On July 29, 1953, Geddy Lee was born. Lee was the lead vocalist, bass player, and keyboardist for the Canadian band Rush, a staple of rock radio.
Rush was formed in 1968 in Toronto. The group went through a lot of membership changes in its first few years, but by 1971, the lineup had stabilized. Lee was the frontman; Alex Lifeson was the guitarist; John Rutsey was the drummer.
The band refined its act playing Toronto bars and private parties before releasing their first single in 1973. Their self-titled first album was released in 1974, originally only in Canada. When a Cleveland radio station began to play the song “Working Man,” it became a local hit, which led to Mercury Records releasing the album in the United States.
Almost immediately after the album’s release, John Rutsey left Rush. He had some chronic health problems and didn’t enjoy touring. Neil Peart was hired as his replacement two weeks before the band began its first United States tour and also took over from Lee as the group’s principal lyricist. Lee, Lifeson, and Peart would be the lineup of Rush for the next forty years.
Rush’s first album had been a straightforward blues-based rock, but they quickly began to shift towards progressive rock. “Prog” rock grew out of 1960s psychedelia and drew on jazz and classical techniques and forms. Prog rock albums featured long, multi-part suites, complex time signatures, and instrumentation that went beyond the standard guitar/bass/drums, usually with lots of electronics and synthesizers.
Rush’s 1975 album Fly by Night includes an 8 minute suite, “By-Tor and the Snow Dog;” later the same year, Caress of Steel featured two tracks that were more than 12 minutes long. Their record label pushed them to return to a more commercial, radio-friendly sound, but Rush ignored them. The title track of 1976’s 2112 was 20 minutes long. But it was their biggest commercial success yet, going platinum in Canada.
The band’s albums of the 1970s saw them moving deeper into prog rock and taking steps back from it. Their sound grew more complex, with more synthesizers and a large battery of percussion instruments, and their lyrics were often influenced by classic science fiction and fantasy. At the same time, they began to move away from the long pieces, which didn’t get much airplay at radio.
The changes helped them find a larger audience. The 1980 album Permanent Waves, which added elements of new wave and reggae to their sound, went to the top five on the American charts. 1981’s Moving Pictures did even better, with singles “Limelight” and “Tom Sawyer” becoming top ten rock hits.
Geddy Lee took a brief detour from Rush in 1981 to provide vocals for an unexpected novelty hit. The Canadian sketch comedy show SCTV had become a hit in America; among its most popular recurring characters were the dimwitted brothers Bob and Doug McKenzie, played by Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas. The McKenzies were popular enough for Moranis and Thomas to record Great White North, an album of songs and sketches; Lee sang the anthemic chorus on the album’s single, “Take Off,” which made it to the top 20.
Rush kept moving away from traditional guitar-oriented rock in the 1980s, broadening their musical style even further to include hints of ska and funk, and bringing Lee’s synthesizers to the foreground, where they took the musical lead from Lifeson’s guitars. The 1982 album Signals gave the band their only top 40 pop hit, “New World Man.”
Rush continued their exploration through most of the 1980s, but returned to a more traditional rock style with 1989’s Presto. The synthesizers were de-emphasized, and Rush sounded much more like a traditional three-piece rock band.
That stylistic shift continued through the 1990s, and the band’s audience kept growing. Their 1996 tour was the first time they’d toured completely on their own, with no opening act.
After that tour ended in 1997, Rush went on hiatus because of tragic events in Peart’s life. Within a year, his daughter and wife both died. At his daughter’s funeral, he told Lee and Lifeson, “Consider me retired.” Among Peart’s coping mechanisms was motorcycling. He spent several months traveling around North America, covering more than 55,000 miles, and wrote about his travels in the memoir Ghost Rider.
Peart has written several other books, most of which, like Ghost Rider, combine travelogue and memoir. Traveling Music recounts his trip to Big Bend National Park; Far and Near and Far and Wide are stories of international motorcycle travel.
Lee and Lifeson each recorded a solo album during Rush’s hiatus. Lee’s My Favourite Headache was modestly successful; Lifeson’s album was less so, perhaps because he chose not to release it under his own name. The album’s title and billed artist were simply Victor.
During his travels, Peart decided that he wasn’t yet ready to retire, and Rush began work on a new album in early 2001. Vapor Trails was released in 2002.
Rush was less busy in the next decade than they had been earlier in their career, but still a very productive band. They went on a 30th anniversary tour in 2004, released Snakes & Arrows in 2007, and made their first American television appearance in more than 30 years in 2008, performing on The Colbert Report.
Rush was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2010, and into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013. The latter induction was seen as long overdue by their fans; they’d been eligible since 1998, but never before placed on the ballot by the Hall’s nominating committee.
Rush’s 2012 album Clockwork Angels was a concept album in which each song took place within a fictional universe created by Peart. The album presents a series of vignettes from that imaginary world, but there is enough of a story that science fiction writer Kevin J. Anderson, working with Peart, wrote a novel based on the album, followed by a sequel, Clockwork Lives.
During the band’s 40th-anniversary tour in 2015, Lifeson told an interviewer that it would probably be Rush’s last major tour. He had developed arthritis, and Pearl suffered from tendinitis, so playing a long tour was increasingly difficult. By 208, Lifeson and Lee both said, in separate interviews, that Rush was unlikely to tour or record again.
On January 7, 2020, Neil Peart died of brain cancer, bringing the band’s 45-year career to an end.
Almost all of Rush’s albums are available for streaming at Hoopla.