Anthem: Rush in the '70s

February 17, 2020
Music critic Popoff (Rush: Album by Album) delivers the exciting first volume in a projected three-part history of the band Rush, from its formation in 1968 through the 1970s. Popoff provides a comprehensive appreciation of Rush’s music, focusing on its first seven LPs, including a detailed look at its breakthrough 1976 work 2112. Based on interviews with bassist Geddy Lee, guitarist Alex Lifeson, and drummer and lyricist Neil Peart (who died in January of brain cancer), as well as their managers, record producers, and fellow musicians, Popoff recounts the band’s formative years (from being “three kids from Toronto trying to figure out what they were and become what they wanted to be”), their gigs in Toronto as they were gaining popularity (they opened for the New York Dolls at the Victory Theater in 1973), as well as their drive “to be the world’s most complicated three-piece band”—or, in Lee’s words, “to combine the feeling and emotional rock potential of The Who and even Zeppelin and bring the complexity of a band like Genesis and Yes.” By book’s end, Rush has emerged from “the action-packed and at times desperate 1970s” to become a major headlining band. Popoff is given to sharing extensive quotes, which can slow the narrative but nevertheless provide great detail and depth. This will thrill Rush’s huge fan base.