Spoilers- Rolling Stone cover article up online

[blueschica]

They seemed to do a good job capturing what is kind of perceived as everyone's personality- it's interesting! Why does Alex always sound like he would be a riot at parties?

 

http://www.rollingst...0150616?page=13

Edited June 16, 2015 by blueschica

[EagleMoon]

Great interview!

[Lorraine]

They seemed to do a good job capturing what is kind of perceived as everyone's personality- it's interesting! Why does Alex always sound like he would be a riot at parties?

 

http://www.rollingst...0150616?page=13

 

Because he probably would be and is!

 

Thanks for the link. I'll go read it now.

[Lorraine]

Eagle has high speed and has already loaded and read the interview.

 

Here I sit with my dial up. I have yet to get the RS link to even load.

 

Perseverance will win the day here.

[blueschica]

Eagle has high speed and has already loaded and read the interview.

 

Here I sit with my dial up. I have yet to get the RS link to even load.

 

Perseverance will win the day here.

 

Would it be easier if I cut and pasted it with no photos? Or pm'd it to you with no photos? It is about 64 paragraphs long with like 5 photos. It has I think, 4 links to other RS old articles about the band, one that is a list of youtube videos so that may be slowing things down. On our old system (4 months ago) anything with a video link or embed tok forever or wouldn't load.

[Lorraine]

I'm making progress. The Rolling Stone logo at the top of the page has finally appeared. :)

 

I wish I was kidding around, but I am not.

[goose]

"black khakis"

 

 

When did "khaki" the most popular color for "chinos" - a style of pants - become the name of the pants themselves? Just curious.

 

 

Saying "black kahkis" is like saying "black tan things".

 

[Lorraine]

Would it be easier if I cut and pasted it with no photos? Or pm'd it to you with no photos?

 

It has to be coming through soon. I have no idea what's taking it forever to load.

 

Chica, whichever way you want to go - post it here or send it to me in a pm.

[Jaminbenb]

Eagle has high speed and has already loaded and read the interview.

 

Here I sit with my dial up. I have yet to get the RS link to even load.

 

Perseverance will win the day here.

 

Would it be easier if I cut and pasted it with no photos? Or pm'd it to you with no photos? It is about 64 paragraphs long with like 5 photos. It has I think, 4 links to other RS old articles about the band, one that is a list of youtube videos so that may be slowing things down. On our old system (4 months ago) anything with a video link or embed tok forever or wouldn't load.

 

Just for reading purposes...I cut and pasted, removed the photos and some other stuff, made the print a little smaller and got it down to 12 pages (I'm old and like paper for reading purposes)

[blueschica]

"black khakis"

 

 

When did "khaki" the most popular color for "chinos" - a style of pants - become the name of the pants themselves? Just curious.

 

 

Saying "black kahkis" is like saying "black tan things".

 

 

Yeah, I've sewn for ages. Khaki is a color. The fabric is twill, usually cotton or a cotton blend.

[blueschica]

Would it be easier if I cut and pasted it with no photos? Or pm'd it to you with no photos?

 

It has to be coming through soon. I have no idea what's taking it forever to load.

 

Chica, whichever way you want to go - post it here or send it to me in a pm.

OK!

[blueschica]

Neil Peart drives like he drums. On a bright mid-April afternoon in Los Angeles, fresh from a rehearsal with his band, Rush, for what might be their last big tour, he powers his pristine, silver, Goldfinger-style 1964 Aston Martin DB5 onto an exit ramp off the 405 at highway speed, slowing not at all — speeding up, maybe — into a sharp, perilous curve. Call it the way of the Peart: daunting technical mastery paired with a penchant for the gloriously excessive.

He plays an outsize role in Rush, writing the lyrics, serving as the band's designated conscience, taking solos so lengthy and structured that they get their own song titles. To a certain breed of rock musician, the drummer is a Clapton-in-'66-level god: Dave Grohl wept after meeting him.

Peart is also an amateur auto racer, and something of an off-ramp connoisseur. "Racetracks are designed to make it as difficult as possible to get around that corner fast," he says over the Aston Martin's growl, hands tight on the wheel as he whips through the turn. "And some ramps, by necessity, are that way too. I've been picking out a few favorites — the ramp to Wilshire on the 405 is awesome."

At 62, Peart resembles an off-brand Tom Hanks, with a prominent, florid nose and alert brown eyes. He is tall, dressed in a black T-shirt, black khakis and Prada sneakers; he has ropy, muscled forearms and an athlete's physical ease, despite growing up as a self-described weakling. He is a good deal more personable than you'd expect of a guy who wrote the lyrics to rock's premier anti-schmoozing anthem, "Limelight" ("I can't pretend a stranger is a long-awaited friend"), delivering crisp, all-but-indented paragraphs in a rich baritone. A rigorous autodidact and a gifted, near-graphomaniacal writer, he has penned so many books, essays and lyrics that he can't help deploying conversational footnotes: "When I wrote about that, I said . . . "

Peart's fans consider him rock's greatest living drummer: He's won prizes in Modern Drummer's annual readers' poll 38 times. And even those allergic to the spectacle of inhuman chops unleashed upon gleaming, rotating, 20-piece-plus drum kits might consider Peart's talent for rhythmic composition and drama: Rush fans know that his hypersyncopated beats and daredevil fills are pop hooks in their own right. "Neil is the most air-drummed-to drummer of all time," says former Police drummer Stewart Copeland, Peart's friend, musical influence and occasional jam partner, who points to a core sense of groove beneath the flashiness: "Neil pushes that band, which has a lot of musicality, a lot of ideas crammed into every eight bars — but he keeps the throb, which is the important thing. And he can do that while doing all kinds of cool shit."

Neil Peart likes to ask himself a couple of key questions. One is "What is the most excellent thing I can do today?" The answers lead him to travel between Rush's shows on a BMW motorcycle instead of a plane or bus (creating scheduling nightmares for the band's management), and to embark upon extracurricular bicycle trips through West Africa and China and Europe. He aims to fill every minute of his life with as much much-ness as possible, which may also help explain all those 32nd notes.

The other query, posed in the face of any moral dilemma, is "What would my 16-year-old self do?" Teenage Neil was a brainy misfit in a middle-class suburb 70 miles from Toronto who permed his hair, who took to wearing a cape and purple boots on the city bus, who scrawled "God is dead" on his bedroom wall, who got in trouble for pounding out beats on his desk during class. His teacher's idea of punishment was to insist that he bang on his desk nonstop for an hour's worth of detention, time he happily spent re-creating Keith Moon's parts from Tommy. For years, Peart wore a piece of one of Moon's shattered cymbals around his neck, retrieved froum a Toronto stage after a Who concert, and his current drum kit includes a sample trigger bearing the Who's old bull's-eye logo.

 

In their early years, opening for practically every major band of the 1970s, Peart and his bandmates — singer-bassist Geddy Lee and guitarist Alex Lifeson — were disturbed by what the drummer would later describe as the "sound of salesmen." "We would hear them give the same rap to the audience every night," says Peart. " 'This is the greatest rock city in the world, man!' That was creepy. I despise the cynical dishonesty." They did get along with the guys in Kiss. "We would get high with Ace Frehley in his hotel room and make him laugh," Lee recalls, "and they were a really good influence on us in terms of learning to put on a show."

They were taken aback, however, by Gene Simmons' and Paul Stanley's unabashed view of Kiss as a product. "I don't want to knock them," says Peart. "But once I was in a little restaurant in Kansas, and a guy with Kiss Army tattoos kept playing Kiss songs on the jukebox. He believed in a marketing campaign, swallowed it as religion. He was like a convert to Scientology."

Ultimately, Peart wants the freaky, purist kid he once was to be proud of him. "It's about being your own hero," he says. "I set out to never betray the values that 16-year-old had, to never sell out, to never bow to the man. A compromise is what I can never accept."

[Lorraine]

Would it be easier if I cut and pasted it with no photos? Or pm'd it to you with no photos?

 

It has to be coming through soon. I have no idea what's taking it forever to load.

 

Chica, whichever way you want to go - post it here or send it to me in a pm.

OK!

 

I finally got it! So you don't have to send it. :)

[Lorraine]

Geddy Lee Answers Your Twitter Questions

 

[blueschica]

Rush have spent 41 years mastering the art of no compromise. They've superserved their superfans while pretty much ignoring everyone else, and it's all worked out pretty well. There are weirder bands and there are bigger bands, but none quite so weird and quite so big. In each date of their current arena tour, Rush run through their catalog in reverse order, so nearly all of the show's second half is devoted to their Seventies work, showcasing the band in its purest, oddest, arguably most awesome form.

Back then, they had songs so epic that they actually continued from one album to the next, including, memorably, "Cygnus X-1: Book One: The Voyage." They had Lee nailing fierce bass-guitar parts while shrieking like he had an overdrive pedal in his throat, hitting notes that made Robert Plant sound like Leonard Cohen. They had Peart pairing polyrhythms with polysyllables, and Lifeson summoning proto-thrash riffs, classical-gas acoustic bits, ringing chords and increasingly outré leads. They were brasher and louder than their stately prog forebears, Yes and Genesis: Rush sometimes sounded like they had formed their entire style around that one heavy bit in the latter act's "Watcher of the Skies." "We were young," says Peart, quoting himself, inevitably, "and foolish and brave and fun."

As the Eighties approached, Rush discovered concision and synthesizers, recording taut songs that jumped straight into the classic-rock canon: "The Spirit of Radio," "Freewill," "Tom Sawyer," "Limelight." "When punk and New Wave came," says Peart, "we were young enough to gently incorporate it into our music, rather than getting reactionary about it — like other musicians who I heard saying, 'What are we supposed to do now, forget how to play?' We were fans enough to go, 'Oh, we want that too.' And by [1981's] Moving Pictures, we nailed it, learning how to be seamlessly complex and to compact a large arrangement into a concise statement."

Even as their hair got shorter and skinny ties appeared, Rush remained militant about power-trio purity: Lee multitasked, holding down bass and vocals while also using every available limb to play synthesizers and trigger backing parts — a feat that pushed virtuosity into the realm of circus act. "Every rehearsal, I was screaming, 'I can't do it!' " says Lee. "But it just felt wrong to have another dude onstage with us. We talked about it all the time — we still talk about it! But it's a no-go zone, can't do it." They had their rules, and they kept to them — Peart wouldn't even play the same drum fill more than once in a song.

"I never set out to betray the values of my 16-year-old self," says Peart. " A compromise is what I can never accept."

 

Rush have had the same lineup for four decades, since Peart stepped in for their original drummer, John Rutsey — a Bad Company fan who was averse to both odd time signatures and U.S. tours — just after the recording of their first album. They've scarcely had an argument the whole time. "We're never mean to each other," says Lee, "so if we disagree, we pout. That's sort of the Canadian way. But we did used to love punching Alex when he said something stupid."

"If any of us were the slightest bit less stable," says Peart, "the slightest bit less disciplined or less humorous or more mean, or in any way different, it wouldn't have worked. So there's a miracle there."

Lately, Rush have been moving ever closer to pop culture's center, with a hit documentary, Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage, and a 2013 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But the end is in sight — sort of, maybe. Rush let their manager, Ray Danniels, include a press-release line noting that their current run of dates will "most likely be their last major tour of this magnitude" — a very Canadian version of the splashy farewell outing that promoters wanted. "It's most likely our last tour," says Lee. "I can't say for sure. But it doesn't mean we don't want to work together still, it doesn't mean we won't do another creative project, and I've got ideas for shows we could do that don't involve a tour."

"I don't think we're having much difficulty thinking about it as possibly the last," adds Lifeson, 61, who has health issues and wants to spend time with his grandkids.

Peart has disliked touring since their first month on the road, in 1974, threatening to become a studio-only player as early as 1989. But the drummer's concerns have grown more acute. For one, he's pained by long separations from his five-year-old daughter, Olivia. They're close enough for him to know the name of every character on her favorite cartoon, Bubble Guppies. "I realized on the last tour that it's good for her when I'm there, and it's really bad for her when I'm not," says Peart, who moved from his native Canada to L.A. around the turn of the century. Peart and his wife of 15 years, Carrie Nuttall, don't plan on informing Olivia about the tour until the week before it begins. Peart is worried about how she'll react.

As Peart gets deeper into his sixties, he's also questioned his continued physical ability to play Rush shows, a task he's compared to "running a marathon while solving equations." But so far, he's surprising himself. "Everything hurts, but that's fine," he says. "I'm just gratified that I can still do it – at not only the level I would wish to but still getting better."

 

Earlier that morning, the three members of Rush arrive at Mates Studios, a squat, U-shaped, warehouselike structure in unglamorous Van Nuys that's been a go-to arena-band rehearsal spot since the late Eighties. In a brick-walled room, a Guitar Center's worth of gear awaits them, along with a big black rug bearing the logo of their R40 Tour. Lee is using 26 different vintage basses on the tour: "the history of the bass on parade." Peart is playing two different drum kits, and for the rehearsals, they're right next to each other. One is his gold-plated current setup, with laser-etched logos from late-era Rush albums; the other, for the old songs, is a precise re-creation of his circa-1978 chrome kit, complete with the naked dude from the 2112 back cover on the kick drum.

Peart, who is wearing his usual onstage hat, a rounded African-style model, finds the old gear challenging. He's a fluid and relaxed drummer now, but was a clenched, scowling presence behind the cymbals in the old days. "This is all thought out, everything comfortable," he says, gesturing to his new kit. "I can play without looking. The old kit, everything's stupid — like I was at that time. 'Ride cymbal over there? That makes sense!' "

Lee shows off his bass-pedal rig, which is really a sort of foot-synth, laid out like piano keys. "Sometimes it's a keyboard," he says. "Sometimes it's a sound-effects machine. Like I don't have enough to do. Dance, monkey boy, dance!"

The opening date of the tour, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, is only three weeks away. "We're still not very good," says Lifeson. "But we're practicing!"

"We're practicing our mistakes," adds Lee. They used to tease Peart about his insistence on doing a month of solo preparation before group practices begin, telling him he's the only man on Earth who "rehearses to rehearse" — now they all do the same. Lifeson, who lives within walking distance of Lee in Toronto, has the simplest method: He blasts Rush songs in his home studio and plays along.

Today, Rush are running through the first set, which begins with songs from their most recent album, Clockwork Angels. It's an adventurous concept LP, complete with a full-circle return to sci-fi motifs that Peart had long abandoned. Their producer, Nick Raskulinecz, grew up on the band, and pushed them to re-embrace their Rush-iest aspects, urging Lee to use his highest vocal register, encouraging Peart to throw a drum solo right in the middle of a twisty track called "Headlong Flight."

Playing that song now, Peart is hitting his snare drum so hard that the skin beneath his jaw vibrates. Lee, in dark jeans and a faded T-shirt, plays serpentine lines on a green Fender bass with no apparent effort; Lifeson, in looser, lighter jeans and a gray sweat-wicking tee, is in his own world at stage right, nailing a tricky chord barrage. By the end, Peart is red-faced and wiping himself down with a towel.

The band has a harder time with the heavy instrumental "The Main Monkey Business," bungling the ending. "Close," Lee says.

"Two out of three got it right," says Peart. ("You can't have that in a three-piece band," he notes later.)

"I came in all right and then it got mixed up," Lifeson laments. "There's like a stupid f***ing beat put in."

They eat lunch in a break room, where Lifeson, who's attempting a low-carb regimen ("I've always been partial to the protein thing — except when I eat carbohydrates"), opts for a steak. "You're going to sleep through the rest of the set," says Peart, who picks a lighter entree, but then inhales a bowl of ice cream: Drumming burns a lot of calories.

On the yellowish-orange wall are striking portraits of Jeff Beck, Alice Cooper, Prince and Rush's old tourmates Kiss, along with a reproduction of John Entwistle's cover art for The Who by Numbers. As the meal ends, a roadie drops off both dental floss and little gum-cleaning sticks, which Lee and Lifeson put to immediate and vigorous use — the guys in those photos may have a bit more traditional rock & roll mystique, but when it comes to oral hygiene, Rush wins.After lunch, the set list keeps moving back in time, hitting one of Rush's best songs, 1982's "Subdivisions." The lament of a teenager trapped in the suburbs, it was a lyrical breakthrough for Peart, trading fantasy and philosophizing for unadorned emotion. "Nowhere is the dreamer or the misfit so alone," Lee intones, over ominous marching synths and a beat that fights against itself, mirroring the narrator's struggle. "Conform or be cast out!"

[blueschica]

Would it be easier if I cut and pasted it with no photos? Or pm'd it to you with no photos?

 

It has to be coming through soon. I have no idea what's taking it forever to load.

 

Chica, whichever way you want to go - post it here or send it to me in a pm.

OK!

 

I finally got it! So you don't have to send it. :)

 

OK! I'm glad you got it!!

[blueschica]

OK half of it is up, if anyone else needs it, let me know but I''l just leave this the way it is.

[Lorraine]

I'll keep my thoughts about the article to myself for now. :)

[Ancient Ways]

They seemed to do a good job capturing what is kind of perceived as everyone's personality- it's interesting! Why does Alex always sound like he would be a riot at parties?

 

http://www.rollingst...0150616?page=13

On New Year's Eve he is

[Lorraine]

I never heard of these super duper sneaks Neil wears.

 

What is so special about them aside from the fact that they probably cost hundreds of dollars?

Edited June 16, 2015 by Lorraine

[EagleMoon]

I've always thought Neil would make a fun guest on Top Gear.

[Tuesday's Gone]

Thanks for sharing, I found it interesting to read.

 

"There was a guy in the second row during 'Xanadu,' " says Lee. "I thought his head was gonna pop off and roll away. He couldn't f***ing contain himself! I thought he was gonna have a heart attack."

 

 

I've always thought Neil would make a fun guest on Top Gear.

 

Only time I'd ever watch the "Star in a reasonably priced car" segment, I usually have no idea who the guest is so it bores me to death. I didn't know that Neil loved cars and racing btw.

Edited June 16, 2015 by Tuesday's Gone

[toymaker]

"There are weirder bands and there are bigger bands, but none quite so weird and quite so big."

 

Right . . . what?

[EagleMoon]

Thanks for sharing, I found it interesting to read.

 

"There was a guy in the second row during 'Xanadu,' " says Lee. "I thought his head was gonna pop off and roll away. He couldn't f***ing contain himself! I thought he was gonna have a heart attack."

 

 

I've always thought Neil would make a fun guest on Top Gear.

 

Only time I'd ever watch the "Star in a reasonably priced car" segment, I usually have no idea who the guest is so it bores me to death. I didn't know that Neil loved cars and racing btw.

 

I know most of the guests buy I also love the show. Hope it comes back on.

[Lorraine]

Does anyone happen to know the age of Neil's wife?