By ALAN SCULLEY
One might wonder why Rush is making a big deal out of the band's 30th
anniversary.
For one thing, the power rock trio of bassist/singer
Geddy Lee, guitarist Alex Lifeson and drummer Neil Peart never got the
chance to celebrate No. 25.
At that time it wasn't even clear Rush had a future.
In 1997, shortly after completing a tour supporting the CD "Test For Echo,"
Peart's 19-year-old daughter, Selena, was killed in a one-car accident near
Brighton, Ontario. About a year later, his wife, Jackie, succumbed to
cancer.
In the aftermath of the back-to-back tragedies in Peart's life, any
considerations about the band were pushed aside as Lifeson and Lee tried to
help Peart cope with his grief.
In fact, Peart didn't even pick up his drumsticks for nearly four years, and
it wasn't until fall 2000 that Peart, who remarried in 2000, and his
bandmates even decided they would try to record again, a decision that
resulted in the 2002 CD, "Vapor Trails."
Those circumstances - not to mention the fact that being a band with the
same three members for 30 years is a major accomplishment in itself -
certainly make this year's anniversary something worth commemorating.
"It was important, I think, both to us and to our audience, to celebrate the
fact that we were still around after all these years, and so is our
audience," Lifeson said.
Lifeson, Lee and Peart are marking the anniversary in two major ways. First,
the band has launched an extensive world tour, which finds Rush giving a
generous sampling of their catalog with a three-hour and 20-minute set.
"Even at three hours and 20 minutes, that's like the bare minimum that we
could get it down to," Lifeson said of the set. "We probably, in our final
version before actually getting it on the road, it was more like 3:40. That
was impossible. It would have killed us in our old age."
The other anniversary project is an eight-song CD of cover tunes called
"Feedback." It will be released June 29.
"There was talk of doing a tribute record in our honor, and we really
weren't that keen on the idea," Lifeson said. "We thought that it made more
sense to do a tribute to some of the bands and music that we grew up with as
12-, 13-year-old kids learning to play guitar. And that ended up being just
so much fun. We just had such a ball doing that."
"Feedback" features covers of several songs that will probably be familiar
to many rock fans. The tracks include "Summertime Blues" (the Eddie Cochran
song made famous in the late 1960s by Blue Cheer and by the Who);
"Crossroads" (the Robert Johnson blues classic that was a hit for Cream);
two songs by Buffalo Springfield, "For What It's Worth" and "Mr. Soul"; and
two tunes by the Yardbirds, "Heart Full Of Soul" and "Shapes Of Things."
Some bands might hesitate to cover such well-known - some might say obvious
- songs. But Lifeson said that issue didn't enter into Rush's thinking.
"I guess our criteria was to pick songs that we played at one time and the
ones that really moved us," he said. "Like 'For What It's Worth,' by the
Buffalo Springfield, for example, is probably my all-time favorite song.
"And 'Heart Full of Soul,' you know, I don't know how many people recognize
that song," Lifeson said. "That's a great arrangement we did of that. I know
that's Geddy's favorite song. 'Summertime Blues' is pretty straightforward.
It's kind of a cross between Blue Cheer and the Who. It's got that real
great summery feel about it, and it's that youthful abandon. ... We have our
style, and if we can put a little bit of that in some of these great songs
from that era, you know we're not afraid of anything."
The 30th anniversary year promises to be memorable for Rush. Still Lifeson
suggested that it will take a lot for this tour and CD to be as special as
the "Vapor Trails" tour of 2002.
"I mean, there was so much to overcome before we actually got out on the
road," Lifeson said. "Everything that happened with Neil, the prospect of
never doing it again, spending 14 months in the studio on that record - gee,
there was just so much that culminated in actually hitting the stage on the
tour. So everything about that - the tour itself and the album - are really
important to the three of us. It definitely occupies a very special place in
all of our hearts.
"I remember at the Hartford show, which was the first show on the tour,
people in the audience were crying," he said. "I was having a hard enough
time with the lump in my throat, and I'd look out at people and they were
crying in the audience. They were so happy. And we're just a band. We're
just a rock band. But we mean that much to some people. It was very, very
moving."
Special to The Kansas City Star