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Oh, before I continue, here’s a piece of trivia from my public school days: there was a boy in my class named Rick Moranis. Yes, the Rick Moranis of Ghostbusters and Little Shop of Horrors fame.
Please understand, I love being a Jew and I’m super-proud of all that “my” people have accomplished in so many aspects of life—especially in the face of persistent prejudice, hatred and outright murder—but I consider myself a devout cultural Jew: I love the history, the humour and even some of the food! But a belief in God and organized religion? Not for me.
She’d grow fiercely devoted to her daughters-in-law and adored them unquestioningly till the day she died. I find that hugely admirable for someone of her age and with her past, and wonder if I would have had the strength to change as she did.
In the next chapter I’m going to relate my parents’ experience of the war. After all, if it wasn’t for what happened to them then, I wouldn’t be here to tell you my tale now and I wouldn’t be the person who I am.
I’ve included it in this book because I feel we’re living in an era that seems to have forgotten what can and will happen when fascism rears its head. I think we all need reminding of it in the face of those who either deny the past or never knew about it in the first place.
I strongly believe that the stories I relate to you now are not only true but capture the essence and spirit of what my mother and father lived through as teenagers—the awful and the good.
Their flirtation continued throughout their incarceration. It’s hard to believe that under such horrific circumstances anyone could be thinking romantically, but one has to think of their age and the resilience of youth, and the need to believe in something other than imminent death.
We had assumed there was no one left alive to save us, otherwise why had they not come sooner?”*
To find happiness in my life I’ve done my best to reconcile those feelings through therapy, through self-examination, through acceptance. The healthiest way to deal with them, in my experience, is to talk about them—so I’m thankful to my mother for having told us her stories at the dinner table; they were proof that the human spirit can overcome terrible adversity without ever forgetting those who sacrificed everything to make happiness possible for me and the ones I love.
“As I listen to these speeches, I realize, maybe for the first time, that it was I who have actually won the war. I am still here, standing on German soil with my three children, and the Nazis are dead and gone. I only wish that my sister and my brother would have come here with us for this event, it would have done them good!” After fifty years, she had triumphed. Talk about closure.
we gave ourselves several far-out, imitatively psychedelic band names, including the Dusty Coconuts, the Aqua-Lined Dimension of the Mind and the Blueberry Hyena Underwater. What do you expect? It was the sixties, man!
Oy, what in the world would ever become of us?
how many folks can boast a relationship of fifty-plus years and still have a photo of their very first kiss?
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Note our first Rush T-shirts, with RUSH - ENERGIZED ROCK on them.
that brief hesitation was a reminder that regardless of my physical age, I can still revert to that little kid from the Willowdale suburbs.
Can’t we all. Has to be a common human reaction.
Thing is, while our originals were naïve and crude at that stage, we knew that no one ever soared to the top playing cover songs (except Joe Cocker with his raspy soulful voice and so much charisma that you were happy to hear him sing the telephone directory).
Rock Star Lesson #2: Famous people can be dicks.*
John Griffin wrote in the Montreal Gazette that I sounded like “a guinea pig with an amphetamine habit”;
“If Lee’s voice were any higher and raspier, his audience would consist exclusively of dogs and extra-terrestrials.”
My voice had to cut through our heavy rock barrage, and as that whole blues-based rock attitude became more complicated—or “sophisticated” or “pretentious,” depending on the descriptor you prefer—its bluesy-ness stood out even more, because suddenly the context was no longer the blues.
After meticulously and painstakingly grinding through every single moment of the record that far, it was a joy to be so spontaneous—so much so that we’d summon that spontaneity again with “Vital Signs” on Moving Pictures, “New World Man” on Signals and “Malignant Narcissism” on Snakes & Arrows; all were last-minute inspirations.
Throughout the “Xanadu” period, I’d wear an even longer white satin robe, with cowboy boots—you know, sort of how Legolas or Elrond would look if they lived in Texas. How does that Glen Campbell song go? “Like an Elfin Cowboy”?
there I am in all my youthful splendour, sporting a wizardly white satin mantle and cowboy boots I bought in El Paso, singing about the Milk of Paradise, kingdoms full of hatred and philosophers, ploughmen, blacksmiths and artists. It was only years later that we found the self-confidence to ditch such misguided and desperate attempts at epic haberdashery and simply walk out onstage in our T-shirts and jeans. It took us a while to grok that our music was our image.
I will choose a path that’s clear I will choose free will To my dismay, those words have been cited without regard for the song’s overall message and used as a catch-all, a licence for some to do whatever they want. It makes me want to scream. Taken out of context, it becomes an oversimplified idea of free will, narrow and naïve, not taking into consideration that even the strongest individual must, to some extent, bow to the needs of a responsible society. Too often it’s seized upon as a reckless substitute for common sense.
During the Covid pandemic, I saw this first-hand. When I posted a picture on Instagram of myself wearing a mask, loudmouths were quick to throw “Free will!” back at me, as if those two words alone constitute permission to act without regard for the well-being of others, to ignore science and to rid ourselves of responsibility for the consequences of our actions. To me, it was stupidity taking shelter in poorly thought-through ideology, holding on to the lyric as if it meant “I can be as selfish as I fucking want to be.” Well, folks, from where I sit, it ain’t that simple. I’ve read the book
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Sure, we pay more taxes than many others do, but I prefer to live in a world that gives a shit, even for people I don’t know. Okay, now I’ll get off my soapbox.
“What?” I said, breathless, sweating bullets. “What’s wrong?” With Jules in her arms and a blissful smile on her face she said in her gentlest voice, “Isn’t he adorable?”
Like Big Brother or the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey, “the Band” is ever present. It gives a musician an indisputable reason to run off, regardless of the chaos he may be leaving behind. It is ubiquitous, inexorable and constant. It demands precedence over everything, silently running (and occasionally ruining) your life. Of course, it’s of your own making, but it is more convenient to think of the band as an entity separate from yourself. Children, wives, friends and family are left with little choice but to accept being collateral damage of the Band’s schedules, obligations and
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It really does sound like a noisy, sweaty, torch-wielding bunch of rednecks, but in reality, it was a bunch of hosers with scarfs on, freezing their nuts off late on a Canadian night in November.
Suddenly everybody had an effin’ opinion about what we should do and how we should be doing it.
The German-made PPGs were all the rage at that time, notably used by Trevor Horn, the Fixx, David Bowie, Propaganda, Depeche Mode, Tears for Fears, Ultravox (and, eventually, all over Grace Under Pressure).
The one-upmanship continued as, for example, every studio had to have an AMS Digital Delay, the effect that gave birth to the ubiquitous 1980s gated snare: think “In the Air Tonight,” “Born in the USA,” “Take My Breath Away,” “Hounds of Love,” “Paradise City” . . . the list goes on.*
Phil Collins was one of the greatest rock drummers you could find, so he can do whatever the hell he likes, but with that brilliant and powerful gated drum sound he recorded for “In the Air Tonight,” he inadvertently set a bad example for imitators to overuse! It was a sign of the times, for sure, just like the twangy guitar was back in the day for Speedy West. Every period has a sound that becomes its signature cliché.
Even we had a makeover. Alex looked and dressed more like a member of Duran Duran now, while Neil had shaved off his magnificent Hungarian handlebar ’stache and gone all Depeche Mode.
grew my hair back, but it morphed into an unfortunate bonnet that got me elected to the Mullet Hall of Fame. It was the best of each world, you might say, but not both. I refer to it as my Daniel Boone phase.
It has to be said, not all our fans were enthralled;
Alex worked around them imaginatively too, finding new ways to make his presence known. The urgency of his ska and reggae chops is downright funky at times; there’s a blistering intensity all over those songs, especially in his wild soundscapes for the middle section of “The Weapon” and his solo work on “Digital Man.” Which is all the more admirable, considering how unsold he was on the whole keyboard thing.
In 1980 Rush and Max Webster recorded a song called “Battle Scar,” and when they opened for us on the Signals tour, I used to sneak out and sing my part disguised as . . . a crook.
By now, the ergonomic in-ear monitors and solid state devices and pre-amps I was using in pursuit of a better tone rendered amp stacks onstage quite unnecessary (even if they looked cool). During rehearsals for Test for Echo in 1996, it was obvious that the shrinking of my rig had created an imbalance with Alex’s on stage right, and I thought, Why don’t I take the piss out of all of that?
his crew assembled a harem of worshipful Barbie dolls holding up tiny signs of love and admiration in front of his foot pedals.
him. I gestured at Neil, caught his eye, pointed and mouthed, “Char-lie Watts!” Neil’s eyes opened wide and his mouth broke out in a grin.
Oh to have been there
You might be thinking about what’s coming up after the song you’re actually playing, or worrying about those people security is pushing around down in front, or thinking, Wow, there’s a hot chick in the third row! She must think the Stones are about to come on
“You’re known for some long songs. Have you ever written a song so epic that, by the end of the song, you were actually being influenced by yourselves?”
We still had many influential detractors—some of whom, for example, sat on the board of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. (What was it we were going to call our next album?)
As the song evolved, Neil embellished it to In a world where I feel so small, I can’t stop thinking big, which put me right back in my bedroom as a kid, dreaming of escape from my lonely dead-end life after Dad had passed away.
He was satisfied that he’d already done what he’d done to the best of his ability.
“I’m hip to you. You sit there very quietly, but every now and then you say something that tells me you’re a badass.”
So for me that gig in LA also marked, at long last, the end of my shiva both for Neil and for my band. As a wise rabbi once told me, it was time to turn from grief to remembrance.
Having said that, at my tender age my “extracurricular” creative interests—writing books, travelling, bird photography, collecting baseball memorabilia, oh, and drinking good wine—have become almost as important to me as writing music. Of course these things do not inspire the same visceral reaction and ego-feeding aggrandizement as a roaring live audience does, but in many ways they’re as satisfying to the soul.
He looked at me in wonder and said, “Wow, Zaidy. One day you’re gonna be famous.”
