Intense Early Reaction to Rush's Permanent Waves

RPM Weekly, February 9, 1980, transcribed by pwrwindows

Toronto: Toronto-based rock trio Rush are entering the eighties with a new album release designed to maintain their heavy worldwide following and increase their demographics. The new album, on Anthem Records, is titled Permanent Waves. While it maintains the group's solid rock sounds, along with the usual Rush elements of progressive music and science fiction lyrics, the album shows elements of further musical and lyrical maturity from the group, as evidenced by "The Spirit Of Radio", an intelligent tribute to that medium which even includes a brief segment of reggae-influenced sound.

Permanent Waves is Rush's ninth album release overall, including the live All The World's A Stage and the three-LP reissue of Archives. It follows Canadian platinum releases in 2112, the live set, A Farewell To Kings and, most recently, Hemispheres. The new release was shipped to Canadian radio stations January 4, followed by public release the next week. Rush product is released outside of Canada by Mercury Records, and the new set shipped over 300,000 units in the U.S. on January 14.

The LP has received intense radio support in its very earliest stages throughout Canada. On the day of release to radio, lead vocalist/bassist Geddy Lee went to CHUM radio Toronto to premiere the set on CHUM-FM with John Donabie and Ric Ringer. Afterwards, he moved over to CHUM-AM for a very rare live interview with John Majhor, which was also taped by the CHUM-affiliated CITY-FM and run on their news broadcast the same night. On the same day, a Friday, CHUM-AM instantly pulled "The Spirit Of Radio" from the album for immediate airplay (an edited version of the track will be released as a single by Anthem shortly). During the same weekend, every major AOR station in Canada added the album.

In further support of the new release, Anthem have sent out a new Rush bio, again written by drummer/lyricist Neil Peart. The bio includes a fact sheet tracing major events in the group's career, as well as a detailed story of the recording of the new album, which was produced at Le Studio in Morin Heights, Quebec by the group and Terry Brown. The band's past two sets had been recorded in Wales.

As well as their highly successful careers in Canada, Lee, Peart and guitarist Alex Lifeson (who doubles as the group's chef) are highly established as concert headliners in the U.S. and Europe. Rush will be touring in support of the album through the States on a major concert tour which also includes fellow Anthem group Max Webster, who also hail from Toronto. To further boost support on the tour, which will occur basically in major arenas, and the album with its 300,000 unit initial shipment, Mercury Records have committed to what Anthem describes as the U.S. company's biggest promotion and marketing campaign the company has ever undertaken on any act. Rush already have achieved U.S. gold on four of their albums, and Anthem are confident the Mercury campaign coupled with the tour will take the group toward the platinum level.