Rush:
The Album
The first album featured drummer John Rutsey, who played only on this
album. Neil Peart replaced Rutsey before the start of their first American
tour.
Alex Lifeson (from "Success Under Pressure"): "That's how
the first Lp was done. I think we only spent three days of
actual recording, and then a couple more re-doing two songs and mixing the
whole thing. It was all done in under a week, but was spread out over
several months."
Working Man
Alex Lifeson (1983 interview): "A copy made its way down to
Cleveland to a radio station program
director there and she passed in on to Mercury Records."
(The Cleveland radio station and DJ Donna Halper are credited in the liner
notes)
Fly By Night:
Anthem
Inspired by the Ayn Rand novel of the same name.
By-Tor and The Snowdog
scrs_ltd@uhura.cc.rochester.edu: Rush's road manager,
Howard, came up with the title at a party. There were two dogs at the party,
one a German shepherd and the other
a tiny white nervous dog. Howard used to call the shepherd By-Tor
because anyone that walked into the house was bitten. The other dog was
a snow-dog (white ...). So from that night on Howard called the pair of
dogs "By-Tor and the Snow Dog."
Was Rivendell a real place?
From the Rush FAQ: Rivendell was the safe haven for
travellers in J.R.R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings."
Caress of Steel:
Lakeside Park
Where is Lakeside Park located?
- From the Rush FAQ: It's in St. Catharine's, on Lake
Ontario, in Canada.
What is the significance of May
24th?
- From the Rush FAQ: It's Victoria Day, commemorating
Queen Victoria's birthday.
Geddy reflects on the older songs:
- Geddy Lee (1993 Raw magazine): "A lot of the early
stuff I'm really proud of," he says. "Some of it sounds really goofy, but
some of it stands up better than I gave it credit for. As weird as my voice
sounds when I listen back, I certainly dig some of the arrangements. I can't
go back beyond 2112 really, because that starts to get a bit
hairy for me, and if I hear "Lakeside Park" on the radio I cringe. What a
lousy song! Still, I don't regret anything that I've done!"
The Fountain of Lamneth:
Alex on the lyrics for The Fountain of Lamneth
- Alex Lifeson (1983 interview): "Ged and Neil wrote the
lyrics for The Fountain of Lamneth, and he thought it would be kind of nice
to try to incorporate a very loose concept in it by having a starting point
and ending point which would go from the beginning of side 2 [to] the end of
side 2 and it would be one complete story, but broken up, so that it could be
individual songs that, unless you look closely, wouldn't necessarily relate
to each other."
Alex on No One at the Bridge
-
I recall from our last meeting together that Steve Hackett was your major
influence from the progressive movement.
- Alex Lifeson (1984 Guitar magazine): "Yes, Steve Hackett
is so articulate and melodic, precise and flowing. I
think our Caress of Steel period is when I was most
influenced by him.
There's even a solo on that album which is almost a steal from his style of
playing. It's one of my favorites, called 'No One at the Bridge'."
2112:
The Album Cover
Hugh Syme (Creem 1983): "What I did do with that particular cover was read their lyrics, and understand that there is a good force and a bad force: the good force was music, creativity, and freedom of expression-and the bad force was anything that was contrary to that.
"The man is the hero of the story. That he is nude is just a classic tradition ... the pureness of his person and creativity without the trappings of other elements such as clothing. The red star is the evil red star of the Federation, which was one of Neil's symbols. We basically based that cover around the red star and that hero.
"Now, that hero and that kind of attitude about freedom of expression and the band having that kind of feeling ... at the time, it never ready occurred to me, to be honest with you, that they would adopt it quite so seriously as a logo. Because it's appeared just about everywhere, thereafter."
Geddy Lee (1983 interview): "Hugh Syme designed that. Once he received the lyrics for 2112 and heard some of the music and know what the album was, sortof, what direction the album was going, and he designed the graphics to go along with it and he came up with the design. It sorta comes to us to sort of stand for individualism, sorta man against the masses."
Neil Peart (Creem 1982): "All it means is the abstract man against the mass [sic]. The red star symbolizes any collectivist mentality."
2112
Neil Peart (Dec 2, 1991 "Rockline" interview): "The inspiration behind it was ... It's difficult always to trace those lines because so many things tend to coalesce, and in fact it ended up being quite similar to a book called Anthem by the writer Ayn Rand. But I didn't realize that while I was working on it, and then eventually as the story came together, the parallels became obvious to me and I thought, 'Oh gee, I don't want to be a plagiarist here.' So I did give credit to her writings in the liner notes."
All The World's A Stage:
The Album Cover
All The World's A Stage is a pretty straight-forward cover, except that the original pressings of the album came with a triple gatefold jacket.
Hugh Syme (Creem, 1983): "Yes, well, that was during the hiatus of outrageous packaging. As I said, AGI in Chicago did all of Rush's printing then, up until about four years ago. Albums like Ooh La La by the Faces, and Physical Graffiti-all of that was going on then, so we thought we'd go for a six panel jacket."
The Album
Neil Peart (Circus, November 25th 1976): "With 2112, we felt we had reached a first plateau. We had realized the goals we set for ourselves before the second album [when Peart replaced the band's former drummer, John Rutsey]. Musically, it looked like a logical place to do a live album. We had four albums' worth of material honed down to a live show. And the record company was hot for a live album."
Peart feels that the live album will help present a more accurate picture of where the band is currently at.
"When we play a piece live, we add all our little quirks to it. It grows; our older material shows a remarkable progression. Some of the old songs have developed until they're superior to the originals. This gives us a chance to bring them up to date. We always felt there was something happening live that didn't come across on record. Now we have the opportunity to capture that essence of the band.
"Also, All the World's a Stage presents our material to people who may have heard or liked a couple of our songs, but never got into all our albums. Now they can have those songs together on one album without our having to put out a Best of Rush package."
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