Relayer2112

I voted for the same player Alex would vote for...Jimmy.

I think from a funny perspective, the Scorpions original "Lovedrive" artwork (which was banned in the US) is one of my favorites. The Scorpions had a knack for offensive album covers there for a while, I'm sure they inspired Spinal Tap's fictitious "Smell the Glove" cover.

Have any of you seen the Hipgnosis documentary on Netflix? Although I don't miss vinyl, I miss the days of real album cover art.

If you want to hear how human Alex is, listen to the following...I don't mean this to put Alex or anyone else down. What I idolize about Alex (Ged, John and Neil also) is that he took his desire to play and would not be denied. Years of struggling, knowing that there were players out there who were better than him, yet still becoming a rock god to many. His greatest talent was/is playing the right notes at the right time to make a song meaningful and memorable. He always did just what each song needed...no more, no less.

I'll go back to what Charlie Watts famously said which paraphrased was "25 years in a rock n' roll band equates to 5 years of playing and 20 years of hanging around". Needless to say, the members of Rush had a lot of free time on their hands over the years. I think it's hard to witness what your peers are doing and not try different things just out of plain boredom. Given that, it's not surprising that Geddy's book delves a bit into the hard drugs that were being used by both band and crew. Was I overly surprised about the amount of drugs being used...only to the extent that they had to know that it affected their performances negatively. I'm just glad that Geddy's book spared us all the tales of womanizing that went hand-in-hand with the drug use.

They do have more detail than Geddy's book, which is why I was disappointed. The detail those books provide is more about technical details such as the production and engineering. I know that those tasks are extremely important to the end product. I'm just more interested in the inspiration behind the bass line or riff or drum pattern that was the seed. I think the only thing I get out of Geddy's book regarding this is that he and Alex evidently wrote a lot of their earlier songs on acoustic guitars and that "Making Memories" was written in the back of a station wagon. How Geddy remembers that, but can't remember that they had played "Jacob's Ladder" in concert prior to R40, I'll never know.

I guess that makes sense...there probably isn't any of us who want to rehash our work lives for 30+ years. That's probably why there isn't a whole lot of detail about it. Clearly they struggled at times in the studio and the songs we hear are not the result of divine intervention, but of painstaking trial and error, not to mention the long hours. I wouldn't want to revisit that either.

I enjoyed them quite a bit and flew through each of them. Again, a little disappointed in the details about the music creation process in the Popoff books and was hoping that Geddy's book would fill in the gaps, but it does not. I would guess that many memories of the writing/recording of their earlier albums are simply lost to time. Not sure if Terry Brown has any books about his time with Rush or not. I've always enjoyed reading Neil's tour program notes in which he described the atmosphere of their recording sessions, especially those at Le Studio. I don't know if any of Neil's books provide any more detail.

Agreed...I enjoyed the early chapters much more as they tended to focus on the importance of the music and what drove him to become the musician he ended up being. His writing about his parents was very poignant also. I think I enjoyed Martin Popoff's books better.

I'm just about finished with the book. It's a good enough read but, as I expected, the music itself is pretty much glossed over throughout, some albums not really even getting more than a few sentences. I was hoping for a little more insight on the music creation process and maybe some mentioning of moments of when they were inspired musically when coming up with a song. There isn't a whole lot of that. There's a certain "woe is us" tone at times in the book that bothers me a bit coming from a rich rock star. I understand that Geddy and his bandmates made many sacrifices for their careers. Should I feel bad about that? It's something that is necessary for just about everyone over the course of their lives. When I got to the part about the tragedy of Neil's wife and daughter, I couldn't help but think about people who go through similar situations but don't have the means to take years off travelling the world to try to find the inspiration to work again. That is literally all I could think about while reading those passages. Maybe I find the book a little too "lifestyles of the rich and famous" for my taste.

I was being sarcastic :)

I've only seen two performers that were bothered by crowd noise...Steve Howe and, believe it or not, Roger Waters. You would think that performers who have been doing it for years would just let it slide as drawing attention to it just causes more problems. I was at Geddy's book tour show in Philly. There were people yelling and applauding all the time but, since Geddy responded positively to it, it wasn't a huge deal and didn't really throw things off.

To me, this album has the perfect blend of synth and acoustic instruments. It's one of my favorite Tull albums. I just wish the band had stayed in this phase for another album or two before going to the extremes of "Under Wraps".

Quatrain - Jethro Tull

As much as I loved the Beatles' documentary...boy would I love something like that from Rush. I can't get enough of the "behind the scenes" stuff with them.