That shot of Southern Comfort going "right to his head"

[Timbale]

I am not quite finished Geddy's book - about 3/4 of the way through, and loving it.

 

Like many people, I was pretty shocked to read about the drug use...and that Geddy in general had a more "rock and roll" lifestyle than I had imagined.  Or maybe even been led to believe.

 

It has made me think about the story he tells both in the book and in Beyond The Lighted Stage about that first gig opening for Uriah Heep.  Without the context of everything that went before that we didn't know about when BTLS came out...that story could easily be read as if it was his first ever drink of hard liquor.  The way he tells it - they've never had a rider before, they didn't really know what to order - it all had such an air of innocence about it.  It doesn't sound like a story that a guy who's been wasted a whole bunch and tripped on LSD would tell.  I don't think anything in the book contradicts that story...it just seems very....cherry picked for the film to underscore the image of them as not very "rock and roll".  Similarly, the stories that Kim Mitchell and Gene Simmons tell about them don't seem like the same band having drinking contests with Thin Lizzy and snorting coke with fans.

 

Did anyone else feel a sort of disconnect with those things?

[JARG]

50 minutes ago, Timbale said:

I am not quite finished Geddy's book - about 3/4 of the way through, and loving it.

 

Like many people, I was pretty shocked to read about the drug use...and that Geddy in general had a more "rock and roll" lifestyle than I had imagined.  Or maybe even been led to believe.

 

It has made me think about the story he tells both in the book and in Beyond The Lighted Stage about that first gig opening for Uriah Heep.  Without the context of everything that went before that we didn't know about when BTLS came out...that story could easily be read as if it was his first ever drink of hard liquor.  The way he tells it - they've never had a rider before, they didn't really know what to order - it all had such an air of innocence about it.  It doesn't sound like a story that a guy who's been wasted a whole bunch and tripped on LSD would tell.  I don't think anything in the book contradicts that story...it just seems very....cherry picked for the film to underscore the image of them as not very "rock and roll".  Similarly, the stories that Kim Mitchell and Gene Simmons tell about them don't seem like the same band having drinking contests with Thin Lizzy and snorting coke with fans.

 

Did anyone else feel a sort of disconnect with those things?

 

Agreed that the movie, in retrospect, seems to have whitewashed certain "seedier" elements of Rush's backstory. It's possible, I suppose, that that was a management call given that the band was still an active business pursuit at the time -- perhaps Ray and company were not willing for the "warts and all" version of Rush to be made public.

[malm_51]

I'm sure you all have seen pics of the band over the years "fried"!

Edited January 28 by malm_51

[Weatherman]

I don't know how someone could listen to their 1970s output and think they WEREN'T on drugs. 

Attention all planets of the solar federation...

[Timbale]

1 hour ago, Weatherman said:

I don't know how someone could listen to their 1970s output and think they WEREN'T on drugs. 

Attention all planets of the solar federation...

I never thought they were on drugs - everything they wrote seemed logical to me.

[Union 5-3992]

16 minutes ago, Timbale said:

I never thought they were on drugs - everything they wrote seemed logical to me.

 

You never had any suspicions with Caress of Steel or "A Passage to Bangkok"? They weren't exactly subtle about it.

[Timbale]

19 hours ago, Union 5-3992 said:

 

You never had any suspicions with Caress of Steel or "A Passage to Bangkok"? They weren't exactly subtle about it.

Admittedly, A Passage To Bangkok is very obvious.  I was 10 years old when I got into Rush, so although I knew all the words to it, I didn't really grasp its meaning...and as I got older, well, 2112, particularly side 2, wasn't really my jam.  Caress Of Steel, which I loved (except for Going Bald) didn't strike me as druggy, and still doesn't really.  It just hits me as weird fantasy writing - not much different from Cygnus or Jacob's Ladder.  I always thought of Neil as a very logical writer (still do), even when writing fantastical tales, which to me didn't translate to being a pothead.  He clearly was both, haha.

Edited January 31 by Timbale

[Rush Didact]

10 hours ago, Timbale said:

Admittedly, A Passage To Bangkok is very obvious.  I was 10 years old when I got into Rush, so although I knew all the words to it, I didn't really grasp its meaning...and as I got older, well, 2112, particularly side 2, wasn't really my jam.  Caress Of Steel, which I loved (except for Going Bald) didn't strike me as druggy, and still doesn't really.  It just hits me as weird fantasy writing - not much different from Cygnus or Jacob's Ladder.  I always thought of Neil as a very logical writer (still do), even when writing fantastical tales, which to me didn't translate to being a pothead.  He clearly was both, haha.

 

I was the same way.  I didn't pick up on the deeper meaning of A Passage to Bangkok until I was late in my teens.  (And actually, I remember there being a thread about it over on Counterparts, way back when, asking if APTB was about getting high, and the answers were pretty evenly split between "well duh" and "there's no way Rush did drugs!", so I was far from alone at the time.)

 

I was a pretty innocent kid, and aside from that one song, there was really nothing about Rush's music that screamed "drugs" to me.  There still isn't, to be honest.  Stuff like Rivendell and The Necromancer comes across as nerdy and dorky, but I was nerdy and dorky and didn't do drugs (at that point in my life, anyways), so why should I have suspected them of it?

Edited January 31 by Rush Didact

[That One Guy]

The book was a little surprising to me. I knew they were all smoking pot in the 70s, or forever if you're Alex. I didn't expect a several year coke bender from Geddy. Neil's drug use, particularly around the time his whole family died, seemed and still seems vague but very real.

 

Makes sense that they didn't want to talk about ripping lines during the 2010 movie. That wouldn't help the "family friendly multi-generational concert band" image at the time.

[Timbale]

4 hours ago, That One Guy said:

The book was a little surprising to me. I knew they were all smoking pot in the 70s, or forever if you're Alex. I didn't expect a several year coke bender from Geddy. Neil's drug use, particularly around the time his whole family died, seemed and still seems vague but very real.

 

Makes sense that they didn't want to talk about ripping lines during the 2010 movie. That wouldn't help the "family friendly multi-generational concert band" image at the time.

For sure - and I don't fault him/them for not wanting to talk about coke use in the film.  But...in the movie Geddy says something about how (I think) Kiss's hotel rooms were "interesting to watch" or something of the sort... and it really makes them seem like they WERE the guys sitting in watching TV after gigs only...not the guys having a drinking contest with Hawkwind.  Looking back on the film, it seems a little bit distorted.  Maybe a little dishonest.

[Weatherman]

11 hours ago, Timbale said:

For sure - and I don't fault him/them for not wanting to talk about coke use in the film.  But...in the movie Geddy says something about how (I think) Kiss's hotel rooms were "interesting to watch" or something of the sort... and it really makes them seem like they WERE the guys sitting in watching TV after gigs only...not the guys having a drinking contest with Hawkwind.  Looking back on the film, it seems a little bit distorted.  Maybe a little dishonest.

Agreed, and Gene Simmons making fun of them for being so "straight" wasn't exactly accurate either. 

[Weatherman]

On 1/31/2024 at 8:54 AM, Timbale said:

Caress Of Steel, which I loved (except for Going Bald) didn't strike me as druggy, and still doesn't really.  

The music on that album was clearly made by three people who could barely see straight from the drugs. It's aural sludge.

The music before (FBN) and after (2112) is so much brighter by comparison. Put down the hash oil boys!

I'm not surprised by the booger sugar in the early 80s. But I am surprised that they persisted using it all the way through the late 90s, at least. 

 

[Timbale]

2 hours ago, Weatherman said:

The music on that album was clearly made by three people who could barely see straight from the drugs. It's aural sludge.

The music before (FBN) and after (2112) is so much brighter by comparison. Put down the hash oil boys!

I'm not surprised by the booger sugar in the early 80s. But I am surprised that they persisted using it all the way through the late 90s, at least. 

 

Different strokes, I guess.  I would not categorize Caress Of Steel as "aural sludge".  Not at all.  I do not think it's their best sounding album or anything, (although sonically speaking I'd listen to it ahead of Vapor Trails, S&A and Clockwork Angels any day), but I think it's in line with their mid 70s output.  Geddy has talked about how they thought there was more reverb on stuff because they were high...but it doesn't strike me as an overly dry album.  I think some of Fountain Of Lamneth - No One At The Bridge and Bacchus Plateau in particular - sounds great, and although as an adult I can't really bring myself to listen to ANY songs that have narration in them (it just seems so silly to me now) I think a lot of The Necromancer sounds awesome...Alex's trippy volume swelled double tracked guitars are recorded very nicely to my ear.

 

I don't think COS is brilliant writing (and it's the weakest of their concept pieces)...and I'm not at all shocked to learn that Peart was high writing it.  But, I think I was a pretty naive kid, and like @Rush Didact, I didn't see anything in their music that was overtly druggy.  It all basically made sense to me, conceptually.  But then, I never thought of Dark Side Of The Moon as a drug album, so what do I know.  For me, when I would hear my friends' Kiss albums ...that stuff to me was what I connected to drug culture...in a sex, drugs and rock and roll way.  Or another pal would play me Grateful Dead boots...and those guys jamming in mid-tempo 4/4, noodling around for 10 minutes on 2 chords... that seemed like music made by and for high people. Nerdy, bookish allegory and shifting time signatures engaged my brain, which felt like the opposite of "drug music" to me.  I do think that's a naive perspective now, but it was where I was at when Rush came into my life.

[Timbale]

I guess there is a broader topic that is connected to this… That since reading Geddy's memoir I've been thinking about a lot. And I would reiterate that I started listening to Rush when I was nine or 10 years old. I took Rush very seriously. I was very much into what Neil was writing about… And about the progression of his lyric writing from a technical standpoint as he grew. I also was already banging on pots and pans, and knew that I wanted to become a drummer… So of course the music was very inspiring on that count as well. My friends were listening to Kiss and Motley Crue and Def Leppard and although I did like some other pop music… Rush seemed like a completely different animal than anything anyone else was listening to. I remember my dad doing the classic come into my room and tell me to turn that noise down, and explaining to him that Rush was "not just some other rock band".

 

And as an adult, of course I know that as people who were professional musicians, in a certain way the guys in Rush I have way more in common with members of Aerosmith then with people who do some other job.  But I had so many years of not thinking about it that way… That reading the tour stories in this book was a bit discombobulating. It feels way more like they were just a rock 'n' roll band like anyone else… They just leaned into progressive arrangements and wrote about conceptual things. The music is still wholly unique... but it's like Rush as an entity wasn't really what I had imagined they were all those years ago.

Edited February 7 by Timbale