Alex Lifeson.
What an embarassing picture. I hope it helped sell records.
The extent of Rush’s foray into rap was about 1.5 minutes on one song on one album in 1991. That’s not a wholesale change in style, that’s briefly and playfully flirting with a genre of music that was coming into its own at that time.
Oh come on. It was 1976. Show me a picture of any celebrity from that time with a picture that is not embarassing to modern eyes. Those outfits might have been ultra-cool back then.
Nothing at all is wrong with Rush. They are three guys who produce powerful rock music with lyrics worth reading and thinking about. They are popular enough to sell tons of records for years and years without having their music killed by overplaying it. They are popular enough to have lots of people dislike them for it.
They have never struck me as being pretentious - far from it. In fact, they appear to be really down to earth kind of guys with neat senses of humor with whom it would probably be pretty cool to spend an hour in conversation. If you find two - or three - album side sets of songs pretentious, well, there isn’t much that can be done about that. This is your choice. Why a theme can’t be explored on a rock album is beyond me, but I grew up listening to this kind of stuff, so I may have a blind spot there.
The charge that they are poor at composition is also pretty baseless. I would like someone to justify this if there is any merit to it. Look at a song like Freewill, which is a pretty tightly composed song with a bridge that nonetheless shows off their virtuosity within the confines of the song itself. A song like Limelight is also a tightly composed song that manages a great deal of complexity. On the other hand, a song like La Villa Strangiato is not well composed, but isn’t really intended to be anything more than a collection of bits of jams that really just rock pretty damn hard. A recent song, Peaceable Kingdom, is probably one of my favorite Rush songs, in that it rocks really hard, contains meaningful and interesting lyrics, but is well-contained.
I think that they have never really been popular because they really don’t make music that you can dance to and the lyrics don’t lend themselves well to mindless repetition. Don’t get me wrong - there’s nothing wrong with dancing and sing-along songs, but there’s also nothing wrong with alternatives.
I too used to get all het up about folks not liking Rush, but came to realize a long time ago that it is no skin off my nose if you like them or not, and it is kind of funny to see those with blind hatred get all worked up.
Rush has been the greatest rock band for three decades.
The Pogues
Flogging Molly
Aimee Mann
Rufus Wainwright
Pink Floyd
The Clash
Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros
Nick Cave
Ben Harper
The Beta Band
The Pixies
The Breeders
The Flaming Lips
Marcy Playground
Moby
Operation Ivy
The Specials
Paul Simon
Pearl Jam
R.E.M.
The Real McKenzies
Silly Wizard
Smog
Talking Heads
Tom Petty
The White Stripes
The Velvet Underground
Weezer
That’s the short list, anyway. Knock yourself out.
Cool - in 1987, she contributed some guest vocals to the Rush song Time Stand Still. She is, in fact, the only non-member of the band to ever sing on a Rush recording. She added a nice touch to one of my all-time favorite Rush songs 
What’s wrong with Rush?
They were taking up too much space on my hard drive. When my bro built my computer, he installed hundreds of mp3’s as a gift, including the complete works of Rush. I listened to a few of their works, and then deleted the lot. Now that there is no Rush on my computer, there is nothing wrong with them.
HtB:
I remember a nationwide poll of most popular bands from 1980 that went like this:
- Led Zeppelin
- Rolling Stones
- Pink Floyd
- Rush
- Queen
What?! No Skynyrd?!?.
Man, I hated those days.
I think a reason why Rush gets slammed so much is because their fans can be a little over the top. I like some of their stuff, but comments like “Rush has been the greatest rock band for three decades” has me snickering to myself. I can see why a backlash would develop. At least with Tears For Fears, there’s only one fan like this here…Rush as quite a few.
Just take a look at that 2112 picture. These guys are not cool. They’re not real rock and rollers. They’re not Lou Reed or Iggy Pop. Hell, they aren’t even Fleetwood Mac or the Eagles. They don’t shoot heroin, they don’t party until they’re face down on the floor, they don’t fuck each other’s girlfriends, and they’re from Canada.
However, if you were a suburban pothead musical mystical wierdo in the '70s like I was they were a blast.
Hey, that was when I was most into Rush. My band in high school would play Rush album sides. We did everything from All The World’s a Stage, stuff from Fly By Night, Caress of Steel, Farewell to Kings, Hemispheres, Moving Pictures, I even pilfered the orchestra bells from the band room so I could play the orchestra bells part in Xanadu.
Rush, and Neil Peart in particular lost their luster when back in the late 70’s I saw Neil Peart do the same exact drum solo a couple years after the last time I saw them, which was practically the same drum solo he did for All the World’s a Stage. I saw them in '96 and it was a lot of fun (and Peart changed his drum solo) but I haven’t really kept up with them since Moving Pictures.
That’s probably the best explanation I’ve seen so far.
My problem with RUsh is that I usually like prog-rock but I find Rush just blaaaghh (sp?). It doesn’t seem to have the heart of Yes, the skill of King Crimson, or the interest of early Genisis. Rush is to Prog Rock what Heart are to Hevy Metal, a competent also-ran not a race leader at any point. Comparing them to Beatles seems a ludicrous to me as comparing Heart to Black Sabbath. I am glad Rush has its followers, I follow Fish and Mariliion which is far from a race leader itself. But if I said Marillion was one of the greatest bands of all time, I would be dilluding myself with my personal liking of the band, and would expect and accept ridicule for such a rediculous clame.
Sorry, missed this before. Of the four criteria you listed, only musical skill is an objective criteria that measures quality. Thing is, it’s such a common criteria that it’s essentially meaningless. How many professional bands are there out there that really have no musical skill? I’m not a musician, so I’m not in a position to pass judgement on the skills of Geddy Lee et. al. I’ll take the testimony that others have offered as to their virtuosity. But so what? They have talent, which is common enough. What matters is towards what ends they bend that talent. From what I’ve heard, it has been singularly unimpressive.
Sales, longevity, and influence are all forms of popularity. Popularity, as I’ve said, does not equal quality.
In any debate about the quality of a given work of art, all I can do is give my subjective opinion. That some other guy really likes Rush doesn’t make Rush sound any better to me. It’s irrelevant to my opinion. If the person who likes Rush is someone I hold in sufficient esteem (such as, say, Aimee Mann) it might prompt me to give them a second try, but it is not, in and of itself, a rebuttal of my opinion. That a band has been around for a long time is perhaps the most meaningless yardstick of all. Stephen King and Dave Berry are members of a rockgroup that, by all accounts (mostly their own) blows chunks. However, they’re a pack of obscenely rich authors who never have to work another day in their lives if they don’t want to. They could keep their band together for forty years, just on the strength of their royalty checks from their writing, but it doesn’t say anything about their abilities as musicians.
I will have to check out Time Stand Still, though. I’m always interested to see what happens when a musician who’s never recorded a song I don’t like collaborates with a band who’s never recorded a song I could stand. It’s surprising (and heartening) how often quality wins out over suck, in those situations.
Gotta disagree with you there. In any given genre, the most popular bands are the best at making that kind of music, and they’re the ones that sell the most albums and influence the most followers. Longevity, maybe not–think of the Stones…
And to be honest, I really don’t see how a band that really does suck could generate the sort of controversy that the Beatles, Rush, Metallica or Emperor does.
OK. Do you really need the argument to be stated “Longevity of a band is a valid measure of quality for a band that is supported soley and adequately by the income from their music alone.” ?
Sheesh, didn’t want to argue that point, but you made me. Didn’t want to because I agree with you that longevity of a band is not measure of quality. Just look at Bruce Springsteen. Bleah. And yet he’s still around and famous. But your reasoning in support of my point made me cringe and undermined the argument.
Oh, and I really like “Time Stand Still”, but it does still have a noticeable Rush feel. Not Rush circa “Tom Sawyer”, but still Rush.
Well, yeah. That’s my opinion. If that makes you dislike Rush, that’s kind of weak, but that’s your choice. Go for it!
Where did I say I disliked Rush?
Y’know, a young Marilyn Manson was once photographed wearing a Rush teeshirt: can’t be bothered Googling {hell, I’ve barely heard of them}, but if some rabid fan of either feels like letting their fingers do the walking…
I made a presumption based on your opinion regarding Rush. If that is in error, go ahead and clarify. Or be coy. My opinion of them will remain the same.
In thinking more about your observation, it is odd that 10 over the top hateful statements about Rush don’t tend to make people like them more, whereas my opinion, in your estimation, drives people away. Hmmm. Perhaps those people were given to disliking Rush in the first place.