The 2000s band Geddy Lee was most proud to inspire: “Some of our attitude”
Given how their recent reunion has still managed to attract tens of thousands of fans to each of their shows, there’s no doubt that Rush has not only cemented itself as one of the most significant prog rock bands in the world, but remarkably maintained this position over time.
While it took the band a reasonable amount of time to find their identity, having initially formed as a power trio hugely influenced by Cream, the Toronto titans would eventually find their audience once they began to venture in a more progressive direction in the mid-1970s, helped in part by the recruitment of drummer and lyricist, Neil Peart.
The first two albums with the classic trio, Fly by Night and Caress of Steel, were largely unsuccessful in terms of their commercial performances, but showed that they had a good idea of where things were heading, and by the time they came to releasing their grandiose fourth album, 2112, in 1976, they would end up being thrust into the spotlight as an example of a band who were well and truly certain of where they wanted to be creatively.
The more expansive they became, the larger their audience grew, and as a consequence, they ended up claiming their place as one of the most important acts of their ilk in the latter half of the 1970s and into the 1980s.
This surge of popularity would, of course, continue for some time, but the fact that they’ve remained so important to prog fans and future acts within the genre only goes to show just how impactful they were once they hit their stride. However, when asked about their influence in 2007 during an interview with UGO, frontman and bassist Geddy Lee argued that there weren’t many bands out there that truly followed anything that Rush did at the height of their career.
“I don’t hear our sound,” Lee claimed, before making the caveat, “but I get nuggets of some of our attitude from time to time”.
He went on to talk about one example of a 21st-century act who were perhaps as close as anyone to emulating what Rush did at their peak. “I was listening to Mars Volta the other day, and somebody told me they’re big fans,” Lee added, “There’s times where the music is just really wild, and they do rhythmic things that remind me of the way we used to think and still do from time to time about throwing riffs together.”
A rare example of a band embracing progressive rock stylings in the early 2000s, The Mars Volta were bound to appeal to long-time fans and proponents of the genre, and it shouldn’t come as a surprise that their forefathers were more than happy for them to become the rightful torchbearers for the genre. “There’s an adventurous spirit there that I would like to think was helped to grow through some stuff that we did at one point in our career,” Lee concluded.
It’s interesting that The Mars Volta would form from the ashes of another band who weren’t actually that progressive in nature, with its two founding members having been in the post-hardcore outfit At the Drive In, but they came crashing out the gates with two albums that were highly adventurous and progressive, which could only have come courtesy of a deep appreciation for the masters who came before them.
