John Rutsey: The one musician to walk out on Rush
When looking at how a band like Rush operates, nothing about them screams ‘mainstream stars’. Out of all the groups of their time that were looking to make something with a lot of punch that might manage to get on the radio, the Canadian icons that were known for multipart songs that went on for ten minutes at a time didn’t stand a chance next to the heavy-hitters of their day. While the group could combine different prog sections with ease, their early years meant removing some dead weight with John Rutsey.
Then again, maybe that’s being unfair. There’s a good case to be made that without Rutsey, there wouldn’t have been any band called Rush at all. When playing different backyard-style gigs throughout Canada, Rutsey’s group, which he had with Alex Lifeson, was short a bass player when Geddy Lee walked into play the four-string.
Even though the three of them had a lot of great chemistry, they did not always see things eye-to-eye. The majority of the time, Rush had always let their music do the talking, but in the early promotional spots of the group performing, Rutsey was really the emcee of the entire band, usually the one talking to the crowd in between songs and getting them hyped up.
Compared to the group’s later prog outings, their self-titled record is, for lack of a better term, a lot dumber than what they would become known for. As opposed to making long songs that combined different time signatures, it’s easy to see this kind of record getting lost in the shuffle amid the Humble Pies of the world were it not for the massive closer ‘Working Man’.
But that kind of straight-ahead approach was normally Rutsey’s vision, and that wasn’t really what Lifeson and Lee were looking for anymore. After they started gaining traction, Lifeson remembered that Rutsey became more and more uncomfortable with where things were headed, saying in Beyond the Lighted Stage, “I don’t think John really felt comfortable with what was happening. He was a much more straight-ahead rock guy. He was more into Bad Company, whereas Gedd and I were more into Yes and Genesis and bands like that.”
Aside from musical differences, there were also some lingering health issues in the background. Sure, any teenager liked the idea of being able to go around the world and play to as many faces as they could on the circuit, but given that Rutsey was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes, he knew that he didn’t want to commit to a tour that would put his blood sugar in jeopardy every single night, leading to him gracefully bowing out of the group.
For Rush, this was like losing one of your best friends from high school, but they lucked out by getting Neil Peart into the group. Whereas Rutsey may have held a solid groove on the first album, Peart became the answer to their prayers, playing with the strength of someone like John Bonham while also writing lyrics and coming out with concepts that would become the basis of their career as prog giants.
While it’s hard to look back on the debut as anything more than a sophomoric attempt at hard rock, Rutsey’s performance is a great time capsule of what Rush was like in the early years. There’s a certain innocence captured in those songs, but they were always destined for better things.
