Different Stages • Live

"suddenly...you were gone...from all the lives you left your mark upon"

In loving memory of Jackie and Selena

Hello you,

This collection was recorded over a span of 20 years, primarily during 3 tours. Our desire was to record many shows hoping to capture some "magic" performances as naturally as possible. But, as Murphy's Law would dictate, with well over 60 shows to choose from, we found ourselves being drawn to a mere handful. We have tried not to "mess" with these tapes very much and to present something that we think represents a fairly definitive retrospective of our live work and changing sound over that period of time.

Of course, no band is an island, and so we thank our various crew members, management staff and drivers throughout the years who have been the unfailing support system that has kept us rolling, stage to stage, with great dedication and professionalism, and good humour.

But most significantly, we would like to thank our many fans around the world for their long-standing support which, to our continuing amazement, has enabled us to hang around for so damn long - despite the inherent weirdness of our music!

best wishes to all

Geddy

PRODUCED BY GEDDY LEE AND PAUL NORTHFIELD
All Mixing Engineered by Paul Northfield
Mixed at McLear Pathe Studios-Toronto Canada
Assisted by Denis Tougas and John Biondich
Live Recodings and Invaluable Pre-Mixing Organisation by Robert Scovill
Assisted by Eric Kugler at Eldon Boy Studios - Phoenix, Arizona
Sequencing and Invaluable Assistance by Simon Pressey
Mastered at Gateway Mastering - Portland, Maine by Bob Ludwig
Executive Production - Liam Birt and Pegi Cecconi

Hammersmith Recording Engineered by Terry Brown

Art Direction, Illustration and Design by Hugh Syme
Photography - Andrew MacNaughtan
Additional photography - Dimo Safari, Tony Frederick & Fin Costello

Crew Members On T4E Tour
Boss - Liam Birt
Lighting - Howard Herns Ungerleider
Live Sound Engineer - Robert Scovill
Guitar Tech - Jim Johnson
Keyboard Tech - Tony 'Jack Secret' Geranios
Drum Tech - Larry Allen
Bass Techs - Russ Ryan & Steve Cohen
Stage Manager - Craig Blazier
Office Production - Skip Gildersleeve, Karin Blazier
Monitors - Brain Keefe, George (Barney) Barnes
Band Assistant - Peter Rollo
Bike Wrangler - Phil (Brutus) McMullen
Moving Lights - Matt (Sniffy) Druzbik
Stage Technicians - George Steinert, Lorne (Hey Gump) Wheaton, Rick Munroe
Firm of Drisdale and Drisdale Acct. - John Whitehead and Scotty McBirt
See Factor Lighting - Ed Duda, Don Lodico, Andy Preston, Phil Karatz, Bob Chaize
Electrotec Sound Crew - Charles Lawson, Jason Alt, Mike Humble
BCC Video Crew - Jeff Claire, Keith Marrero, Kraig Boyd, Jim Malone
Laserlite Crew - Charlie Passerelli, John Popowycz
Drivers - Arthur MacLear, Dan Johnson, Dave Cook, Aline Jones, Mickey Miller, Danny Powers, Melanie Posey
Riggers - Billy Collins, Brian Collins, Richard Acebo
Bus Drivers - David Burnette, Paul Hortop, Davis Smith, Steve Huddleston
Management - Ray Danniels / SRO Management, Toronto
Management Staff - Sheila Posner, Pegi Cecconi, Cynthia Barry, Shelley Nott, Anna LeCoche, Karen Jones, Steve Hoffman, Randy Rolfe
Booking Agents - Phil Ernst for ICM Agency / Neil Warnock for The Agency Group
Merchandising - Mike McLoughlin & Rob Flynn

© 1998 Atlantic Records © 1998 Anthem Entertainment

Notes

    Click to enlarge
  • Atlantic/Anthem, November 10, 1998
    • Highest Billboard Chart Position: 35 - Certified Gold by RIAA: December 2, 1998
  • The Japanese release of Different Stages includes the exclusive bonus track "Force Ten". In addition, it also includes miniature A Farewell To Kings and Test For Echo tourbooks.
  • A 4:59 edit of "Closer To The Heart" was released as a promo cd single. Twenty four seconds (from 3:27-3:51) of the original album version have been removed for the edit at approximately 3:33, and additional crowd cheering before and after the music is also heard.
  • Disks 1 & 2 recorded 6/14/97, except: Disk 1 track 4, 4/30/94; Disk 1 track 6, 2/27/94; Disk 1 track 7, 5/24/97; Disk 1 track 10 & Disk 2 track 7, 6/23/97; Disk 2 track 2, 3/22/94; Disk 2 track 6, 7/2/97. * Disk 2 track 10, 6/4/97 (Japanese release only); Disk 3 recorded 2/20/1978
  • As demonstrated on both All The World's A Stage and the Hammersmith Odeon recording, during live performances of "Bastille Day", Geddy mixes together the first and last stanzes, singing "Hear the echoes of the centuries, Power isn't all that money buys" in the first chorus, instead of "Free the dungeons of the innocent, The king will kneel, and let his kingdom rise".
    • A Farewell To Kings 40th Anniversary Edition
  • The Hammersmith recording (disc 3) is not the complete show; missing from the setlist are Lakeside Park, Closer to the Heart, 2112 and the drum solo (shortened to 10 seconds at the end of "In The Mood"). The complete show was later included in the A Farewell To Kings 40th Anniversary Edition.
  • Click here for the 'Different Stages' Transcript Archive.

In Their Own Words

"Joking that the ClusterWorks enhancement may be of 'special interest to people who smoke a lot of herbs', Lee had some light-hearted advice for those Rush fans who are so inclined. 'Get your stash out and vibe out for an hour,' said Lee laughing". - Jam! Showbiz, November 6, 1998
"It was due October 6, but it was pulled back to include two more tracks that were initially left off, 'Analog Kid' and 'Show Don't Tell.' What happened was, well, because I was doing it on my own (bandmates Neil Peart and Alex Lifeson were not in on the final production), I had the luxury of changing my mind. There was three or four versions of each side, so when I realized how much time I had before the release date, I was constantly tweaking. It came to my attention late in the proceedings, I had seen a list of somebody's favorite songs and 'Analog Kid' was on it. I remembered, 'Damn! I wanted to mix that song!' In the confusion of making the record, so many songs, I just forgot about it. Fortunately, everybody was still around, so I was able to go back in and do it. 'Show Don't Tell' was already mixed, so I figured as long as we were changing it, we might as well add both." - Geddy Lee, Long Island Entertainment, October 1998
"No. You can't go back." - Neil Peart (when asked if Rush would ever again play the full version of "2112" in concert), Rush Backstage Club Newsletter, 1988
"The last one [Different Stages] was the best one. It has the best packaging of the stuff from Hammersmith Odeon. We included that so you get 20 years. You can see the rawness of those days and the maturity and confidence of the more recent days. We are proud of it, but it is an enormous headache to do a live record." - Alex Lifeson, JAM! Showbiz, May 7, 2002
"[Natural Science is] one of my favorite songs. It's one of those songs that kind of went away in our live show for many years. And when we brought it back, we changed the arrangement a bit. There were things in the arrangement that were a little shortchanged in the original song. Like in the second part of the song for the main 'wheels within wheels' part of the song. It's not a traditional song; there's no real verse/chorus/verse/chorus, but I remember certain melodies like that that I felt derserved to appear more than they did, and I thought it would give the song more resonance. So we did those things, and the last section of the song is made shorter than it was in the original version. I felt we had kind of overdone it on the record. So sometimes there's that opportunity to fix a mistake or an arrangement that may be short-changed in some way. And I think our current version live is the best we've ever played it." - Geddy Lee, Contents Under Pressure
"In deciding to bring [Natural Science] back into our live set a few years ago, after not playing it for a while, we made some arrangement changes that we probably would have done at the time it was recorded in 1979 if that long, complex, multi-part suite hadn't been written and recorded in about two days! In most cases, we are happy to play our songs as they were recorded because we remain contented enough with them that way, but other times we can't resist reconsidering. We have done that with a few other older songs, where we felt it simply would have been better without a certain part, or as with 'Entre Nous' last tour, where it would have been better to repeat a certain passage." - Neil Peart, "Thus Spoke Neil", Drum Magazine, June 2009

The first Toronto show of the Test for Echo tour was filmed with intentions of releasing it as a live DVD; those plans were shelved due to problems with the sound recording, but a large segment of the show was later released as part of the R40 video compilation:

"Unfortunately due to some problems with the various ADAT machines - the show that was filmed gave us sound that just wasn't usable. And after countless efforts using every bit of technology that exists - it couldn't be fixed." - email from Pegi Cecconi to Eric Hansen, Marc 2, 2006
"I have footage logged from a show and we're trying to work out the details of how to best use that. I'm very interested at the moment in DVD technology and what it can allow us to do that would be more than simply a concert. And how we could incorporate some other really interesting things into it. And from what I understand, that area of exploration is becoming more and more possible where you can almost combine some of the benefits of a CD-ROM with a DVD. So, I would say yes, at some point in the future, there would be some sort of visual representation of the Test For Echo tour." - Geddy Lee, Rush Fancast: Different Stages, SonicNet, November 15, 1998
"...we have other things in the vault as well, such as a concert that we recorded on the Test For Echo tour, with which we weren't satisfied at the time, but that's been replaced by its historical value." - Geddy Lee, Aardschok Magazine, March 2006

The inclusion of the Hammersmith Odeon recording as part of RUSH's fourth live album was actually planned BEFORE the release of Test For Echo.

"During that break, Rush will mix its fourth live album, which will feature material recorded on the Counterparts and Test For Echo tours, as well as previously unreleased tracks from a late-'70's date at London's Hammersmith Odeon, according to Lifeson." - Billboard Magazine, August 3, 1996
"Ged and I went into the studio a couple of weeks ago and there is some material that we have from 1978 at the Hammersmith Odeon. We played a five nighter there and recorded the shows. We didn't have a very good memory of it; I think Ged thought that he'd had flu during that period and there was some problem with the recording, which of course we did discover when we got the tapes out, but they were not as severe as we had thought." - Alex Lifeson, Guitarist magazine, May 1995
"About four years ago we came across a pile of tapes (from the Hammersmith gig) while we were clearing out our office. We put 'em up there and had a listen, and thought that we could do something kinda nice. We could provide it as a bonus CD or something. Once we started going through current stuff from the last two tours, it gave us a better sense of the retrospective." - Alex Lifeson, Guitarist, March 1999

Promos

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