladder was from that show—Rush’s final hometown performance on June 19, 2015. Hearing Geddy’s outro from the medley of What You’re Doing / Working Man / Garden Road feels both triumphant and sad. They got across the finish line, leaving trails of blood, sweat, and tears. It feels like the end. But one must not abandon hope.
Having listened to all 50 songs from RUSH 50, it’s been more than just a trip down memory lane. I want to avoid being hyperbolic or an overwrought fan, but for those of us who have a band and their music that was present throughout their lives, there’s meaning within this relationship. For me, Rush was my entrée into finding my ears to really start listening to music. Their music was the first that became important to me.
For many years, the idea that this band or that one was important seemed pretentious and overblown. It was a phrase I’d heard delivered alongside admonitions from music snobs. I’ve changed my tack on this, having now rediscovered how I felt in my early music-loving days. As a kid looking for an escape from my pre-teen fears, music was the thing that brought me peace. In recent years, anxiety, fear and uncertainty returned in grown-up sizes, enough to seek help with mental health. What I rediscovered is that immediate relief can still be found in music.
So, music is important—but not as a badge of cool or one-upmanship. It’s medicine. It can make you laugh or cry. It can take you back in a flash, like the scent of your father’s cologne or the taste of your mother’s cooking, with fresh clarity to a way-back memory.
In a unique way—as a Canadian, as a Torontonian, and even as a Jew—my connection to this band is a part of my identity, without being parasocial. But living in a nation raised on British-inspired quietude, I learned to see the goddess in the art and the human in the artist, eschewing the gravity of celebrity. It’s possible that my young self inherited that from Rush.
I may not play Moving Pictures on repeat as I did at ten, but rediscovering a bit of that feeling through this box set reminded me that there’s still something present in the music. And luckily, it’s there to be discovered—or rediscovered—to create new sparks and new fans, even out of old ones like me.
You can learn more about the RUSH 50 box set here.
Aron Harris
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