The 1974 tour Geddy Lee claimed taught Rush everything: “There was a lot to learn”
Despite having their roots in progressive rock, one of the more heavily gatekept music communities to have ever existed, Toronto titans Rush have always maintained a reasonable degree of open-mindedness when it comes to accepting what others do in their craft.
They may have spent the majority of their career being hailed as one of the genre’s greats, but they weren’t always tied to being a progressive rock band, and it wasn’t really until Neil Peart joined as their drummer in the mid-1970s that they began to find themselves expanding their horizons in this fashion.
In fact, Rush started out heavily influenced by other power trios like Cream, with frontman Geddy Lee being a massive fan of Jack Bruce and modelling his own style on his work. That would gradually expand when they realised that they could push their creativity further and carve their own niche for themselves, and the lukewarm reception that their debut album received may have also been a major contributing factor towards their prog shift.
As they became more expansive and started writing longer and more elaborate songs, their audience began to grow rapidly, but it didn’t come in an instant for them, and they had to spend a reasonable amount of time playing the waiting game and looking to impress as a support act.
The trouble was, the vast majority of great progressive rock during this period was emerging from the UK rather than North America, and so when it came to sharing bills with other bands, they found themselves supporting more mainstream rock acts, some of whom you might think were a poor fit for a band as daring as Rush.
That being said, Lee couldn’t help but be impressed by one of the bands that they found themselves sharing a stage with in 1974, and proclaimed that he learned a lot from being on the road with such a tight group of consummate professionals. During a 2023 interview with CBC News, he stated that when they toured with Kiss, the first tour where Peart became part of the band, their eyes were opened to the possibility of how far they could go if they conducted themselves in the right way.
“Kiss was really impressive because not only was their road crew incredibly kind to us, and the guys in the band were very supportive of us, but they were putting on this literally explosive pyrotechnic display,” he said. “They worked so hard, and everything had to be choreographed, and everything was split-second timing.”
However, while he was impressed with the professionalism that the group had to offer, the musical aspects weren’t as gripping for Lee and Co. “There was a lot to learn, there was a lot to take in,” he added. “It wasn’t really about their music for us. We liked some of their songs, of course, and some of them we didn’t care for, but the way they went about their business was really instructive.”
Kiss have always been slick, and while you might think that they’d be far too commercial for someone like Lee, the fact that they knew exactly how to conduct themselves and connect with an audience through a meticulously crafted show was certainly something that he had to take his hat off to.
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