The concert that brought Rush back together: “Getting to that point felt impossible”
Rush was the one prog band that seemed to want to play until they physically couldn’t do it anymore. For a genre that has been known for artists that come in and out of different groups and often find themselves in massive fallouts with whoever they’re playing with, the Canadian power trio somehow developed some kind of friendship gene that no one could break over their decades in the industry. That didn’t mean things couldn’t get ugly, but this one show was where they came back after a near-death experience.
Throughout their time in the spotlight, though, Rush was one of the few bands where mainstream success didn’t even seem to matter. As much as people would like the idea of only having to play the music they wanted to make, it’s not normally that easy, with labels usually demanding that you think about what the modern sounds are supposed to be.
That doesn’t apply to Rush. Their fans are more than willing to look at the different periods of their career, and some of the best moments in their catalogue come when they try something different, like embracing synthesisers in the 1980s or returning to heavy guitars in the late 1990s.
Once the band wrapped up their tour for Test for Echo, Neil Peart was dealt a body blow that would kill anyone else. In the span of a few months, he lost his daughter in a tragic car accident and then subsequently lost his wife after she passed away from cancer a few months later.
Lost and unsure of what to do, the group was on hiatus, with Alex Lifeson saying in Beyond the Lighted Stage, “Everything about the band ended at that moment. It just wasn’t something you even thought about thinking about.” While Peart went on a cross-country journey to find himself, everything was up in the air as to whether they would ever perform again.
The journey towards getting behind the drums again wasn’t going to be easy, but Peart eventually acquiesced to work on another record, putting in the time to become the drumming god again on Vapor Trails. It’s one thing to make a record, but it’s another to actually deliver it to the people once you’re onstage.
At their first show in Hartford, Connecticut, Geddy Lee remembered tensions being high, saying, “I think that’s the first time we ever had a group hug. It wasn’t lost on us that getting to that point was almost impossible. Neil was really nervous, so I figured my job was to go over there and make him not nervous.”
Even though the cobwebs needed to be dusted off a little bit, most of the crowd felt transported back to 1978 all over again, with the sounds of songs like ‘The Spirit of Radio’ sounding better than ever. Peart also admitted that it felt almost miraculous that they even managed to get to that point in their career after such a heavy fall. Most bands never recover from those losses, but Rush knew the music could guide them through even the toughest times.
