The Rush song born out of audacious “naivete”
If there was one word that summed up the attitude Rush had toward their fourth studio album, 2112, it would be defiance. After the commercial failure of the band’s previous effort, 1975’s Caress of Steel, the Canadian progressive rock trio were under pressure from their record company to simplify their sound. Instead, the band turned the other direction, creating their most ambitious and uncompromising album up to that point.
By all accounts, the band members went into the project content with the fact that it might be their last. “I remember having these conversations about, ‘What are we going to do? Are we going to try to make another mini-Led Zeppelin record or are we going to do what we are going to do and continue forward and whatever happens, happens?'” guitarist Alex Lifeson explained in the liner notes for the album’s 20th anniversary. “We fully intended to [not] go down in flames but we were prepared to do that.”
“We talked about how we would rather go down fighting than try to make the kind of record that they wanted to make,” Geddy Lee said in the documentary Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage. “We made 2112 figuring everyone would hate it, but we were going to go out in a blaze of glory.”
“We did summon that strength of character to say no,” drummer Neil Peart explained in Beyond the Lighted Stage. “We won’t do that, we’re doing it our way, and if this is the last hurrah, fine. Back to the farm equipment dealership for me. It was a big ‘no’: no were doing any of that, no you can’t tell us what to do, and no we don’t care.”
As it turned out, 2112 became the album that gave Rush the freedom to do whatever they wanted. Although only a modest commercial success (and a relative critical failure), 2112 was popular enough to allow Rush another tour, followed by another album, followed by a continued life as a successful rock band. The titular suite at the heart of the album certainly didn’t see much in the way of radio play, but it made up the defiant core of what Rush were pushing at the time.
“We thought we were really smart,” Lee told Entertainment Weekly about ‘2112’. “[Rush] couldn’t do that now, because [we’re] not armed with the same naivete. That naivete makes you a bit more audacious — and great art comes from audacity. When writing a book in science fiction, there are no rules.”
“You can make any shit up you want. The same thing goes for us musically,” he added. “You can use all kinds of sounds and it all can be rationalized by the story that you’re telling that’s set in a different time-space continuum.”
Check out ‘2112’ down below.
