The 1978 album Geddy Lee could never disconnect from: “I think fans appreciate that”
It’s difficult for anyone to really understand what Rush was going for when they first hit the big time.
No one would have guessed that one of the single nerdiest bands in the world would somehow find their way onto the album charts, but even when Led Zeppelin were becoming larger than life, the Canadian trio were making songs about solar federations that managed to resonate with people who wanted their music a bit more complicated. But even if Geddy Lee loved the idea of making more complex music than what he heard on the radio, there were a few records that felt a little too close for comfort.
Then again, Rush was never a band that tugged on everyone’s heartstrings every single time they made a new record. Neil Peart could definitely write a tune that made you think, but long before he started to make genuinely heartbreaking tunes like ‘Afterimage’, most people were lucky if they understood half of what Lee was singing every single time they threw on A Farewell to Kings.
2112 was already a journey through the cosmos, talking about tyrannical leaders half a galaxy away, but hearing tunes that paid tribute to classical literature and dining on honeydew was going to be a little bit more difficult for most people to process if all they listened to was Aerosmith. But even when making their classics, Lee felt that Hemispheres was when he began questioning what the hell they were doing.
The record already had some connective tissue to A Farewell to Kings by starting with a sequel to ‘Cygnus X1’, but beyond that song going on for over 20 minutes, the rest of the tunes weren’t easier to get into by any stretch. ‘The Trees’ was probably the most palatable at that stage, but anyone who ever tried to play along to ‘La Villa Strangiato’ back in the day has my deepest sympathies for what they put their fingers through.
So if these songs were enough to give every single fan whiplash trying to learn it, imagine how the band felt trying to play it. Lee was already frustrated to have to record the final song in three distinct parts, but when it was finally mastered, he felt that there was a little piece of himself that got left on the cutting room floor when the band moved on to more accessible material one album later.
Even though Lee sees the record as a good next step for Rush, he felt that there was never a way to disconnect his feelings on the record from the time that he spent working on it, saying, “I don’t know if I can ever possess the necessary objectivity to be able to see and hear what people see and hear in Hemispheres. But I like to think that it’s the ambitiousness in the effort we put in. There’s something truly prog about that record, and I think fans of that genre really appreciate that.”
But in terms of the shorter songs on the record, the band were already testing the waters of what they could do in a short format. Their albums didn’t necessarily have to go on massive musical exercises every time they made something new, and Permanent Waves was the first time where they seemed willing to try out material that might have a shot on the radio, like on ‘The Spirit of Radio’.
Most prog fans are only too happy to go on the thrill ride that Hemispheres goes on, but the crack that Peart made by naming their song ‘La Villa Strangiato (An Exercise in Self-Indulgence)’ is proof enough that they knew this was the end of the line. They made a lot of great strides in terms of what a trio could be, but if they ended up going down this road any further, they would have had to build an entire condominium up their own ass.
