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Rediscovering Rush – Fly By Night IV

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Some thoughts from the future:

The style still hasn’t settled down, has it?  I’m a bit overthinking things in places, but I do enjoy my Edinburgh nostalgia, and it’s strange to read the words written before the whole Canada thing became a reality.  As noted above, I own this as part of the ‘Archive’ set, and every now and then I see a copy in one of Victoria’s marvellous record stores, and I never quite get round to it.  One day, though – just listening to these tracks as part of finding them to insert into the posts has given me the urge to go back and listen to it all again.  It’s pretty good, this album.

Rediscovering Rush – Fly By Night III

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Fly by Night

This one’s tricky.  A thousand memories wash through me as I hear the opening bars – this is a song which has always been with me.  It seems to have spoken to me throughout my life, and it still does.  Without giving too much away here (there are plans as yet unmade, and people as yet untold), we are planning the kind of life change which fits well enough with ‘Fly by Night’; not an escape, but my ship isn’t coming, and I’m tired pretending.

When I first heard it (I’m assuming it’s on ‘All the World’s a Stage; I haven’t checked), I had not long left home.  All alone in the big city, I bought Rush albums to keep me company, and ‘Fly by Night’ helped me realise that I was doing the right thing (I do find that what I’m after is changing every day; that’s OK).  Two years ago, I was back in Edinburgh for the day, but Phoenix Records on the High Street is long gone, sad to say, and everything has changed.

Listening to this again should make me feel warm and nostalgic; instead it makes me want to get up and do something about my life.  Time to move on again; it’s been 4 years in this one place, and we’re coming to the end of it.  When I write the story of our experiences, some of the chapter headings will be lines from songs, and one of them will surely be:

Change my life, again…

Making Memories

On the other hand…

Nope, don’t remember this.  It’s kind of, well, acoustic, in feel – I can imagine it being busked on a street corner, or late at night in a packed Grassmarket pub – there’s a folkishness to it which surprises me a bit at first, but then I remember Zeppelin’s ‘Gallows Pole’, and I suppose that it’s not such an unusual sound for its time. (Not that I think it sounds a lot like ‘Gallows Pole’, but there’s a certain vibe to it.)

Second time round, I pay more attention to the lyrics.  It’s already registered with me that this surely isn’t one of Neil’s, and now I suddenly realise that it’s that staple of the repertoire, a tour song!  Man, life on the road is so tough; lucky we’ve got good memories to sustain us.  Oddly, for a song I am not that impressed with, it stays with me; the chorus – such as it is – has a neat hook, and I’m humming it all day.

Rivendell

Ah, yes.  Tolkien.  Now, I’ve done my share of reading, and I’ve ploughed through Lord of the Rings more than once, but I think that my interest in it is more academic than imaginative.  By which I suppose I mean that I’ve never felt inspired to write a song from the perspective of one of the characters.  But I do understand people who are inspired like that – I have felt like living in many other books (I’m currently immersed in Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle, and there’s a series which could inspire all sorts of creativity.  Incidentally, I keep conflating Stephenson and Peart in my mind; they seem somehow similar people; I wonder if they’ve met?)

All of that notwithstanding, I’m not sure about this song.  I remember it, sure – as a full blown acoustic ballad, it kind of stands out in the Rush repertoire – and I thought I knew what to expect, but I’m still slightly unnerved.  Partly this is because I’m listening through headphones, and Geddy appears to be perched on my left shoulder, which is very disconcerting.  Partly, I’m trying to work out what the background sound is – eventually, when I hear that some of it sounds like some of the guitar work in ‘Xanadu’, I realise it’s Alex being creative. I’m also wondering who wrote the melody line which causes Geddy to rupture himself reaching the highest notes.

Out of context, this is a lovely song.  In the context of the whole Rush oeuvre, this is a bit of an oddity.  In the context of this album, it kind of works, but I’m glad this wasn’t the path they followed.

In the End

Remember that stuff about me loving songs which begin quietly and build?  Well, this was for a long time, my favourite Rush song of all.  I fondly imagined being in a rock band of my own, and doing a cover of this. (Oh, come on, we’ve all done that.  Haven’t we?)  On listening to it now, I see it very much as the bridge between old and new; even allowing for the fact that this band is only 2 albums old, this is a long way ahead of where they used to be.

There’s a consistency to this song, and it closes the album off perfectly.  To dive straight into something raucous would have been too much after the pastoral idyll of ‘Rivendell’; instead we are led gently down the garden path, and set up so that the eruption into the body of the song seems inevitable and welcoming.
Summary:

This was always one of my favourites, and I can see why: great tunes (I still think ‘Fly by Night’ could have been an excellent pop song); variety; cohesiveness; even a kind of ‘concept’ feel to the thing – especially with the way the second side (it’ll always be the second side to me, even on CD) has a different sound – a different feel – to the first, only to be rounded off by ‘In the End’ bringing us full circle.  It’s the first album with that true ‘Rush’ sound, where you can hear all the elements, and understand how three guys can make such a full sound.  Once this exercise is over, this is one of the albums I’ll keep coming back to.

Rediscovering Rush – Fly By Night II

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Anthem

I know things are going to be a bit different now- it’s a given, isn’t it?  So what exactly am I looking for?  Of course I hear the drums immediately (and I’ll come to the lyrics in a moment), but what I hear most of all is tone and structure.  From the start, this is a song performed by a three-piece.  Each strand of the music is clear (and all four parts are given equal weight – no more drowning everything in multi-tracked guitars).  This is a clean sound, and the song really benefits from it.  The structure is instantly more interesting than anything on ‘Rush’ – the various sections hang together, the instrumental parts are there for a reason, and the music works with the words, not just as a rhythmic device to distract you from their banality.

Words.  I’d better declare my position up front, because I’m going to deviate from it often enough.  I don’t believe Neil Peart to be a poet.  I actually don’t even think that he’s the greatest wordsmith in modern music – and I don’t think he’s ever tried to be.  What I believe he is, is the most consistently interesting, thought-provoking and musical lyricist in rock music.  And the most important word in that list, for me, at any rate, is ‘consistent’. This may not be the first song he ever wrote; it may not be the first Rush song he ever wrote, but straight off the bat you notice two things:

1. He’s on the arrogant side of thought-provoking (“Don’t let them tell you that you owe it all to me”? Er, hello, Mr Peart; I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.  Who are you , exactly?)  From 30 years away, it’s a familiar and somewhat wry comment on the perils of fame, but just think for a minute about the fact that it’s the first time anyone’s heard a Peart lyric.  Wow, that’s confident.

2. You don’t understand it first time out.  He doesn’t use words like ‘baby’, does he?  How many other rock lyrics include the word ‘wrought?’  I’m going to have to go back and listen again to figure out what’s going on here.  The first time I heard this, I was studying the metaphysical poets.  This made me think almost as much to figure it out.  How can you not love something like that?

Best I Can

Woah, hold on there, guys.  Where did this come from?  One song into the new era, and we’re right back among the dinosaurs.  It must be a hangover from the first album, and I suppose you might as well put it here to draw in those who loved that, and haven’t quite got over the shock of ‘Anthem’.  However, you do notice all that drumming poured all over it, which kind of raises it up the scale a bit, and there’s a nice breakdown section.  But it’s not the best thing on this album, is it?

Another ‘last’ – is this the last time we hear Geddy sing the words ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll’?

Beneath, Between and Behind

Two things straight off.  When I heard this again for the first time in twenty or so years, I thought it was the riff to ‘Lakeside Park’, only to be brought up short.  It’ll be interesting to hear how similar they actually are when I get there.  Then I thought I was getting ‘Bastille Day’, thanks to that initial yelp.  I’m not sure if that says more about my memory than it does about the song.

Actually, now I listen more carefully, it does seem to be a dry run for ‘Bastille Day’ – all that stuff about ‘noble birth’ and a certain briskness to the structure.  Considering I only dimly remembered the title, and thought it was two other songs, this has since stuck in my head quite pleasantly.  As someone might say, it’s nifty.

By-Tor and the Snow Dog

Before I even start, I’m looking forward to this.  It’s the first of the really extravagant songs, and I remember it well – there’s something orchestral about it in my memory, and although I’m not the biggest fan of fantasy lyrics, there’s something comforting about this because it is still, after so long, utterly familiar.

Incidentally, I was never a big fan of fantasy writing either.  Then I was introduced to Guy Gavriel Kay.  Trust me, you should try him.  He is Canadian, after all.

So, for an eight-minute epic, this doesn’t hang about.  Two quick verses, fairly traditionally structured, and suddenly we’re off.  Now I can see why Neil’s writing works so well.  The complaints I had about the instrumental sections in ‘Working Man’ have all been addressed here – this is integral to the song, and all this musical sparring serves a narrative purpose.  How tedious it could have been to write (and listen to) “Then By-tor leaps at the Snowdog’s  throat, but with one swipe of his mighty paw…’ Yawn.

Instead we get thrilling musical battle, the greatest countdown in all of rock (6…5…4…3…2…Bang!. The timing is perfect, and the metre is maintained throughout), a wonderful funereal lament – mists slowly clearing over the battlefield, that sort of thing – a drum roll and a liquid bluesy solo, followed by the scrambled resurrection back into the verse.  It’s a lot shorter than 8 minutes, I swear.

I’d write more, but I’m going to listen to it again instead.

Rediscovering Rush – Rush IV

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Some thoughts from the future:

I wrote these back in 2005; I was genuinely in a period of rediscovery.  Looking back at them (looking back at my looking back, if you follow me), I’m struck by how much of this really felt new to me.  This may be something of a spoiler, but the ‘rediscovering’ thing worked – I became fully immersed in the music of Rush again, and when I listen to these songs now, I am coming back to them having last heard them a few weeks, or at most, months ago.  This also suffers from the inevitable issues with starting a new project without having found a comfortable way to approach it.  I did, in the end, stick pretty much to the ‘introduction – side 1 – side 2 – summary’ structure (it gets a little trickier in the age of CDs), but I like to think that as time goes on I give a little more thought to the whole thing.

Since I wrote that, I have bought the ‘Archives’ vinyl set all over again – I have now, to my everlasting joy and delight, returned to the world of record-buying as it was meant to be – I still don’t own a copy of this album on its own on vinyl; no doubt I’ll get round to it eventually.  There’s, of course, a pristine digital copy on my hard drive, and (perhaps equally unsurprisingly) I don’t listen to either version all that much.  It remains, as I said, perfectly fine, but not exactly representative of the band, and while I’m glad it exists, and hearing any of the tracks makes me smile, I don’t reach for this if I want a slice of early Rush.

 

NB: these 2018 reflections will be posted as if I’d skipped back in time, to keep them in a logical place in the flow – I actually wrote this in February 2018.

Rediscovering Rush – Rush III

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Side 2:

What You’re Doing

The first thing I notice, before the song has even started, is that it’s not called ” What You’re Doin’ ” – it’s a small thing, but it’s indicative of a certain class, I feel.  We plunge straight into a familiar riff – do I remember this, or does it remind me of something else?  I can’t pin anything down, so perhaps my memory is still pretty good.  Odd, random things occur to me as we go along – that drumming is actually pretty damn good; this is a song assembled in sections, and I can hear some of the joins; are Geddy’s vocals going to be echoed all the way through?

Turns out they are.  Not sure that I’m too fond of that effect.  Still, I like the song.

In The Mood

The first song I’ve heard more recently than 1984, this was one of the ones I put on my original selection, mostly because it is absolutely the perfect rhythm for powerwalking to.  It’s a lovely riff and a great middle eight, just don’t take the lyrics too seriously.  Actually, there’s a thing:
Another of those things which bother me: The word ‘baby’.  I mean, please.  Last taken even remotely seriously around the time of The Beatles’ “Drive My Car”, all it is by 1974 is a placeholder for those moments when you can’t work out how to fill those two beats – goodness knows what purpose it serves now.  I suppose it’s probably gone through the ironic, ‘Austin Powers’ thing, and is now a kind of post-ironic cool thing to say.  I wouldn’t know; I’m middle-aged.  Still, with any luck that will be the last time we hear Geddy singing ‘baby’ to anyone.

Before and After

Before and after what, I wondered to myself.  Then I got about halfway through the song, and all became clear.  I have absolutely no memory of this song, yet it is exactly of the type that the 20-year-old me would have loved – a lyrical instrumental gradually building to flat-out rock.  I was a real sucker for that kind of thing back then.  Thing is now, I can’t hear the charms for all the thoughts crowding in on me.  Firstly, that lyrical beginning; it takes three listens to work out what’s bugging me – the skipped beat in the repeated measure at the beginning.  They do it something like eight times, and it sounds odder each time I hear it.  It’s quite a good idea, because otherwise that repeated phrase might sound a bit bland, but it’s a little unsettling to listen to at first.  This is not a bad thing, you understand.

Secondly, the two halves don’t seem to gel – I don’t hear the relationship of the second to the first really.  That’s probably from listening to too much classical music, where every theme is developed, and all the strands seem to relate.  These two sound a bit too much like two half-finished songs glued together in the studio.  I don’t think they were two half-finished songs; but they sound a bit like it.  Also, more doubled guitars, and now I realise what it reminds me of.

Wishbone Ash.  No, really – I wonder if there was any conscious or unconscious influence there?

Also, guess what?  Back there, that wasn’t the last time Geddy sang ‘baby’.  Let’s hope this one is…

Working Man

This is the first track which is difficult to sort out in my mind.  First of all, I have heard it many times over the years; it’s kind of a standard; part of the mental furniture.  Also, it’s a genuine classic, isn’t it?  So what can I bring to it save for some  idle speculation about the mid section.

Well, what the heck.  Let’s do that:

I may be old and cynical, but this seems to me to be a triumph of expediency over intention.  The record needs to be in the vicinity of 40 minutes long (20 per side, kids) and here’s a song which, without the middle – it’s not a middle eight, really, more a sort of middle sixty-four – would be a simple, one-riff plod.  So this extended jam got shoehorned in; once again it doesn’t really fit the rest of the song, but it doesn’t half show off the musicianship of these three guys, and when we get back to that Black Sabbath-like riff, its an old friend.  Having said that, it works superbly well; much better than it ought to.

Summary:

Well, I can’t tell you how much I’ve enjoyed time-travelling back to 1974.  That album which I didn’t play all that much even in my Rushaholic phase turns out to be a fine example of its time – wearing its influences on its sleeve, to be sure, and lacking a certain something in the lyrical invention department, but if you’re in the mood (sorry) for a little early seventies bluesy rock, you could do a lot worse than this.

Baby.

Rediscovering Rush – Introduction

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I first stopped listening to Rush sometime after ‘Power Windows’.  I don’t really know why; I haven’t stopped to analyse it too much; it’s just one of those things that happened.  Life went on; time failed to stand still; I got married, moved house, moved house again, changed jobs, lived life.

One day I was contemplating the tediously pointless daily car journeys I was making, and decided to buy myself a Rush album to while away the hours.  So, I bought ‘Hold Your Fire’ on cassette tape, and I got right back into it all again.

I bought ‘Presto’ on tape, too.  Then…

Then, nothing.  I stopped again – this must have been about 1990.  After that, Rush was just this band I used to listen to.  My musical tastes changed, and for more than ten years now the only concerts I have gone to have been classical ones: I heard a magnificent Grieg Piano Concerto on Friday night; remind me to tell you about it some time.

Then I saw ‘Different Stages’ in a Virgin Megastore in Brent Cross one New Year – in the sale, it was, and I thought ‘Why not?’  And I was off again – it lived in my car CD player (I’ve moved on and – I like to think – up in cars since the ‘Hold Your Fire’ days) for months, and I grew to love all these old songs again.  I even grew to love some of the new ones – that bass solo on ‘Driven’ is terrific, and I can’t resist -er, ‘Resist’, being Scottish.

Then – you’re probably getting the idea of this now.

Last Christmas, my family gave me an mp3 player.  It’s a nice one – a Creative Zen Touch – and it has room for lots of Mahler symphonies.  And the odd bit of rock music.  I loaded some things on there I hadn’t heard for years – all that long-haired, sweaty music I loved 25 years ago – and I tried to pick just one representative Rush track to put on it.

And, of course, I couldn’t.  So I loaded up representative tracks from all the Rush albums.  And then I realised that wasn’t enough; I needed more.  At the same time, following an intense period of work, I felt the need to get back to writing again, and needed a project to stimulate me.

So I hit on this idea of ‘Rediscovering Rush’.  I have been intrigued and fascinated these last few months to realise that these three guys mean more to me than anything else I listened to all those years ago.  I’ll be honest with you – they don’t mean as much to me as some classical music does – please don’t engage with me on the topic of Mahler’s second symphony unless you want to be bored rigid by my private enthusiasms – but there is something special in their music, and I’d like to find out what it is.

So, here’s the plan.  Over the next – well, however long it takes, to be honest – I am going to listen to the entire Rush back catalogue on my little Zen Touch – while I’m exercising; while I’m flying to Italy (or Canada, soon); while I’m sitting here browsing while I should be working, and I’m going to write about it all.  I’m going to try to find out just what connects so strongly with me, and I’m going to try to find out  what I think of all this music now – am I more critical now?  Am I still excited by it?  Will I fall in love all over again with something I’d completely forgotten?  Will I make it to the end of ‘Feedback’ with my sanity intact?

Tune in and find out.  I don’t really know where this will go, but I aim to have at least a little fun finding out.