Did anyone say "Enough with the coke already"?

[Timbale]

One of the things I've always been struck by is how in Rush's classic late 70s - early 80s era, their sense of tempo is not very...consistent.  Let me say off the top that Exit Stage Left is my favourite live album of theirs - I adore it - but when I think of how some of the songs speed up and slow down...and that these are not bootleg versions but the best performances from lots and lots of live tapes...it's a bit wild.  The revelations from Geddy's book regarding coke made me wonder how much of that can be attributed to the rhythm section being high.  (Some of the Signals tour boots are pretty crazy...the whole set is just wizzing by at breakneck speed...)

 

It also made me wonder if anyone was in the position...and if anyone took the chance to say, hey, maybe if you cut down on the blow we wouldn't be leaving the venue 5 minutes early every night because all the songs are way too fast.  Or, even if among the 3 of them they listened to some board tapes and thought, the tempos are a little hit and miss...maybe there's a reason....

[78jazz]

Compared to the studio recordings, no. The fast and loose they would play though was generally consistent. The known recordings from Signals were all that energetic (I suspect this was done to get all the material played that they wanted to in 2 hours or less).

 

If one wanted to look for clues to how coke was affecting their performances, I would start listening to the vocals first. Coke can wreak havoc on the pipes.

 

 

[Union 5-3992]

I'm indifferent. It was the 80s. if I already enjoyed Permanent Waves thinking they just did weed every now and then, finding out they wrote it under the influence of coke does nothing to change my opinion. They were extremely far from the worst offenders during that time period and it clearly didn't cause much friction in the band.

[goose]

55 minutes ago, Union 5-3992 said:

I'm indifferent. It was the 80s. if I already enjoyed Permanent Waves thinking they just did weed every now and then, finding out they wrote it under the influence of coke does nothing to change my opinion. They were extremely far from the worst offenders during that time period and it clearly didn't cause much friction in the band.

Schoolboys compared to Aerosmith

[BastillePark]

27 minutes ago, goose said:

Schoolboys compared to Aerosmith

The "Toxic Twins" probably did more than all 3 of the Rush guys plus the roadies and other staff.

[taurus]

My ear and technical musical knowledge isn't as good as yours so I don't really notice the tempo changes in ESL. I'll just say that I don't think they had lots and lots of MP live shows to choose from for the ESL album. My guess is that all 3 Toronto shows and the Montreal show were recorded multi-track. The only other MP show recording we have confirmation on is the Edmonton show June 25th, and I don't know if that's a multitrack recording or just a board tape. Having listened to a fair bit of live recordings from MP tour and editing compilations using various performances stitched together and then trying to sync that to video, I found Rush's tempos very consistent.

 

Now the Signals tour... whoa, that's a different story 

[78jazz]

4 hours ago, taurus said:

My ear and technical musical knowledge isn't as good as yours so I don't really notice the tempo changes in ESL. I'll just say that I don't think they had lots and lots of MP live shows to choose from for the ESL album. My guess is that all 3 Toronto shows and the Montreal show were recorded multi-track. The only other MP show recording we have confirmation on is the Edmonton show June 25th, and I don't know if that's a multitrack recording or just a board tape. Having listened to a fair bit of live recordings from MP tour and editing compilations using various performances stitched together and then trying to sync that to video, I found Rush's tempos very consistent.

 

Now the Signals tour... whoa, that's a different story 

I was bummed we didn't get the whole Edmonton show.

[JARG]

There was a time when the members of Rush were like gods in my eyes. They were powerhouses on their respective instruments, writing amazingly involved pieces of music and expressing atypical concepts in a thought-provoking and poetic way. Clear that idle idol worship was all just me projecting onto them what I wanted to be true.

 

The veneer really began to slip away as I developed enough facility on guitar to play in a Rush cover band. The more I knew about how Alex played his parts, and, by extension, the ins and outs of music composition and arrangement, the more human he, and they, became. And once I was OK with them just being "regular" guys, the less I was affected by rumors of drug use. Many of my musician friends did inordinate amounts of drugs, but that didn't lessen them as friends in my eyes.

[That One Guy]

53 minutes ago, JARG said:

There was a time when the members of Rush were like gods in my eyes. They were powerhouses on their respective instruments, writing amazingly involved pieces of music and expressing atypical concepts in a thought-provoking and poetic way. Clear that idle idol worship was all just me projecting onto them what I wanted to be true.

 

The veneer really began to slip away as I developed enough facility on guitar to play in a Rush cover band. The more I knew about how Alex played his parts, and, by extension, the ins and outs of music composition and arrangement, the more human he, and they, became. And once I was OK with them just being "regular" guys, the less I was affected by rumors of drug use. Many of my musician friends did inordinate amounts of drugs, but that didn't lessen them as friends in my eyes.

Agreed. I was mesmerized by some of Alex's guitar in my teens. In my 20's, once I could play dozens of Rush songs simultaneously on guitar and vocals, the less overly impressed I became.

 

They were just dudes of the era. A lot of people did coke around that time, including some of my extended family members who I would not have guessed. Wasn't bad enough to ever need rehab apparently, nor ever be visibly annihilated on stage or develop a reputation.

[Rush Didact]

I have to say, when I first listened to some Signals tour boots last year, the first thought I had was that the performances had to be chemically enhanced.  They're absolutely flying through those songs.  Neil is playing parts that are already hard to keep up with at album speed and taking them up another notch, and then another notch past that.  It's nuts.  And keep in mind, that's the year he turned 30, an age when most people are starting to slow down a bit and lose the intensity of youth, but he's playing faster than he ever had before.

 

When I read Geddy's book, I specifically read the parts about coke with that in the back of my mind, and all the sudden it seemed to make sense.  I would guess that the Signals tour was when things really started to get out of hand, and that might also explain why there were no official recordings done, and why that tour seems to get short shrift in general.  Maybe things were pretty rocky in the Rush camp that year, even rockier than Ged lets on in his book.  He wrote about his own problems with coke, but for obvious reasons he doesn't really talk about how much Neil or Al may have been doing.  I'm going to bet that the Signals tour was probably a not-so-great time in Neil's life as well, and he likely had his own issues to overcome.

[malm_51]

Maybe some of those Signals boots needed to be speed corrected? Some recording devices malfunction at times (speed up when played back), low battery power for instance would cause a recording to drag resulting in a sped up playback! Just an idea I had.

[Rush Didact]

3 hours ago, malm_51 said:

Maybe some of those Signals boots needed to be speed corrected? Some recording devices malfunction at times (speed up when played back), low battery power for instance would cause a recording to drag resulting in a sped up playback! Just an idea I had.

 

No, if they were sped up, the pitch would be off too.  They actually were playing that fast.

[Timbale]

11 hours ago, JARG said:

There was a time when the members of Rush were like gods in my eyes. They were powerhouses on their respective instruments, writing amazingly involved pieces of music and expressing atypical concepts in a thought-provoking and poetic way. Clear that idle idol worship was all just me projecting onto them what I wanted to be true.

 

The veneer really began to slip away as I developed enough facility on guitar to play in a Rush cover band. The more I knew about how Alex played his parts, and, by extension, the ins and outs of music composition and arrangement, the more human he, and they, became. And once I was OK with them just being "regular" guys, the less I was affected by rumors of drug use. Many of my musician friends did inordinate amounts of drugs, but that didn't lessen them as friends in my eyes.

I totally relate to what you are saying.  When I was first into Rush, I felt like they were on a completely different planet talent and presentation wise.  I find it funny now when I see people talk about them - Peart in particular - as these untouchable gods.  A quick scroll through youtube can find you plenty of 15 year olds playing Tom Sawyer note for note on a drumkit.  But of course, like lots of music, virtuosic or not, it's not what the person played...but the fact that they chose to play it.  The intention and the artistry of it is so much a part of what makes music great.

 

But the other thing that set Rush apart for me was what I perceived was the greater sense of intention behind their music.  Like Trent Reznor says in the Rush documentary, it seemed like they were on a righteous path.  I always had that feeling about what they were doing artistically (and I still do, really)... and doing coke and having drinking contests with Hawkwind or whoever it was doesn't mean that they weren't in it for the music...but everything I'd ever read about them (and the portrayal of them in the doc) made it seem like they were a fish out of water in the rock and roll scene.  Geddy's book changed the perspective I have about them...that yes, they were doing something musically unique...but they also were "just" a band like any other band.  And that makes sense...but it wasn't the way I thought about them for most of my life.

[Relayer2112]

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.

[malm_51]

18 hours ago, Rush Didact said:

 

No, if they were sped up, the pitch would be off too.  

Yah I would have to agree with that!

[Mr Freeze]

On 2/15/2024 at 10:07 PM, Rush Didact said:

 

No, if they were sped up, the pitch would be off too.  They actually were playing that fast.

 

Well,nowadays there are programs where you can futz with the speed of a recording without changing pitch

 

[Rush Didact]

1 hour ago, Mr Freeze said:

 

Well,nowadays there are programs where you can futz with the speed of a recording without changing pitch

 

 

Yes, of course, but every bootleg from the tour sounds like that.  I doubt there's a conspiracy to artificially speed up old Rush bootlegs here.

[Weatherman]

On 2/15/2024 at 2:14 PM, JARG said:

There was a time when the members of Rush were like gods in my eyes. They were powerhouses on their respective instruments, writing amazingly involved pieces of music and expressing atypical concepts in a thought-provoking and poetic way. Clear that idle idol worship was all just me projecting onto them what I wanted to be true.

 

The veneer really began to slip away as I developed enough facility on guitar to play in a Rush cover band. The more I knew about how Alex played his parts, and, by extension, the ins and outs of music composition and arrangement, the more human he, and they, became. And once I was OK with them just being "regular" guys, the less I was affected by rumors of drug use. Many of my musician friends did inordinate amounts of drugs, but that didn't lessen them as friends in my eyes.

Interesting. I went the opposite here. 

I discovered them as songwriters: my classically-trained professional pianist cousin gave me MP and said "study these guys, they're amazing". 

So I learned to play guitar by learning Alex's parts. I never idolized them

UNTIL

My first concert, Roll the Bones tour. Alex was flipping incredible. I remember watching his fingers on Spirit of Radio and going "ohhhh he's better live than in the studio, shiittttt". Then they became larger than life and pretty much stayed that way, in my mind. 

[Relayer2112]

17 hours ago, Weatherman said:

Interesting. I went the opposite here. 

I discovered them as songwriters: my classically-trained professional pianist cousin gave me MP and said "study these guys, they're amazing". 

So I learned to play guitar by learning Alex's parts. I never idolized them

UNTIL

My first concert, Roll the Bones tour. Alex was flipping incredible. I remember watching his fingers on Spirit of Radio and going "ohhhh he's better live than in the studio, shiittttt". Then they became larger than life and pretty much stayed that way, in my mind. 

 

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.

 

[That One Guy]

On 2/15/2024 at 8:07 PM, Rush Didact said:

 

No, if they were sped up, the pitch would be off too.  They actually were playing that fast.

Coked up synth rock I guess. When I play The Analog Kid, my natural speed is noticeably slower than the album version. If I try to play along to it, it's like "holy hell guys I'm trying to keep up here". I naturally play others like Digital Man slower as well.

[Weatherman]

On 2/20/2024 at 9:17 AM, Relayer2112 said:

 

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.

 

Yeah I've heard that before. It definitely brings him down to earth.