The Rush critique Geddy Lee called “irresponsible”
People act like getting up in arms about something and spouting off about it is somehow “new”, that it’s an entirely 21st-century phenomenon to have a kneejerk reaction to something, react badly and spew some hyperbole about said thing being “fascist” or “an infringement on our liberty” or some such thing. While it’s true that our interconnected modernity can make the dispersal of those nuclear takes a lot easier, what we’re actually describing is a little thing called Human Nature. From the witch hunts to the lavender scare, we’ve thought the sky was falling, and in 1978, the writer Barry Miles managed to find a way of calling Rush, of all bands, “proto-fascist”.
Now, in fairness to the lad, he wasn’t grasping at straws here. Main man Neil Peart wasn’t exactly covering himself with glory when he sat down with Miles and talked about how kids in the UK “have no freedom” and “do what [they’re] told to do. By the socialists”. He’s also right to see the quite frankly scarlet flags popping up when a band does as Rush does and dedicated the entire 2112 album (and this is a quote from the liner notes no less) “to the genius of Ayn Rand”.
The article itself is a fascinating read. A relic of a time when an interview with a pop group in the middle of the biggest-selling rock weekly of the moment could descend into an extended argument between the basics of socialist and conservative economics. I’m not even going to say that Miles was wrong to point out how right-wing Peart sounds. Sure, you might say that “politics has no place in music”, and even if that is true (it’s not), Peart arguably made it part of the conversation first with his flag-waving for Rand.
As for how it matters to fans of the band, when Peart talks about how much the dole gets, in his words, “abused”, Miles makes a point of mentioning “I hope none of you went to the Rush concert on dole money. That wouldn’t fit in with Rush’s philosophy at all.”
In an interview with Mojo last year, bassist and singer Geddy Lee reflected on this very piece with surprising maturity and empathy, saying, “Thatcherism was rising in Britain. The left were understandably freaked out, and I didn’t blame [Miles] for having the belief system he had. But to suggest that 2112 was suckering kids into a right-wing mantra with fascistic overtones was wrong-headed and irresponsible.”
To me, Lee is the only one being mature about it. Miles was reporting on the worldview that Peart was explicitly informing their music with. He had a responsibility to report his views on that. The irresponsible part to me is the fact that a 35-year-old critic at the time was ideologically sparring with someone a decade younger than him. Peart is clearly in the over-excited, under-informed part that all of us (with no exceptions) go through when forming our opinions, and it was also Miles’ responsibility to report that alongside everything else.
The smoking gun of all this is that as time would go on and the band matured, Rush eased out the Randian influence on their music. Give people a chance to grow and oftentimes, they do.
