Over the past 38 years, they have released 14 platinum records, 24 gold records and sold more than 40 million albums worldwide — and veteran Canadian act Rush is still a force to be reckoned with.
According to Billboard, the prog rock legends came in ahead of country star Blake Shelton, classic crooner Rod Stewart, rap mogul Jay-Z, blues revivalists the Black Keys and even pop superstars One Direction and Elton John with earnings of more than $8.7 million in 2012. The same year, they sold a whopping 500,000 physical CDs.
On April 18, Rush is finally being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. To mark the occasion, CBC’s Rewind is mining the CBC archives and taking listeners all the way back to the days when high school friends Gary Lee Weinrib (later Geddy Lee), Neil Peart and Alexander Zivojinovich (later Alex Lifeson) began playing in church basements and local bars, and right up to the release of their 20th studio album, Clockwork Angels, in 2012.
The full show airs at 2 p.m. Thursday, April 4, but to ease the wait, CBC Music is offering a preview of the clips you will hear.
Back in 1979, the band appeared on CBC Radio’s 90 Minutes with a Bullet, where Geddy Lee talked about their conceptual album, Hemispheres, about the band's “sword and sorcery” lyrics, and about why the radio world didn’t exactly welcome the band with open arms.
ListListen to Rush talking about their "sword and sorcery" lyrics and their difficulty getting on radio in a CBC interview from 1979.
By the 1990s, CBC had fully embraced the band — to the point where drummer Peart was a semi-regular on Peter Gzowski’s Morningside. In 1992, he went on the show and talked about his current rotation of CDs. “I’m very much for novelty," he said. "There is not very much old music that I play, especially of rock or pop because to my mind it’s meant to be disposable.”
So what kinds of songs made the cut? At the time, it was the Gipsy Kings, because, as Peart said, the music “stirs the blood in a way that’s particularly unique.”
ListenListen to Rush drummer Neil Peart talking with CBC host Peter Gzowski about his current rotation of CDs in 1992.
But it hasn’t been all smooth sailing for the band. In fact, in 1996, Peart’s 19-year-old daughter was killed in a car crash; 10 months later, his wife died of cancer.
In a 2012 interview on Q with Jian Ghomeshi, Lee and Lifeson remembered that difficult time, and talked about their slow return to the studio several years later.
“It was pretty bad because what we were writing was just awful stuff. And we were very disillusioned and very disappointed. I guess we figured we would just get right back on that horse and it would go," said Lee. "But we were in very different places, and it was a very tough go.” In the interview, the band also talked about its longevity, and its fiercely loyal fanbase, known lovingly as “the Trekkies of Rock.”
Listen to Rush talking about making it through tragedy and returning to music.
Of course, every great band has to start somewhere, and long before the world tours, stadium shows and throngs of followers, Lee and Lifeson met in junior high. They remembered those days, including the flipped-up collars, the flattened hair and their decidedly uncool suburban rocker status with Ghomeshi.
“We had a catastrophic effect on each other’s grades in school, I have to say,” remembers Lee. “We immediately devolved when we met each other and started hanging out, and took our seats at the back of the class, and then completely became goofs.”
ListenListen to Rush remembering all the way back to their earliest days in high school.
Hear more from Rush on Rewind with Michael Enright on Thursday, April 4, at 2 p.m. on CBC Radio One.
Related:
Rush, Public Enemy among Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 2013 inductees
New Brunswick cymbal maker for Rush, Frank Zappa, Jack DeJohnette, Black Eyed Peas, more dies at 89
Show me the money: Drake, Rush, Nickelback, Dion, Bieber among top Canadian music earners
From Rush to Leonard Cohen, Chris Hadfield talks musical influences