A band at work: a new book looks at Rush in the ’80s

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) — The `80s were an era of big hair and loud guitars, but for one legendary Canadian rock band, it meant the switch to more keyboard-based music. A new book looks at how Rush navigated the “greed is good” decade.

Limelight: Rush in the `80s is the second of three books about the band by author Martin Popoff. The trilogy follows the death of drummer Neil Peart in January from brain cancer at the age of 67.

In the first volume, Anthem: Rush in the `70s, Popoff described the band’s sound as “progressive rock with a distortion pedal.”

In book two, he observes Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, and Peart were increasingly incorporating elements of new wave and even reggae into their repertoire. You could say they went from being kimono-wearing prog-rockers to skinny-tie wearing new wavers. Well, sort of.

“They’re just, essentially, kind of becoming a little more direct, a little more focused, and deciding that, you know, all those trappings of prog that started way back in 1970 with Yes, and Genesis, and Jethro Tull, and all of that, they’re going to basically do away with that stuff,” he explains.

LISTEN: Limelight

Rush opened the new decade with the album Permanent Waves, best known for the hit, “The Spirit of Radio.”

“Well, I think it’s kind of neat that it’s about radio. I mean, it’s a really good lyric. That’s not unexpected being [written by] Neil Peart,” says Popoff.

“[But] there’s also this energy to it, this bubbly sort of buoyant drive to the song. It also has that little bit of reggae feel. You know, it’s almost like they figured out how to sell this complicated music and make it accessible and make it radio-friendly.”


Indeed, gone were the long, prog-rock epics of the `70s in favour of shorter, more radio-friendly fare like “Tom Sawyer” and “Subdivisions.”

The `80s also saw the band adopt shorter song structures and move away from the heavy rock that put them on the map in the first place.

“[That was] at a time when they could have gone heavier, like New Wave of British Heavy Metal or the start of, you know, the heavy metal that’s sort of starting in California, so, it was quite a surprise to a lot of people.”

As the band changed its sound, Popoff notes it also began to enjoy a new level of popularity.

“They became the it band. They became the band, you know, in the high school hallways, that everybody’s saying, ‘Oh, you know, [I’m] going to the Rush concert tonight,’ that kind of thing. This is when they broke it wide open.”

One challenge was trying to find a way for both guitars and keyboards to live together on the sound spectrum, one that put a strain on Alex Lifeson.

“You know, he never saw himself as a riffster, though the riffs are becoming less and less often at this point. It’s kind of become a four-piece band and that means less of a role for Alex.”

Popoff points out the `80s were also busy time for the trio, who put out seven studio albums and two double-live sets between 1980 and 1989. “They’re wearing themselves out, they’ve got these massive shows. So, they’re basically a big band, they’ve made some money now, they’re basically a big, going concern going to work.”

Limelight: Rush in the `80s is available from ECW Press. The final book in the trilogy, Driven: Rush in the `90s and In the End, is due in April.

RELATED: 

Top Stories

Top Stories

Most Watched Today