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  SIGNALS Daniel Bukszpan

  In 1982, Rush was at a fork in the road. The massively successful and career-defining Moving Pictures was one year behind them, and their next album, Signals, would be their last with producer Terry Brown, who had helped craft 2112 and A Farewell to Kings, as well as the band’s shift into new territory with 1980’s Permanent Waves. But Lee, Lifeson, and Peart were unhappy with the way Signals sounded, and they parted ways with Brown afterward.

  It’s hard to see why the band members had such reservations about the album and harder still to see why they were unhappy enough with it to part ways with Brown afterward. In this reviewer’s opinion, it’s every bit the equal of the band’s all-time best albums, with not a single bad song in its grooves. “The Analog Kid” is one of their finest up-tempo rockers, while “Chemistry” shows Geddy Lee in command of his keyboards before they got away from him. Plus, there’s the odd-metered “Losing It” to satisfy the prog geeks and air drummers. And they still play half of the album when they tour, to this day. So what gives?

  The album kicks off with “Subdivisions,” which features an odd time signature that sounds natural, a Rush trademark. The keyboard-dominated song achieves a melancholy not normally associated with the band. “The Analog Kid” comes next, a perennial concert favorite. Despite Lifeson & Lee’s determination to cram as many notes as possible into the main riff, the song rolls merrily along with uncluttered ease. It also features the best guitar solo on the album, and one of the finest of Alex Lifeson’s entire career.

  The criminally underrated “Chemistry” is up next. The chorus is absolutely sublime, but the song is really driven by the bass, as is the case with much of the material on the album. The bass is also star of the show on “Digital Man,” a six-minute rhythm-section wankfest. When the chorus comes in, it’s pretty clear that everyone in the band was listening to the Police’s Ghost in the Machine a little too much. Still, it’s hard to complain when performance is this good.

  Side two fades in on “The Weapon,” another of the album’s overlooked gems. It has the same chilly gloom as “Chemistry,” an attribute that first showed up on “Witch Hunt” one album prior. The mood is lightened by “New World Man,” the least consequential song on the album. Legend has it that it was written specifically to fill up 3:57 on side two so that the record could be mastered correctly, and it shows. Still, it would be the runaway best song on any album the band made between 1985 and 2002.

  Next is “Losing It,” the closest thing Rush had at this point to a tearjerker. When it lifts off at midsection into the fusion-ish drum pattern and Ben Mink plays his transcendent violin solo, it’s the moment the album sprouts wings, and it’s only too bad they never did more stuff like it. Finally, “Countdown,” which has gravity without heaviness and weight without plodding, brings everything to a very satisfying close.

  Signals betrays an anxious uncertainty on the part of the musicians; if it’s a bummer in any sense, it’s for that reason. After the euphoria of Moving Pictures, perhaps the band’s negative feelings toward Signals could be attributed to what-do-we-do-for-an-encore syndrome. Be that as it may, Signals stands 30 years later as one of the strongest albums in the Rush catalog—even if they didn’t realize it at the time.

  Once inside, opening track “Subdivisions” cascaded upon the listener with whooshes of synthesizer, followed by a “Red Barchetta”–like rocker called “The Analog Kid.” Many more electronic washes textured the balance of this brave step forward and commercial step sideways.

  The percolating futuro-reggae advance single to the album, “New World Man”, was cooked up because the album was coming up short on time (hence the working title, “Project 3:57”), while haunting ballad “Losing It” features one of the catalog’s rare and best guest slots, namely Ben Mink on violin (Mink also shows up on Geddy’s solo album). But it is “Subdivisions” that would become the album’s main anthem over the years, Neil accurately summarizing the song as “an exploration of our background as children of the suburbs. Of course, a great number of our fans probably have the same sort of background—that’s a universal in this day and age.”

  A deep album track highlight to the record is the keyboard-profuse closer “Countdown,” in the words of Neil, “a re-creation of our experiences attending the first Columbia [space shuttle] launch in Florida. Because we have some friends at NASA, we were able to get hold of the actual sound tapes—which we used on the record—and a whole lot of original footage which we’ll be able to use in our rear-screen projections. It’s worth a lot of thought and investment to us; for one thing, it adds so much to the show. Each year we have one or two new films specially shot to accompany certain songs, and other films get recycled as some songs get dropped and others added.”

  “New World Man” b/w “Vital Signs (Live),” U.S., 1982.

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  New York City residency, 1983. Ray Wawrzyniak collection

  Nassau Coliseum, Uniondale, New York. Romano Gonnella Jr. collection/Frank White Photo Agency

  Ray Wawrzyniak collection

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  Courtesy Wyco Vintage/www.wycovintage.com

  Reiterating the band’s determination to keep challenging themselves and their fan base, Neil opined further, “Once you’ve set aside commercial considerations and operate on your own system of values, the security is gone. Past success gives you freedom but it doesn’t give you any satisfaction. One reason this new album was so difficult for us was because we were trying something different with a lot of the songs—and with texture, the overall sound. There’s more synthesizer work this time—and even down to fine points, we went for different types of drum sounds, different ways of mixing things together. So, even though we’ve made eight or nine albums, all that experience didn’t serve us all that well. Signals took us a long time because we were trying not to repeat ourselves. Past success gives us the independence and the ability to decide when, where, and how we’re going to work—and no one else has the right to gainsay that—but, at the same time, we’re going in each time with a fresh slate. One approach is to assume that a particular album is as good as the last, and that people will buy it on that basis—that attitude doesn’t work for us. We’re concerned about making something that’s both different and better.”

  Courtesy Wyco Vintage/www.wycovintage.com

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  “The Enemy Within” video shoot at Battersea, London, April 1984. All Fin Costello/Redferns/Getty Images

  “I don’t like to be trapped behind my keyboards but a lot of the new material requires me to be there,” noted Geddy, who, unbeknownst to him at the time, would find himself manically multitasking at every Rush show from this day forward. “On the last tour I was able to spend 60 percent of the time running around but now it’s much less. So I think you have to be conscious of the fact that the band is a little static and therefore try to make the visuals a bit more happening. When I initially started playing [keyboards] I just wanted to use the occasional string line, but the thing is that I like writing on keyboards and I feel it gives us somewhere interesting to go to—it’s helping us mold our sound into something different than it was before. And I think it’s a real bonus. It’s one hell of a challenge to me and, to tell the truth, I do get very excited about using keyboards.”

  “I’m still very much in the dabbling stage,” continued Geddy. “Put me beside any real keyboard player and it’s a joking matter. And I don’t really pretend that I can play. I can write solo lines and melodies and play basic chord patterns, which is really all I need. I certainly don’t have any illusions about being a Keith Emerson or anything like that.”

  Once the songs of Signals began to settle in, the band started to express dissatisfaction with the album, mostly bemoaning the lack of heaviness, the tipping of the scales too far toward keyboards. One casualty of the band’s restlessness would be their relationship with Terry
Brown, producer since the beginning. A search was on for someone to take the reins next time out, a bad omen upon what would become Grace Under Pressure coming in the form of U2 man Steve Lillywhite bailing on the band at the last minute. Hasty replacement Peter Henderson would cast a further pall on the project, a record as exhausting to make as Hemispheres, but pointedly without the satisfaction of the final result.

  Issued on April 12, 1984, Grace Under Pressure arrived seventeen months past its predecessor. This was less given to Rush pursuing good on their promise to become more rounded people, but rather the horrified realization that with Henderson, they didn’t have a leader or organizer but a “good engineer” and that they would have to plow through most production decisions on their own in addition to playing their traditional roles.

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  Tour program. Ray Wawrzyniak collection

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  Grace Under Pressure tour, Rochester, New York. Ray Wawrzyniak collection

  “The Enemy Within” video shoot at Battersea, London, April 1984. Fin Costello/Redferns/Getty Images

  The Holocaust, the Cold War, close friends dying, futility, futurism, anger, and mortality… the subject matter of Grace Under Pressure was as dark as the fatigued birthing of the album itself. Unsurprisingly, there were no real hit singles, although one silver lining of the fraught experience was the elevated artistry of the album’s music videos, lead single “Distant Early Warning” in particular riding the front edge of the MTV revolution. “In the middle of working on that album we took off some time to play several shows at Radio City Music Hall in New York,” noted Peart, referring to a string of semi-legendary intimate dates, with neo-proggers Marillion as support. “Then we came back to the rehearsal hall, and there was such a fresh input from having played live. ‘Distant Early Warning’ was one of the songs that we wrote right away after we returned.”

  GRACE UNDER PRESSURE Neil Daniels

  Rush’s tenth studio album was in many respects as much of a rebuke to their previous studio album, Signals, as it was an extension of the band’s burgeoning new sound. Whilst touring Signals, the band had come to a consensus that they wanted to work with a different producer other than Terry Brown, who had produced a run of Rush albums from Fly by Night (1975) to the aforementioned Signals (1982). It was an amiable split, and the band even paid homage to Brown in the sleeve notes to Grace Under Pressure with the quote “et toujours notre bon vieil ami—Broon” (“and always our good old friend”).

  After the departure of Steve Lillywhite, who was initially slated to produce Grace Under Pressure, the band members produced it themselves with assistance from Peter Henderson, best known for his work with prog rock outfits King Crimson, Frank Zappa, and Supertramp. Recorded at Le Studio in Morin Heights, Quebec, between November 1983 and March 1984, the album saw the band experimenting with different sounds, including reggae and ska in some songs, and further developing the synthesizer sound they had explored on Signals. Although some long-standing Rush fans—those who prefer the more progressive rock-based sound of the previous decade—felt alienated by the new sound, others look fondly on the album. Neil Peart was, at the time, heavily influenced by the New Wave sound coming out of the U.K. with bands such as Talk Talk.

  As in the past, many of the songs on Grace reflect Peart’s interest in science fiction themes. Given the album’s moniker, it is evident that the general theme that runs through the album is how humans cope under varying kinds of pressure. “Between the Wheels” and “The Body Electric” are intriguing songs whose lyrics reflect such themes and whose music features a very dystopian sound harnessed during fourteen-hour workdays in the studio. Perhaps most intriguing of all is the track “The Enemy Within,” a part of what has been termed the “Fear” series that began with “Witch Hunt” on Moving Pictures, continued through “The Weapon” from Signals, and even went so far as “Freeze” from Vapor Trails (2002).

  However, not every track has a science fiction theme. “Red Sector A” focuses on the Holocaust, chiefly the memories of Geddy Lee’s mother, who was held prisoner at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. “Distant Early Warning” is generally understood to be about dealing with life after a nuclear holocaust, while “Afterimage” was a tribute to a friend who had passed away. Rolling Stone’s Kurt Loder wrote in his review of the album at the time that “Rush is a band with a message.” Indeed they are.

  Grace Under Pressure is an accessible album even if classic rock purists have lamented its overuse of synths. Released on April 12, 1984, it peaked at No. 10 on the U.S. Billboard 200 and No. 5 in the U.K. Top 40 album charts. Grace Under Pressure received generally positive reviews, and although Rush may have lost some fans during this era they were fortunate to acquire a new spread of music lovers.

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  Print ad, Netherlands.

  Print ad, Japan.

  “I thought that Grace Under Pressure was the right album at the right time,” Neil said a few years after the fact. “It was a time of crisis in the world and I was looking around and seeing my friends unemployed and having a very bad time. Inflation was rampant everywhere and people were basically in trouble. The world looked dark. That album to me was a tremendous statement of compassion and empathy with the world and I thought because of this it would have a similar accessibility as 2112 or Moving Pictures in their own eras. But it didn’t have the desired impact because people do not wanna hear about sadness when reality is so gloomy.”

  Grace Under Pressure does, in fact, seem like a correction toward more guitar after Signals, certainly heavier in contrast to what comes after. In fact, decades later, Alex picked it out as the band’s last heavy record. “Well, in a way, Counterparts was a pretty driving record, but Grace Under Pressure had that thing to it,” he said. “I think because it’s kind of dark, sort of grayish, not a black record but it’s a pretty dark gray record [laughs]. It has a bit of that heavy character to it. Certainly, yeah, but I don’t know if we’d ever had a really heavy record, to be honest.”

  Critics and fans now had two Rush albums in a row to complain about, aided and abetted by a band that was honest enough about the construction of Signals and Grace Under Pressure to express their own reservations. Settling in was a worldview that Rush represented a form of outsider cult band, no matter how big they got. Wrote Kurt Loder in Rolling Stone, “This album needs no critical assistance: If you like Rush, you’ll love it; if not, then Grace Under Pressure is unlikely to alter your assessment of the band as a lumbering metal anachronism. Rush has managed to incorporate a number of modern elements into its sound (note the almost danceable rhythms in ‘Afterimage’ and ‘Red Sector A,’ and the swelling synthesizers and electropercussion throughout). Geddy Lee, the group’s bassist and vocalist, has also gotten his dog-calling falsetto shriek under control. The problem, though, is musical. On record, the lack of melody and any but the most rudimentary harmonic development soon becomes oppressive. In addition, Alex Lifeson is not a particularly interesting lead guitarist, and the strictures of the trio format still result in more splattery drum bashing than you’ll ever care to hear. Rush delivers the goods, all right: strong social statements enveloped in a massive, pounding sound. But it’s old news, and old music, too.”

  Grace Under Pressure tour, The Spectrum, Philadelphia, November 5, 1984.

  Phonogram print ads, Germany.

  Ray Wawrzyniak collection

  Still, despite the grind of being Rush during this period, and despite a lack of hit singles, the band managed immediate platinum sales for both Signals and Grace Under Pressure, with Moving Pictures attaining double platinum before the close of the year. After a typically exhaustive American tour, November 1984 found the band playing Japan (plus Hawaii) for the first time, an experience Neil found unsettling, never quite getting over an incident in which he tried to intervene in a brutal wife-beating incident at the hotel. What left an impression as much as the violence was the fac
t that the hotel staff turned on the band, acting as if they were Westerners interfering in an everyday domestic dispute.

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  Grace Under Pressure record store display. Author collection

  Print ad, U.K. Author collection

  Grace Under Pressure tour, Richfield, Ohio.

  Part of the band’s success with record sales during this period can be attributed to their legendary long tours, strong ticket sales, and firm headliner. In turn, the success of Rush on the road was attained through the managed decision to pour most profits back into the show through the use of the best audio and visual technology available, in parallel with the band’s philosophy of exploring the sounds of every new musical toy on the market.

  Unfortunately, an early-adopter ethic can result in choices that render music the opposite of timeless, instead anchoring it to a day and age. In the case of Power Windows, that day and age would be the 1980s and the rock music clichés thereof. Even as Rush was attracting hoots of derision for their sassy haircuts, skinny ties, and dinner jackets, Geddy was again pushing keyboards to the fore, while Alex was looking to replicate the wiry sounds of the guitar in post-punk, apparently blind to the reduced role of the axe in that music. Meanwhile, Neil was discovering the electronic kit, soon to live in infamy as one of the most discredited instrumental trends of yore.