How Did you find Rush? Who or What got you into the band?

[TheGhostRider]

How did everyone find the band? My dad introduced me when I was about 7 years old and I've never stopped listening since. I didn't become a huge fan until after I saw them live and the band retired. That was when I was around 16 years old. I didn't really appreciate the band as much as I do now. My last show I was only 13. That was during R40. I still get annoyed that I missed the Clockwork Angels Tour, but I was so young at the time, and my dad only got tickets from a friend for my older brother and himself.

[Rush Didact]

When I was 10 years old in the summer of 1995, my best friend's older sister had a copy of RTB on CD.  He played it for me, and we left it on repeat the whole day.  I fell in love instantly.  I borrowed it, taped it, and listened to the tape obsessively.  The rest is history.

[TheAccountant]

Mine was a 3 step process.

 

Step #1 - Fall of 1987, I was a big Def Leopard fan going to college in Rochester NY.  The local radio station played a lot of Rush.  HYF was out and 3 songs (Time Stand Still, Under Lock and Key, Force 10) were in regular airplay.  I got lucky and Def Leopard played the Rochester War Memorial (with Telsa opening).  I had been disappointed in Hysteria (which DL was out touring to support) but went because I had never gotten to see DL before and hoped they would play a lot from their prior albums.  Any way, before the show played all of Hold Your Fire over the sound system.  At first I was like "cool, Rush".  Then I was like "Awesome, Time Stand Still.  More Rush!!"  Then there was this other song that I did not recognize but it sounded like Rush, then another songs and I was like "That sounds also like Rush.  Are they playing the entire album?"  Yes, they were.  I was blown away - had never heard anything like it.  Way better than the concert.  Next day I went and bough HYF and Power Windows.

 

Step #2 - Late 1987 / early 1988 - I was home for Christmas vacation and I went out to a bar with some friends.  We got a pitcher of beer and my friends promptly got into a dispute with some other people in the bar, decided that they did not want to stick around with the other patrons of the bar and left to walk back to their apartment.  I was not part of the dispute and was not going to let good beer go to waste (horrible thought!) so I stayed around and worked on the pitcher  (and actually got along well with the guys my friends had gotten into the dispute with).  While hanging out something came over the sound system in the bar.  Mind you, music generally sounds better with beer (most things are better with beer) but this sounded insanely good - plus it sort of sounded like Rush.  Only when I heard "And the Meek shall inherit the earth" was I like "Yes, thats Geddy's vocals."  The bar played all of 2112 over the sound system - just blown away by it.  I was like "Wait, Rush is HYF & Power Windows and that?  What kind of a band are they?  They are awesome".  That made me like Rush a lot more.  So at this point they are one of my very favorite bands.  But not my favorite.  Not totally.

 

Step #3 - The VT tour.  I got to see Rush on Presto and Counterparts and loved those shows.  Then I saw them on the VT tour.  Just blew me away.  Mind blowing experience.  Reinforced when Rush in Rio came out and I watched that DVD.  That really got me into Rush and pulled them way ahead of any other band.  Its not even close for me.

 

Thats my story.

[Nova Carmina]

In late 1983 (I'd have been thirteen), I bought (at Kmart!) one of those K-TEL "miscellany of current songs" cassettes. I think it was called Hit Explosion, but I wouldn't swear to it, as I had something like six of those collections in my formative years. Anyway, one of the songs was "New World Man," and I really liked that one. I mentioned to my best friend, Denny. Denny had two older brothers, including one who played guitar and was really into music, so Denny knew mysteries I didn't. He knew Rush right away, and before you know it, I was listening to Moving Pictures.

 

Before too much time had passed (six months, maybe?) I was with my mom at the same Kmart* and saw Grace Under Pressure in the new release rack. I bought it (well, mom bought it . . .) and as soon as I got home I popped it into my boombox: it's never really passed out of heavy rotation since. I was now a Rush fan, and they were my #1 band. 

 

 

(*This Kmart was also the place where I bought my first pack of football/sports cards -- I haven't really appreciated until right now how much childhood, teenage, and adult joy that Kmart created for me!)

 

 

[jamie]

My dad took my family and I to see Rush 10 years ago, I was 15 years old. I've been hooked ever since. I've wanted to play the drums ever since I witnessed Neil's solo as well, and I want to finally learn. Rush is my dad's favorite band, and we've always bonded over music, so Rush brought us closer. I grew up listening to them, and watching Rush in Rio when I was a kid, so my dad was thrilled when I finally became a die-hard fan. I had no idea that seeing Rush would be such a pivotal moment in my life, but it was. I remember being super excited because I knew that Rush is my dad's favorite band, and after listening to Clockwork Angels all summer, I was hyped up. I still remember seeing them play Red Sector A and being blown away.

[blueschica]

I was in 9th grade ( I think) in 1975 and heard Fly By Night on the radio.  Geddy's voice just took me in right away and I just thought it was one of the greatest things I had ever heard. His bass playing still stands out to me on that song as well.  

 

I was a huge fan through Signals; then life, moving, and kids intervened and I lost track of them for a bit; the synth era is not my favorite anyway.  Jumped back in with Vapor Trails.  I honestly was worried they would have become a Kansas type tribute like band or something with nothing new to offer and I was blown away. Finding TRF and the great people here have only made me appreciate Rush more.  

[Jeffrey]

When I was 13, my sister brought home a cassette which contained Hemispheres and Permanent Waves.  I heard this instrumental that I was fascinated by, flipped over the cassette and played the first 2 tracks so I could listen to the instrumental again.  Those songs were of course La Villa Strangiato, The Spirit of Radio and Freewill.  I then got into the rest of the cassette and fell in love with this band!

[thizzellewashington]

Started playing drums and reading "Modern Drummer" magazine in 2001 when I was about 11, and you'd hear about Neil in there constantly name-checked by everyone as one of the greats. Around the time I started listening to classic-rock radio so I had heard all the big songs but I was more getting into Floyd and Zeppelin etc. during those years and Rush didn't really register. Then Neil was on the cover of MD around the time Vapor Trails came out and I read the interview and got the backstory of what happened with his family leading up to that record, so I went and bought it and put on "One Little Victory" and heard that double-kick intro and it was game over. Bought the rest of the catalog over the next 18 months and they quickly became my favorite band and have held that status for the last 20 years.

Edited December 6, 2022 by thizzellewashington

[goose]

A month or so into my freshman year I moved from sunny San Diego to rainy Western Washington. In all the tumult of adolescent readjusting, music was the one calming constant I could rely on. One of my first friends in this new town had a copy of All The World's A Stage and,  as a drummer, I immediately fell in love.  One day he brought by their new release,  Moving Pictures and I was mesmerized.  From there it was diving into Archives, 2112 and finally Permanent Waves.  The complex music and smart lyrics of RUSH were the perfect escape for me, and they became my favorite band.

 

Footnote:  it wasn't till the Presto tour that I saw them live.  After that, I saw them 14 times, all but one show with my high school RUSH fan buddies.

Edited December 6, 2022 by goose

[zepphead]

It was 1975, Caress of Steel had just been released and a mate had bought it. After hearing it I was hooked and bought the first three albums. I purchased everything after that on release date. 

[pjbear05]

A friend gave me a cassette he recorded from the original version of ESL.  This was after I moved to FL, 1987 or so. Years later I gifted him a copy of The Rush Remasters CD.

[J2112YYZ]

I've pretty much known who they were most of my life because the local rock station here always played their stuff. I got into them in 1993/94. That would have put me at 15/16 years old at the time. I was finally old enough to get what I had been hearing that whole time. Limelight was playing on the radio and for the first time I really paid attention to the lyrics. I thought "wow, these lyrics are really unique. Not the same tired rock and roll crap". From there I bought Chronicles and that was it. New fan born.

Edited December 6, 2022 by J2112YYZ

[Maverick]

13 hours ago, Jeffrey said:

When I was 13, my sister brought home a cassette which contained Hemispheres and Permanent Waves.  I heard this instrumental that I was fascinated by, flipped over the cassette and played the first 2 tracks so I could listen to the instrumental again.  Those songs were of course La Villa Strangiato, The Spirit of Radio and Freewill.  I then got into the rest of the cassette and fell in love with this band!

I would have just hit rewind, but I respect flipping the tape, taking a listen, and flipping it back.

[Maverick]

I will tell my story in phases, a la TheAccountant.

 

#1 - Spring of 1981 - I was 11 years old, not really hip to any bands or music beyond pop.  Songs I knew at the time were Whip It, Cars, and Pop Muzik, the later I had on 45.  I had received Billy Joel's album Glass Houses on my 11th birthday (May of 1980) and I liked it quite a bit.  Fast forward to March or maybe early April of 1981 and I here people talking about a band named Rush and a new song called Tom Sawyer.  It's just three people, and it's so good.  One Saturday I'm watching tv (not MTV, just regular tv, so I don't know how this happened) and the video for Tom Sawyer comes on.  I thought to myself, "This is the band and song I've been hearing about."  So I watched it, and I didn't like it.  It sounded weird, they didn't look like rock stars, the singer looked like a witch, and what was with that shrieking?  (On a side note, late in 1981, or perhaps early in 1982, I probably saw King Crimson perform on the show Fridays.  I watched it religiously, and they definitely appeared, but I probably thought it was wacked out weird shit.)

 

#2 - Here's where my timeline is a little bit foggy.  Sometime in the fall of 1984 , I was part of the Columbia House record thing.  The album of the month that they sent out was Moving Pictures.  I kept meaning to send it back, but I missed the dead line and had to keep it.  I had been getting into Yes quite heavily, so Moving Pictures just went  down in the stack of albums my parents had, along with the few I possessed.  In late 1984, was talking to a neighbor friend about wanting to add a band to my listening, feeling that listening to only Yes, I was going to burn out.  He suggested Rush and loaned me All The World's A Stage.  They have the best drummer and the best bass player, he said (we'll see about that!)  After listening to it, I was sold on Neil, still thought Chris Squire was better than Geddy, but not by much, and the guitarist was criminally underrated.  Rush was on my radar.

 

#3 - February 1985 - We'd had a pretty good snow storm that had shut down the schools for a few days.  We had cleared off our driveway, and the snow plows had come through, and my parents and I went to the grocery store.  While they were shopping, I walked next door to the record store, which surprisingly was open.  They didn't have any Yes that I didn't already have, so I looked in the Rush bin.  I can't remember all of what they had, but they did have Grace Under Pressure.  I knew that was the most current album, and I liked what I'd heard on the radio (Distant Early Warning and The Body Electric) so I bought it and listened to it as soon as I got home.  I can still remember hearing the last three songs on side two for the first time.  I don't remember how many times I listened to Between The Wheels that night.

 

#4 - Spring of 1985 - I was listening to Moving Pictures and Grace Under Pressure, but I needed something more.  Since I liked Yes, and loved their longer pieces, I knew Rush had the album 2112, and that side one was the song 2112.  So I bought it one day after work, and that was that.  I didn't need there to be any good songs on side two (but there were) I just needed 2112, over and over again.

[Weatherman]

My older cousin has a M.F.A. in classical piano performance and has cut several albums and built a career in music. I grew up idolizing his musical skill and my earliest memories include attending his piano recitals. He taught me keys for about a year when I was seven.

 

Anyways, when I turned 15, his career was in full swing, and for my birthday he gave me three CDs. "You're ready for the best music now," he said. "So here, these are for you."

I looked at them in my hands.

"Number one is the best jazz ever made - Oscar Peterson, The Trio."

"Number two is the best classical ever made - Rachmaninov's 2nd Piano Concerto."

"Number three is the best rock ever made - Moving Pictures by Rush."

 

I was off to the races. I bought Presto and 2112 in the next month. All three remain my favorite overall Rush albums.

 

I still listen to Peterson and the Rach 2 as well. He was right about all of them.

[Charlotte7598]

My older brother got me into them when I was about 8 years old or so. Fell in love pretty quickly and saw them live on Snakes and Clockwork. You may be annoyed that you missed the Clockwork Angels Tour, but I saw that tour and missed R40. And I'm annoyed I missed R40 cause that was their last one and sounds like the setlist was better!

Edited December 7, 2022 by Charlotte7598

[treeduck]

48 minutes ago, Charlotte7598 said:

My older brother got me into them when I was about 8 years old or so. Fell in love pretty quickly and saw them live on Snakes and Clockwork. You may be annoyed that you missed Clockwork Angels Tour, I saw that tour but I missed R40. And I'm annoyed I missed R40 cause that was their last one and sounds like the setlist was better!

I found RUSH by filming Charlotte's secret activities and stealing her ideas. 

[Rush Didact]

1 hour ago, Charlotte7598 said:

My older brother got me into them when I was about 8 years old or so. Fell in love pretty quickly and saw them live on Snakes and Clockwork. You may be annoyed that you missed Clockwork Angels Tour, I saw that tour but I missed R40. And I'm annoyed I missed R40 cause that was their last one and sounds like the setlist was better!

 

I missed R40 too.  I don't know what I was thinking.  I had the chance, I was in Toronto the night they played there, and for whatever reason I just didn't try to find a ticket.  I'll always regret that...

 

Thankfully I saw them on the VT and S&A tours, so at least I have those memories.  Nothing will ever top that VT show.  I was 17, the perfect age to experience something like that, especially after 5 years of not knowing if I'd ever get the chance to see them play.

[chemistry1973]

I saw ASOH in a record store and bought it because I thought the album art was awesome. There was mystery to this band.

 

Force 10, Time Stand Hill and The Rhythm method. Insane.

 

I think I got Fly by Night next - that was weird!

[Charlotte7598]

1 hour ago, treeduck said:

I found RUSH by filming Charlotte's secret activities and stealing her ideas. 

Oh? 

[treeduck]

Just now, Charlotte7598 said:

Oh? 

[malm_51]

It was march 1976, my sister all of a sudden had this cool album in her collection! Judging from the cover, I thought this could be good! Of course we are talking about RUSH 2112! Put it on the turntable and boom 2112 at full volume!!, hooked ever since! Shortly there after her boyfriend at the time was offering some 8 tracks to me out of his collection, I pointed to Fly By Night... "Oh no sorry you can't have that one" was his reply! Darn it!! He knew they were the shit!

[invisible airwave]

Some other forum I was on had people suggesting that they were a great band to listen to so I got into them a year later in Summer of 2008 starting with Fly by Night up to Moving Pictures on iTunes Music Store.  I got into a lot of older classic rock around 2005 since even alt rock radio like KROQ in L.A. bored me then.  I did a test binge listen early that year through torrents.

 

Struggle was real in the pre Spotify/Qobuz/Amazon era.

Edited December 7, 2022 by invisible airwave

[Laurabw]

We had a talent show every year in my high school and these three guys played Bastille Day - this was 1980 I think - and I was like "What a cool song, who sings that?" And that's how it all began! I bought ESL - the cassette and drove around with the drummer from the band and that's all we listened to, lol. 

[Claude_verret]

My first exposures to Rush did not immediately lead to an obsession.  I distinctly remember hearing ESL on 8 track in my older sisters boyfriends car.  For some odd reason I remember hearing The Body Electric on the radio and thinking it was cool.  I remember hearing Time Stand Still in the background at high school parties.  But it wasn't until my freshman year in college when the RA on my floor played Rush all the time that I was bitten by the Rush bug.  Presto was recently released, so within a few months I had that and all of their previous albums on CD thanks to Columbia House record club.  First album that I bought on release day was Roll The Bones and also the first tour seeing them live.