Article from Paste online site

[BastillePark]

Seems like some can, maybe.

 

Loving an artist—I’m talking about an ultimate, favorite-band-of-all-time kind of love—can make you a pretty terrible music critic. Good critics know when they’re too close to a subject; they know when their love for an artist blunts the sharpness of their thinking. That’s why stan-fueled, fandom-focused drivel rarely makes for interesting album reviews. This isn’t a hard-and-fast rule. Good criticism comes from passion, credibility, and expertise, and when you’re a fan of an artist, you’re likely to have all those things. But I’m not talking about being a fan or even just loving an artist. I’m talking about a whole different beast. 

 

For the duration of my career as a music critic, I have mostly avoided writing professionally about Rush (with one exception). It’s the kind of artist-and-fan relationship that, for me personally, blinds me from being good at my job. Fan art I made of bassist/vocalist Geddy Lee, guitarist Alex Lifeson, and drummer/lyricist Neil Peart litters the walls of my childhood bedroom; besides one essay on Power Windows, the last thing I wrote about Rush was my college admissions essay (about how much I loved Rush); to my roommate’s chagrin, the obscenely expensive 40th-anniversary box sets of Rush albums take up serious shelf space in our apartment. After 27 years, I still don’t get sick of listening to them. There is simply no way I have it in me to apply a critical lens to the band. It’s like writing a music review about my Dad. 

But with their reunion tour, it seems Rush has forced my hand. 

 

If Rush ever had a “brand,” it would be integrity. It explains their fantasy epics, their wordy lyrics, their bad haircuts. The Canadian band did things because they wanted to. They made songs about Greek gods or suburban ennui because it interested them; they wrote acutely difficult solos because it felt like a compelling challenge. You either met them on their own terms—following along through decades of different experiments and philosophical lyrics—or you didn’t. The intersection of music and commerce is a gnarly, twisted beast, but somehow, Rush avoided its claws.  

Though in my fantasies Rush would be touring and making Moving Pictures-level albums until 2112, the band’s end felt respectfully final. Their last studio album, 2012’s Clockwork Angels, is a late-career masterpiece. Peart returned to the fantastical world-building of their ‘70s prog ilk for an album that is, ultimately, about the band themselves. Not unlike Madonna’s Confessions II, David Bowie’s Blackstar, or The Cure’s Songs for a Lost World, Clockwork Angels is the kind of album that could only come from great artists finally reckoning with their own mortality: the sound of the rock gods coming down to Earth. Rush toured Clockwork Angels, went on one more tour to celebrate their 40th anniversary, and then seemed content to rest on their laurels. When Peart passed away from brain cancer in 2020, it seemed that Rush would conclude with the same quiet integrity that they modeled throughout their career. 

 

So when the two surviving members announced the Fifty Something Tour, I was of two minds. On the one hand, I would get to see my favorite band again for the first time since I was a teenager. What would they play? How would they sound? Would they pay dust to my beloved and underrated Power Windows? (Yes.) At the same time, it introduced an emotion I never felt in my decades-long Rush fandom: skepticism. The band was extremely careful to position the tour as honoring Peart’s legacy. They even included the blessings of Peart’s widow and daughter in the press release announcing the tour. But I couldn’t escape the gnawing fear that this tour would ruin some artificial sanctity on what Rush could be—a sanctity that, frankly, doesn’t belong to me. 

 

Leading up to the tour, I alternated between these two perspectives. Optimistically, I tried to see the Fifty Something Tour almost like a tribute band. This wouldn’t actually be Rush; it would be Rush-ish—a celebration of the band featuring two of its members. Therefore, I could preserve the neatness of my Rush. But the nagging critic in me—the voice I was so insistent to never, ever apply to this band—had a more pessimistic view: Why were they doing this tour? Would they really sound good? The tickets were pricey, stoking discontent among the fans. Was this just about money? It certainly doesn’t seem like the kind of tour your average Working Man could waltz into. Even Rush were not exempt from the harsh realities of Ticketmaster queues, scalpers, and Live Nation price gouging. These thoughts were sullying the image I’d held of the band since I was a kid. 

 

And then I saw the show. And then I saw it again. And then I saw it a third time. And god help me (and my savings account), I’m trying to go back. (Are there any brands out there that want to fly me out to see them in Brazil?) The Fifty Something tour never feels like another arena rock band trying to cash in on nostalgia. The resounding feeling I had as I was leaving the United Center on my first night seeing the show—ears ringing from a rousing “By-Tor and the Snow Dog”—was not bittersweetness, nor acceptance, nor even nostalgia. It was: “That was the most fun I’ve had since R40 in 2015.” 

 

Of course, the joy starts up onstage. “It’s just too much fun, I’m sorry!” Lee said after finishing up the nine-minute “La Villa Strangiato.” As the band barrelled through the song’s knotty instrumentals, I swear it felt like time stopped in the space between guitar riffs. In interviews, the band cited the importance of honoring Peart on this tour, but I’m not sure that’s the main reason they’re on tour in the first place. I think they’re doing it because Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee have an arena-filling amount of fun playing together; because these iconically complicated songs still push them to their limits as musicians; because the two of them could play “YYZ” every night forever. Why should they stop now? Their love for being in a band together is genuine enough to shut up my most skeptical thoughts.  

 

Part of the Fifty Something Tour’s playfulness comes from a healthy deconstruction of what Rush can be. For decades, the band prided itself on being a power trio, three members only. In the midst of their so-called “synth-period” in the ‘80s, the band considered adding a touring keyboardist, though they never went through with it. But without Neil, the purity of the “classic” Rush is gone anyway—might as well make it easier on everyone. For the tour, Lee and Lifeson welcomed Loren Gold on keys and backup vocals. Gold certainly seemed to save Geddy some stress, who was free to roam around the stage during the synth-backed chorus of “The Analog Kid” and “Time Stand Still.” It’s a shame they didn’t throw in a few more ‘80s deep cuts. (I am once again asking for some Power Windows respect. “Marathon”! “Grand Designs”! “Mystic Rhythms”!). 

 

If the band were to continue touring, I’d be curious to see what else this expanded version of Rush could look like. On the Clockwork Angels tour, they played with a string section for the second half of the show. Now that anything is up for grabs, why not bring that back? Why not add more members, or even different vocalists? The old rules don’t have to apply anymore. The idea isn’t to recreate the Rush of 1976 or 1981 or 2013. It’s to figure out what Rush can be now. 

Historically, the band has kept their tours to a single setlist with little-to-no variation night to night. But that, too, has been reformed in this deconstructed iteration of the band. With multiple nights per city, the Fifty Something Tour cycles through four different setlists—catch them Night Two if you love “2112”; Night Three if you’re a Moving Pictures ride-or-die. The tour stays spontaneous as the band switches up their beloved deep cuts for the die-hards. 

 

Of course, no part of this tour would work without Anika Nilles. It should be obvious that anyone filling in for Neil Peart would need to be a truly spectacular drummer. And Nilles is a preternatural talent. She plays these songs to perfection while adding her own identity to them. But her stage presence is also essential to this tour’s sense of joy. Geddy springs and leaps over to her, smiling and locking in as they play particularly dense passages on “Freewill.” Like Peart, she plays the straight man to Lifeson and Lee’s antics. In the opening video of the tour, she wanders through the “Villas of Strangiato” retirement community, seeking out Rush while a disguised Geddy peddles sausages. When the two hold out a note before the final strum in “Working Man,” she looks down at them from the kit and cracks a grin. In essence, she’s an excellent sport to their goofiness. 

 

I worried that a Rush reunion might feature a drummer like Mike Portnoy or Dave Grohl, both publicly Rush fans who would play into the band’s dudes-only reputation. Though I would not call Rush’s decision to have a female drummer a beacon of radical feminism, it is a certifiably cool choice. Nilles brings a new personality to the band without trying to replace Peart. She doesn’t diminish Rush’s mythology; she makes it less precious. 

All this joy makes for the brightest and loosest I’ve ever seen the band. The Fifty Something tour is both familiar and a dramatic departure for Rush. The familiar: you’ll hear “Tom Sawyer”; you’ll belt out “Concert halls!” at the end of “The Spirit of Radio”; you’ll notice the cheeky little smiles Alex and Geddy make at each other as they rock back and forth on “2112.” But the tour also casts some Rush cuts in a bittersweet light. Has the Roll The Bones cut “Dreamline” ever felt this much about mortality? Has “Witch Hunt” ever felt this prescient about our own politics? Has “Time Stand Still” always been imbued with such loss? 

 

The tour even finds Rush letting go of their own notorious perfectionism. That’s not to say they sound sloppy. These are some of the greatest rock musicians of all time—sloppiness is not in their vernacular. But for a band best known for their meticulous musicianship, there’s a vulnerability to the way they just roll with it on this tour: a wrong lyric on “The Trees,” an early entrance to “2112: Overture.” For some Rush fans, this might be heresy. After all, Rush’s audience is the exact kind of crowd that would notice a single missed note in the guitar solo to “Red Sector A.” But I found it to be an embrace of where they’re at. They’re letting us in, letting us see the tiny imperfections. There’s tremendous courage in that. It only makes me love them more. 

You could argue that the band has been touring past their so-called “prime” for decades. But Rush is in a rare position for a “legacy band.” Unlike many of their classic rock peers, Rush never relied on sexuality (adamantly not) or a rebellious, youth-culture orientation as part of their appeal. Their stage presence does not rely on a persona that ageist critics might deem embarrassing or inappropriate with age, à la Mick Jagger. Rush have always been about just playing the songs. And the band works hard to sound as good as possible. When Lee walked up to the mic to sing the first notes of opener “Xanadu,” I was shocked at the improvements to his voice. Thanks to extensive vocal coaching, he sounded better than he did 11 years ago on the R40 tour. 

 

“I consider my whole career to be a reflection of me at sixteen and what my values were, and what I thought the idea of artistic integrity was,” says Peart’s voiceover in one of the show’s two tributes to him. “I do refer to that kid, pretty often. What would that kid say a rock band should do or how a musician should behave and all that. And I do like to think that that 16-year-old would still be cool with me.” You can tell Geddy and Alex also referred to that 16-year-old when constructing the tour. They created a tour that demonstrates care and respect for their friend’s memory without sacrificing the joy at the heart of the band. And for my own inner 16-year-old, the Fifty Something Tour was a rare opportunity to let go of being a critic and just celebrate my forever-favorite band. You don’t often get chances like that. But with Rush, I’m always happy to let time stand still a little longer. 

[blueschica]

That was fun to read!  Thank you for posting it!