Rush--Updated Edition by Martin Popoff

Author:Martin Popoff [Popoff, Martin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780760352205
Publisher: Voyageur Press
Published: 2017-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Battersea, London, April 1984. Fin Costello/Redferns/Getty Images

“Red Sector A” is another one that’s extremely important, which is about the fight for survival in a concentration camp. And again, Neil opens certain doors on records, and without people really recognizing it, he never really fully shuts that door. He keeps that conversation open in later songs, on other albums. Like “Heresy” on Roll the Bones, where he asks, All those precious wasted years—Who will pay? It was about communism and the wall coming down and Berlin, and all these millions of lives had been lost and changed, and who will pay?

And then you have “The Enemy Within,” which deals with fear. And that was the original ending of “Fear,” as Neil had executed it to be part of the “Fear Trilogy,” with “The Weapon” and “Witch Hunt.” And it’s really about getting into one’s own psyche and dealing with your nerves and your suspicions. Essentially, you can be your own worst enemy in life.

POPOFF: Speaking of communism, a curious one on here is “Red Lenses”—really, to mix metaphors, the red-headed stepchild of the album, like “I Think I’m Going Bald.”

MAHER: Right [laughs]. Again, you’re dealing with the Soviet Union, the red scare, and you’re dealing with a lot of seeing life through rose-colored lenses. I don’t really think that anybody who listened to “Red Lenses” who was a fan of Rush in 1977, went, “Oh yeah, yeah, this is where I’m at.” No, “Red Lenses” is an absolute acquired taste and nothing more than an acquired taste. You have to be able to be open-minded enough to hear Geddy Lee doing scat, you know, a jazz scat with jazz and fusion and funk bass going on.

You have to be able to appreciate Neil doing what would be considered almost silly-like fusion—on electronic drums that he is just becoming familiar with. But he mastered it. That was the amazing thing about Neil’s playing at that point. And to this day, oddly enough, even though they don’t hold the song “Red Lenses” high as far as popularity or favorites, drummers love that song. What you see and what you get about “Red Lenses” is nothing but pure musicianship and how they play with each other—it’s a jam session. And nobody really takes anything lyrically from that song to heart, or to mind. It’s more or less beat poetry about Soviet nuclear ambitions and the fear that is portrayed in North America about that. It’s not a song that goes into any other philosophical quarters or anything like that. If you’re using it in context with anything else, you think of “Tai Shan” from Hold Your Fire, and you lump them together as Rush’s experimental songs that they gave us.

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