The classic Rush album Neil Peart said was filled with “anger and frustration”
One word that wouldn’t usually be used to describe Canadian prog heroes Rush is angry. However, there was a period when nothing was coming off for the band, and they were facing a stark decline in show attendance and unfavourable critical appraisal, with things looking so bleak for Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson and Neil Peart that their label even considered dropping them. Luckily for everyone, though, Rush furiously fought back against this decline. They poured all their anger and frustration into the album that saved them and is now considered one of their finest.
In early 1976, things couldn’t have been worse for Rush. At that point, they had finished touring their majorly unsuccessful third album, 1975’s Caress of Steel. The record marked a stark change in the group’s style, moving them away from the blues-infused hard rock of their first two releases into the progressive rock area they would eventually finesse and make their own. However, at this stage in their career, the shift in sound did not land with listeners, and Caress of Steel is widely deemed their commercial and critical nadir.
Due to the failure of Caress of Steel, Rush found themselves in the mire that no musician wants to be in. This was due to disappointing album sales, the harsh critical reception of the record, and because of these factors, a demoralising plunge in gig attendance. Things were so bad that the group’s international label, Mercury Records, seriously considered dropping them. However, following intense negotiations with their manager, Ray Danniels, they were granted one more album to try and save themselves.
Mercury demanded more commercial-leaning material to solve the issues of Caress of Steel, but the band had none of it. In a stellar reflection of musicians standing up for their work, Rush continued to hone their burgeoning prog-rock palette. In a quick turnaround, they recorded their fourth album, 2112, in February 1976 with their regular producer Terry Brown, and the centrepiece of the record became the 20-minute title track, which is now considered one of their finest compositions. An expansive, science-fiction-sounding number, it takes up the entire first side of 2112.
In a testament to Rush’s artistic conviction, the album was released to critical acclaim and fast outsold their previous releases. Their commercial breakthrough, it remains their second-highest-selling album behind 1981’s Moving Pictures, with more than three million copies shipped in the United States alone.
Filled with passion and a desire to escape the severity of their situation, when speaking to Interview Magazine in 1980, Rush drummer Neil Peart explained that 2112 was filled with a “great amount of frustration and anger”. This was because the band felt they had been “shat upon” by the industry with the release of Caress of Steel. Clearly, in art, sometimes it can be effective to weaponise ill-feeling.
He said: “I know the first album of ours that became successful was 2112. And it was an album that contained a great amount of frustration and anger, because the industry had been, had ‘shat’ upon us really, with our third album. It had not been successful at all and we were very disillusioned with the whole state of things, because we’d kept our integrity and everything and it wasn’t painting out for us and we’d been written off by the industry when it comes right down to it.”
The late drumming icon concluded: “So this album contained all of that rejection I guess and all of that determination too came back through the music. And I can listen to that album now and feel that electricity and I know that’s what made people respond to that album, because it was so direct and so impassioned.”
