The rock band Neil Peart thought was too calculated: “A complete factory”
It’s hard to think of anyone in Rush trying to pick a fight with another group. They were more about serving the music than getting into any band-centred drama, and even if they did throw jabs at people, it was usually all in good fun. Then again, Neil Peart had a line regarding what constituted good music, and he thought that Bon Jovi crossed the line between being a musician and being a pin-up star.
Once the MTV generation started to kick in, though, Bon Jovi was just what the channel asked for. There had been photogenic rock acts before, like David Bowie, but this was the equivalent of if a band of good old boys like Bruce Springsteen actually looked like fashion models, complete with the teased hair and spandex pants.
For an era that was so focused on the visuals, Rush still had a decent run of hits on their charts. Some of them were limited to their native Canada, but the group actually catered to the trends of the day as well as they could have, including embracing synth textures and making a few ill-advised choices when it came to how they wore their hair.
But Rush was never in the music business to win many fashion contests. They were more interested in making songs that spoke to their listeners on a deeper level, whereas a band like Bon Jovi paved the way for what hair metal would sound like. Sure, a group like Van Halen may have started everything up, but for the next few years, every band on Earth was singing about nothing but sex and drugs while piling on as much makeup as they could.
Although they seemed to be rebelling against the man, Peart only saw a bunch of musicians doing whatever their higher-ups told them to do, saying, “I mean the whole light metal syndrome, that was all very calculated to create an image of rebellion, when at the same time the record company was pulling the strings and telling them what songs to record and how to record them. And the whole thing was just a complete factory, but it was given the guise of being rebellion… Bon Jovi, I think, is a pretty good example.”
While Rush seems like the last act to discuss the borderline-punk etiquette of rock and roll, Peart had enough experience with record companies to talk about authenticity. The entire ethos behind Rush was about doing whatever they wanted, and since they won over their record company by sticking to their guns in 2112, they had about as much credibility as artists as a band like The Clash did a few years later.
Then again, Bon Jovi did attempt to grow a little bit after the glitter era faded. Yes, they still had more than a few moments where they looked absolutely ridiculous, but rarely have hair metal acts been able to weather the 1990s as well as they did, including closing the door on their hit-making days on ‘Blaze of Glory’ and then coming back stronger in the 2000s with ‘It’s My Life’.
Even if Bon Jovi enjoyed every step of the way getting to where they are, Peart’s journey as a drummer was a completely different world. Bon Jovi made their big hits by chasing the pop market, but Rush was so accomplished that the mainstream seemed to come to them half the time.
