Rush Revulsion:

A Love for Hating On a Profit-Gulping Dinosaur

I hate Rush—irrationally, hallucinogenically, and with utter malice.  Hate is not what this blog does: this will be the one exception.

I’m not alone:

• This often-cited article calls Rush the Most Hated Band of All Time. This claim, while entirely agreeable, is unsubstantiated.
• iHeartRADIO, substantiates their claim with compiled data and algorithms – Science! – ranking Rush a modest 18th on a list of the 21 Most Hated Rock Bands of All Time.
• The LA Weekly put them at #9, calling them the anchovies of rock music. 
• Rolling Stone Senior Editor David Wild: “Regardless of their success, Rush has never achieved critical acclaim... most of it gives me a headache...Rush really hasn’t done anything unique.”
  
• Brian Cogan, PhD., author, professor, media consultant, pop culture expert, and Rush hater consulted for the Convince Me to Like This Band podcast: “Rush are overrated and pretentious hacks who, with Neil Peart’s lyrics, have provided reckless creedence to offensive political ideologies.” 
• In 2007, Blender Magazine’s Worst Lyricists in Rock named Neil Peart #2. (He was robbed.) As one blogger avered on Peart: An ace on the rototoms, a train wreck on the typewriter.
• Spin Magazine: Rush isn’t cool.

And yet, Rush has cultishly devoted fans – though, the band’s fanbase scaled past cult status back in the Carter administration. They’re rabid, hypertrophic, and raging with album-cover-tattoos levels of psychosis. See r/Rush Reddit and the forums and marvel at how fans pour over song minutiae with an OCD perseveration as if they were Dead Sea Scrolls. It’s fandom at a blazingly insurrectionist level of alarming.

And their fans have only bred like flies: Rush is ranked third for most consecutive gold- and platinum-selling albums in rock history (askmen.com claims they come in fourth)—behind only The Rolling Stones and The Beatles. This devouring public can’t all be incels.

About those incels: The trope is that women hate Rush too. Women have never been big consumers of Prog—not even in this homeopathic, middle school, technophobic version of dystopian sci-fi. Rush concerts were famous as gyno-deserts. (This Salon article disagrees.) But to be fair, near-desert conditions: these audience photos show that there are at least two women here, and a couple more here.

Many have argued that Lee’s voice is the problem. The most often reason cited for Rushophobia. Geddy’s refusal to rein it in was an act of defiance and, maybe, for that he deserves some props. Also to his credit, when Rush began, no one sounded remotely like Geddy (nee Gary Lee Weinrub)—except maybe Tiny Tim. After the rise of Rush, the world would be lousy with Geddy Lee-type squealers—Bruce Dickinson, Sebastian Bach, Justin Hawkins, Vince Neil, etc. In the beginning, Rush was a Canadian bar band version of Dreadful Zeppelin, without the testosterone. But by album #2, Rush knew the hard bar band sound wasn’t going to serve their arena-sized ambitions. For them, the smell of napalm in the morning was the legitimacy of Prog Rock, and they threw in with the tropes of the time. Then, Prog was already rife with Tolkeinisms and anachronistic fantasy. Rush wasn’t the only band to plod through musical suites that clocked in longer than heart-transplant surgery. 

Back to those vocals: Lee’s sphincter-clenching caterwaul was Rush’s most distinguishing feature—like an incel car alarm receiving a surprise prostate exam. Other, even less charitable descriptions: 

• Soprano-ish banshee wail
• Dog-calling falsetto shriek
• A near-chipmunk bawl
• Cat being chased out a door with a blow-torch up its butt
• Sounding less like a bird of prey than a castrato with a gerbil up his ass. 

(The last two were a bit much, even for me. Mine was better.) 

The second time I heard Rush, it was 2112 (1976). The Temple of Syrinx (see below) was like a CIA renditioning technique. And those liner notes: Dedicated to the genius Ayn Rand. (A claim even Peart would later find embarrassing.) Over the years, the band would be accused of being rightwing propagandists.

Sample lyric: I stand atop a spiral stair/An oracle confronts me there/He leads me on light years away/Through astral nights, galactic days

(At least Peart shares Ayn Rand’s need for heartless editing.) 

That’d be the last time I’d ever here Rush again—unforced anyway. Their creep into rock radio was, however, already tragically underway.

I do get why suburban cracker boys worshipped them. They looked like them – the boys left in the grass after the teams were chosen. Rush is The Revenge of the Nerds in band form. (They were famously not a great attractor of groupies.) Rush fanboys may be blinded by the band’s technical proficiency. And the haters, they say, will never understand music as deeply intellectual and arcane—like some kind of Masonic David Foster Wallace. Guitarist and drummer—Alex Lifeson (nee Zivojinovich) and Neil Elwood Peart, respectively, always wielded every chop at their disposal at every opportunity. If they were playing actual axes they could’ve deforested the Great White North long ago. Some of their mid-period work got rather fusiony (like YYZ), and deftly so. I’ll give that to them: Props for platinum-selling an otherwise unpopular, esoteric, and meandering genre to the multitudes.

The Fanboy zeal has allowed Peart to publish a load of books as a writer or co-writer, including seven of fiction. He even has an illustrated quote book. Despite his fan-reputation for “erudite” lyrics, I submit Virtuality (still milking the computer anxiety):

Like a shipwrecked mariner adrift on an unknown sea

Clinging to the wreckage of the lost ship Fantasy

I'm a castaway, stranded in a desolate land

I can see the footprints in the virtual sand

Net boy, net girl

Send your signal 'round the world

Let your fingers walk and talk

And set you free

Geddy would say: “Even I can barely make sense of our concept albums.”

And then, the evolution of the Rush aesthetic: 17 years after their debut album, Geddy Lee matured from his unctuous helium-registers and began to move, at last, into his adult period. While Rush were not Prog innovators, they did help ride its wave into the enormous profitability of Arena Soft-Prog (think Asia, Genesis, Supertramp, Moody Blues). 

With that, the band did something I would’ve thought impossible: they also became less hatable. They became shopping mall music: Whether they went to the mall or the mall came to them is hard to know. Though, until the glorious day when Tom Sawyer takes its spin on the world’s last Classic Rock station, the battle between the haters and the stans will rage on. 

She Wants More: Fanny and Butterboy

L to R: June, Alice de Buhr, Nicky Barclay, Jean

Oh to be 1974 again!

The drugs! The sex! The macramé midriff tops!

That was the time when the leisure suited Me decade was snuffing out the last vestiges of Summer of Love idealism. Where 60s hedonism was about discovery and liberation, the 70s response was cynical and opportunistic. Chemical mind expansion had migrated into addiction and AIDS was on the horizon. But the 70s wasn't just all about solipsistic pleasure chasing, boundaries were pushed and paradigms were shifted, not the least of which were the roles of women. By 1974 the bubblegum anthem I Am Woman had just released its sphincter hold of the radio, sex was being discussed much more openly––Everything You Want to Know Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask) was on many home bookshelves as was The Sensuous Woman/Man––and took a much more prominent role in popular music, e.g. Walk on the Wildside, Sexual Healing, Afternoon Delight, Pillow Talk, Jungle Fever, Lady Marmalade, etc... you get the idea.

But those songs all shared a mostly male point of view. Where was the frank description of the female side of things? Enter Butterboy: A women's perspective a million miles away from Chapel of Love or even Torn Between Two Lovers and the precious confessions of the likes of Carly Simon and Laura Nyro (not that precious can't have its place). Butterboy is something different. It throws down sexy candor from the get go and doesn't even bother with the entendre: “He was hard as a rock but I was ready to roll...” And the chorus: “Go baby go (Get it up boy)/ Show what you know/ There's a fire down below.” The narrator will claim she was “shock[ed] to find out [she] was in control” in her presumably new role as jockey of her own carnal rodeo. But, as might be expected of a woman's perspective, things are a little more complicated.

But first, who was Fanny? An all female outfit led by the Philippines-born and California raised Millington sisters, June (b. 1948, the oldest of 7) and Jean (b. 1950) – of a Filipina socialite mother and an American navy officer father. Consensus is they were “the first notable/successful hard rock group made up entirely of women.” ("Hard" may be a stretch here but notable––sure––although it's not as if there weren't others.) Of course, they were about 10 years behind Suzi Quatro's sisters, the Pleasure Seekers. (Wiki says Fanny was the third all female group signed to a major label.) Like the Quatros, Fanny were musicians of the sort that could've owned bands like The Bangles and The Go-Gos. Keyboardist Nickey Barclay worked as a session musician and played on Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour while the whole band backed-up Barbra Striesand for her rock album, Stoney End. These ladies weren't just frontin’.

By the time of Butterboy, June departed (she’d suffer a breakdown at the time) and another veteran of all female rock bands, Suzi’s big sister Patti Quatro, would get on the bus.

Patti Quatro, Jean Millington

While Butterboy may’ve extolled the liberation of “casual, quick relations,” it’d appear that this form of self-empowerment had its issues. Jean Millington sings to her liaison, “give me more” and he only responds “you're too much.” (After all, she says “get it up boy” and not “tongue out til you drop a lung out.”) Still, her tool's flesh failures are still not something to sneeze your coke-riddled nose at. Remember, 1974 was only two years after Roe vs. Wade and the pill, introduced in 1962, had only been in wide use for a few years. This was an America where a flaming Conservative president like Nixon could sign a Title X into law (1970), a program which would have government pay to make birth control available for low-income and uninsured women. (The same kinds of women who were called “whores” in the 2012 election cycle.) Considering the post-War milieu in which Fanny came of age, Butterboy's directness was some bold in your face stuff.

And the song just plain rocks. And rocks hard despite its watered-down guitar cocktail, most of its juice coming from the swinging wah-oo-wah-oos, strutting baseline, and the bangin’ Jerry Lee lite piano, not to mention a hook worthy of hanging a side of beef. Its bodacious boudoir confessions––hard to imagine any female performer getting equivalently raw these days (unless it’s not men you're talking to)––wouldn't make the song worth discussing without it.

Interesting to note the cheesecakey image at top was off-brand for them. (I'd guess some A&R types had ordered them to sex it up.) You can see them in dressed-down action at their website here.

This video, on the other hand, may be the exception: They praise the “stimulating” qualities of tea and the camera lingers for some leering butt shots.

 

More history on the band here.

Download:

Fanny: Butterboy (1974)

The world could not support that many ballerinas: Fleetwood Mac & its footnotes - acid, infidelity, & a little bit of suicide

Mac back before it all blew up

You’ve probably heard about Bob Welch’s passing. For those who don’t know, he was the singer-guitarist-songwriter from Fleetwood Mac’s middling middle period of 1971-74. His greatest contribution to the band may’ve been in leaving it: His departure would unleash the band’s destiny of mega-platinumtude and fertile tumult under the Buckingham-Nicks juggernaut. (A grouping that clearly kicked up Christine McVie’s mettle as well.) Despite all that followed in his wake, Welch would play a significant role in the band’s adolescence. Interest from American audiences spiked during the Welch period, a time when American radio was awash in Jackson Brown, Carly Simon, The Eagles and singer-songwriters peddling squishy introspectives and world consciousness. Perhaps it was the waft of ocean breezes and Ozium shrouded weed Americans responded to in the Southern California-born Welch's voice. (The band's first U.S. gold record Future Games would also be Welch’s—and Christine McVie’s—first with the band.) Or, maybe jaded Americans had just had enough of the blooz and Welch’s folkier version of melodic pop was the sound they were looking for.

Peter Green (née Peter Allen Greenbaum) formed Fleetwood Mac in 1967 after short stints in several bands including replacing Eric Clapton in John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. (The Bluesbreakers were another band best remembered for the those who left it.) From Mayall, Green recruited Mick Fleetwood and John McVie. Despite Fleetwood Mac’s considerable critical and financial success, Green’s restlessness would continue; he departed after only two years and eight months. (It's been suggested that Green gave the band its name so McVie and Fleetwood could more easily continue without him.) One might even argue (I would) that those two years and eight months may've been among the most prodigious of any band of that ’67 - ’69 period. To wit: Mac’s sales in the U.K. under Green would exceed The Beatles and The Rolling Stones combined (according to the Man of the World doc). Before Green departed (a story now the stuff of legend—think Syd Barrett’s acid bingeing only with cult abduction), he’d record three albums. The records were inspired, if not extraordinary, blues and if that's all they were we probably wouldn’t be mentioning them now. Even when considering the period in the honeyed glow of retrospection, only one of those three albums gets much critical respect today. Mysteriously, much of their best recorded work, certainly their best singles, were left off of the albums; Green Manalishi, Albatross (a rejiggered version of this became Lennon’s Sun King from Abbey Road), Oh Well, Black Magic Woman (a flop for Mac but enjoying the half life of uranium for Santana thanks to Classic Rock radio).  Further proof of the historical myopia we’ve come to expect from record execs.

I happen to be of the mind that Green Manalishi and Oh Well are among the best songs to come out of the sixties. To back that up, you should note that Green’s roster of A-list fans—Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, B.B. King (who famously said Green was the only guitarist to make him “break into a cold sweat”), Joe Perry, Carlos Santana, Steve Hackett (of Genesis), and on and on—are only too eager to issue frothy superlatives for the man. 

Green Manalishi:


Oh Well (original single version):

 

Oh Well live, 1969:


Green going it alone:



In his autobiography Mick Fleetwood admitted that the band probably owed its early seventies existence to Welch. A period featuring a cocktail of strife and drama that’d cast a long shadow over the band with all the usual rock-life trappings—egos, drugs, alcohol, and infidelity—but with the added thrust of short-lived guitarist Bob Weston’s hook up with Fleetwood’s wife. Weston would be sacked and a distraught Fleetwood would force an immediate cancellation of their tour. Coincidentally, Mac footnote Weston died only days after Welch. According to Weston’s obit in the Telegraph, the seventies for Mac would’ve been the stuff of quintessential reality TV: Christine McVie would hook up with one of the band’s crew (the apparent subject of her You Make Loving Fun) and legendary Beach Boy philanderer Dennis Wilson. Stevie Nicks would have her own rock star hook ups and John McVie, less interestingly but thoroughly rock and roll, nearly drank himself to death. Maybe it was all of this darkness the surviving members were trying to forget when they shunned Welch at their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction. (Green was there.) Or maybe it was Welch’s lawsuit against the band for unpaid royalties.

The dispute would find closure as Welch took his own life on June 7th. As the obituary in People magazine notes, Welch’s note indicated that suicide was his response to a certain future as an invalid, the result of a debilitating spinal injury. You have to respect Welch for the gallantry of not wanting to be a burden to his wife. He knew what he was in for: He’d just buried his own invalid father only years before. You’d hope an event like this might inspire discussions in our culture about choice in end of life decisions in particular, and healthcare options in general, but that’d probably be asking too much.

Once, Dr. Jack Kervorkian had the compassion and courage to seize the frontier in this debate. He was rewarded with prison. Since then, it seems the subject has been closed.

But I digress: Hypnotized was one of Welch’s best known Mac compositions. The song addresses Welch’s acute interest in UFOs. He would also write a song about the “very true” supernatural power of the Bermuda Triangle and the Air Force’s conspiracy to keep it secret.



After Fleetwood Mac, Welch formed the trio Paris with ex-Jethro Tull bassist Glenn Cornick. Though Paris may’ve represented some of Welch’s best work, the band recorded two albums to little acclaim and lackluster sales. Welch followed with a hot flash of platinum success with his solo album French Kiss, “a mix of hard rock guitar, dico-ish rhythms, and sweeping strings” (according to Wiki). But, the success would be brief: Welch squeezed out one more gold album before dropping off the charts completely and resolutely. 

Hear one of Welch’s best songs from the Paris days, Big Towne 2061, below. (A live rendering from 1979 can be found here.) I noticed the CD of the album was going for $80 on Amazon.



Download: Paris - Blue Robin

As you may’ve guessed, the title of this post was taken from the season finale of Mad Men.