The song Neil Peart considered a complete joke: “What a farce!”
It was going to be a cold day in hell before Neil Peart did anything by the book in rock and roll.
Rush was the last band to lobby for hit singles whenever they made a new record, and even if they had a bunch of great tunes in their arsenal, not all of them were cut out to be on the hit parade next to the likes of The Osmonds or Bay City Rollers. They were into taking the listener on a different kind of ride, but while Peart had a lot of respect for the pop charts, he could also tell when they were taking the piss a little too much.
Then again, pop music has never exactly been a bad word for any member of Rush, either. No one is getting into the industry to not have fans, but their greatest strength was in making extended songs that didn’t cater to the casual three-minute formula. ‘Closer to the Heart’ is probably the closest they have to a “normal” song, but even then, half of the album it’s from involves songs about voyaging to distant lands and songs about dining on honeydew and drinking the milk of Paradise.
That’s not exactly the best platform to build a hit on, but that didn’t seem to matter once the 1980s kicked in. Since half of the biggest prog rock acts embraced synthesisers first, bands like Rush were already well ahead of the curve before the MTV generation kicked in. ‘Tom Sawyer’ might have been an anomaly on the charts, but the reason why it worked so well was because the song itself was way too catchy to deny.
But as the band started getting more involved with strings, they seemed to become more fashionable by accident. Not everything was absolutely perfect, and you only need to look at Alex Lifeson’s Flock of Seagulls-style haircut to see that they were fallible, but they did have lines that they wouldn’t cross. No genre of music was off the table for them, but when Peart saw projects like Live Aid, he had a lot of mixed feelings about what those kinds of charity singles entailed.
First of all, there’s nothing wrong with anyone trying to create music for a good cause, but when Canada tried to throw their hat into the ring, things started to get a bit more ridiculous. ‘Northern Lights’ was the perfect Canadian counterpart to ‘We are the World’, but even though Geddy Lee performed with other Canadian icons, Peart saw through the more corporate side of the song in only a few minutes.
It was bad enough that the band didn’t get invited to play shows like Live Aid, but the fact that most people on ‘Northern Lights’ were there just for the attention was downright laughable in his mind, saying, “Geddy was involved with the ‘Northern Lights’ charity record here in Canada, although Rush weren’t invited to participate in the ‘Live Aid’ event. Some of those involved in ‘Northern Lights’ were actually quoted as saying that their managers told them to get down to the recording sessions because it would be a good career move! What a farce!”
Then again, that statement was a lot more true than most people were willing to admit. No one would have claimed that they were doing it for the attention, but there’s probably a good chance that more than a few artists would get strong-armed into playing a few gigs after they realised it would tank their reputation if they said no.
But Rush was never part of the ‘in-crowd’ to begin with, and although Lee was doing it for a good cause, Peart would have rather put his money where the other singers’ mouths were. He had his own beliefs and would gladly help out those who needed it, but if he was going to go back into the public eye, it would have to have been for the right reasons.
