Profiled!
Promo CD by Anthem Records for radio broadcast, 1990, transcribed by Anonymotron42
[Rush Profile]
(Track 1 contains several songs and Dan Neer introducing the band members and the songs.)
["The Spirit of Radio" begins]
Geddy [Same as the station liner from Track 2]: Hi, this is Geddy Lee of Rush. Presto, you're listening to radio magic.
[Montage of "The Spirit of Radio," "Tom Sawyer," "New World Man," "Closer to the Heart," "Limelight," and "Presto" plays]
Announcer: Rush bassist and vocalist Geddy Lee:
Geddy [Edited from his answer on Track 7, but here with "Superconductor" playing in the background]: There are some definite things we tried to do differently on this record, which I guess were successful, and the fact that we went in with a kind of a definitive picture of losing a lot of the high tech synthesizer arrangements in favor of focusing the three-piece bass, drums, and guitar a bit more clearly. We definitely wanted to make more rock record, and I think that was successful, and a little bit of a change. I think there's more energy on this record than our last couple. And there was a definite move to spend more time thinking of vocal arrangements and writing the vocals with a more natural melodic sense, and kind of fine-tuning the lyrics to suit that as well, so that I was never sitting there with, you know, a mouthful of words that wouldn't be musically sung. Whenever that was the case, we tried to alter or lose a word, or change the flow a little bit to give me a more musical point to start with. So, there was some definite things we want to accomplish with this record more than, say, the past couple.
Announcer: Guitarist Alex Lifeson:
Alex: There's less of a thematic direction on this record than some of our past records, certainly, than some of the older records. But I think because we'd had a long break, a year and a half off the road, we'd done a live record rather than another studio record in that time. We got away from being in the band, being a part of the band, and doing some of the things that we seldom get a chance to do: travel, to spend time at home, just other things that aren't centered around Rush. I think when we came back to writing and back to working, everybody was really enthusiastic. And it was just "throw it all out," kinda deal, you know? There wasn't so much pre-planning or solid direction before we actually stepped in the door of the studio and start writing.
Announcer: Drummer Neil Peart:
Neil: Each one for us is quite different from previous ones, and this one no less so, and part of it is based upon experience and maturity, and what you've learned really in, say, the two years between albums. This one is different in, I guess, some qualitative ways because working with a different producer for the first time, Rupert Hine, injected a bit of new input. But really it is a more internal thing because the producer, in our case, doesn't come in until the material is already written, so we had already been off in the country for a couple months, and we had written all the songs and more or less put them together. At that point, Rupert Hine came in and gave us really good suggestions, but they're to do with the interpretation of the material, so it's not exactly fundamental to it.
Announcer: Geddy Lee:
Geddy: I think every Rush album we try to kick off with a bang. And usually the first track on most of our albums is the kind of quintessential Rush track on the record, the most bold, I guess the boldest song. I think it's a good thing to kick off an album with something that's kind of explosive in a way.
Announcer: The explosive cut that opens Presto is "Show Don't Tell."
["Show Don't Tell" plays]
Announcer: Geddy Lee:
["Show Don't Tell" transitions to "Anagram (For Mongo)" in the background]
Geddy: We spent about two months writing, and preproducing, and about ten weeks, eleven weeks recording. That's quick. We spent more time writing than usual, and less time recording than usual, which I think is a better ratio. I think that's where you should spend your time: writing. Too few bands spend enough time perfecting their music, their songs, the actual skeleton of the thing. And then they go in and spend a long time writing it, and end up rewriting on the way, on the go. I think it's nice to be very happy with your material before you've started to record a single note. Because then you go in with such confidence, and then you can concentrate on the production side of things, and making those songs even better. That's how we do it now. We didn't always do it that way. I know records like Hemispheres, for example, we went into the studio without a note written, and we wrote the whole thing as we went. So I think we do it this way because we've done it the other way, and we see the results. And I think that we've learned through experience that this is the most sensible way, the most rewarding way, of putting a record together.
Announcer: Here's the title track from Presto.
["Presto" plays]
Announcer: Neil Peart on the song "Chain Lightning."
Neil [the same as his answer on Track 19, but here with "Chain Lightning" playing in the background]: I'm a weather fanatic. I really love weather and, you know, I watch the weather and look for a good weatherman, and one night I was watching it, and there are two incidents in that song that are synchronicity to one weather report where the weatherman showed a picture of sundogs and described them. And they're just two little points of light that appear at sunset, often in the winter when the sky is clear and crystalline, and they're like little prisms and they sit, I think, about ten degrees north and south of the setting sun. And they're just beautiful little diamonds of light and often times there's a circle of light, one line that connects them, so they're a really beautiful natural phenomenon, and I love the name, too: "sundogs" just has a great sound to it. And in that same weather forecast the weatherman announced a meteor shower that night, and so my daughter and I went out in the lake in the middle of the night and watched this meteor shower. So the whole idea of the song was "response," and how people respond to things, and it's a thing I've found a lot in traveling around the world too. It's not enough just to travel and see things, you have to respond to them. You have to feel them, and a lot of the thrust of that song is that how things are transferred, like chain lightning, or enthusiasm, or energy, or love, are things that are contagious, and if someone feels them, they're easily transferable to another person, or in the case of watching a meteor shower, it's made more special if there's someone else there, you know? "Reflected in another pair of eyes" is the idea that it's a wonderful thing already, just you and the meteor shower, but if there's someone else there with you to share it, then it multiplies, you know? It becomes exponentially a bigger experience, so "response" is a theme, again, that recurs in several of the songs, and was one of my probably dominant sub-themes in the writing.
Announcer: Geddy Lee:
["Hand over Fist" plays in the background]
Geddy: For me writing is the most exciting, and it's the most pleasurable aspect of anything that I do in this band. I think performing is probably the most difficult in the sense that, at this stage in my career I find it the least enjoyable. I like playing, but playing and performing are kinda different in the sense that performing comes along with touring and touring...you start getting into a whole other lifestyle change. You know, it's not that you can just simply go and play. It's never that simple anymore. You can't just play. You can at home. But to actually perform, and to tour from city to city to city, I find very difficult at this stage. It's just such an interruption of life to uproot yourself, and put yourself on a bus for half a year and, you know, go city to city to city to city on that kind of grueling pace, and performing night after night after night. So that's tough for me, and it's probably the least rewarding, even though those moments, those precious two hours on stage are very rewarding. There's twenty-two other hours of the day that are not so rewarding.
Announcer: From Presto, here's "The Pass."
["The Pass" plays]
Announcer: Alex Lifeson:
["The Big Money" plays in the background]
Alex: We've always been very close friends. We've always been more like family. And it goes as far as our crew. We've always been very close to the crew, and to the people we work with. I think it speaks well of the fact that we've lasted for...well, Geddy and I have been together for twenty-one years in this band, and with Neil it's been fifteen years. And we're still doing it, so we've done something right.
[Station Liners]
[Track 2] Hi, this is Geddy Lee of Rush. Presto, you're listening to radio magic.
[Track 3] Hi, this is Geddy Lee of Rush. I've got an idea; sit back and relax and let us play one.
[Track 4] Hi, this is Alex Lifeson of Rush, and Presto, you're listening to the magic of radio.
[Track 5] Hello, this is Neil Peart of Rush. Keep listening for more magic. Presto!
[Track 6] Hi, this is Neil Peart of Rush. If you're in a hurry to hear some Rush, don't touch your dial. Presto, you can hear it right here.
[Answers Only (Geddy Lee)]
[Track 7] Question: Do you think Presto is different from previous albums?
Geddy: A lot of our records, from record to record, don't really seem that different to me. It's only sort of the objective criticisms and replies from your fans, and your friends, that point out to you "wow, it really sounds different, you know?" And then you go "well I guess it does," 'cause it always sounds like us to me. But, there are some definite things we tried to do differently on this record, which I guess were successful, and the fact that we went in with a kind of a definitive picture of losing a lot of the high tech kind of synthesizer arrangements in favor of focusing the three-piece bass, drums, and guitar a bit more clearly. We definitely wanted to make more rock record, and I think that was successful, and a little bit of a change. I think there's more energy on this record than our last couple. And there was a definite move to spend more time thinking of vocal arrangements, and writing the vocals with a more natural melodic sense, and kind of fine-tuning the lyrics to suit that as well, so that I was never sitting there with, you know, a mouthful of words that wouldn't be musically sung. Whenever that was the case we tried to alter or lose a word, or change the flow a little bit to give me a more musical point to start with, you know? So, there was some definite things we want to accomplish with this record more than, say, the past couple.
[Track 8] Question: What do you think your new producer Rupert Hine brought to Presto?
Geddy: It's difficult to say, specifically. I can think of certain songs that would not have been the same without his input, and I can think of other songs that were really changed very little through the process. So I think basically the role of a producer - and I think Rupert served that role very well - was to be objective and to kind of point out areas of, perhaps, songwriting weaknesses or arrangement...I don't know...when something's not cohesive and not flowing. And I think he was very certain about some songs that were maybe written as a song more than others, and other songs that were kind of pieced together, and trying to make them all feel like they were flowing beginning-to-end. And he also brought kind of a different attitude towards performance and, you know, overall feel. I think he was a bit more in tune with a kind of looser feel than we normally play with. You know, we're usually going after that very uptight perfect...note perfect feel, and he was kind of pushing us to be a little looser in the studio, which I think benefited this record. So I guess it's hard to pin down. It's a lot of little things going into making a good producer, but basically, remaining objective, and keeping the best interest of the album as a whole, you know, is what a good producer's role should be, I think.
[Track 9] Question: The bass line of "Show Don't Tell" is kind of like a lead/bass line.
Geddy: Yeah, I think that kind of grows out of being a three-piece. And I think there's a lot more opportunities for a three-piece bass player to experiment with different ways of providing a foundation, and also in a rock format, you know, you don't have much call to do that kind of slap-funk style playing, which suits me 'cause I'm not that great at it [chuckles]. So being in this rock three-piece you can experiment with different ways of using the guitary side of the bass sound, which I think suits me, and also suits the nature of the band.
[Track 10] Question: Who played the keyboard parts on Presto?
Geddy: I played some...a lot of the fundamental keyboard parts were written by myself, programmed, and there was a lot that were added by Rupert; he played keyboards on the record as well. And there was a friend of mine from Toronto, Jason Sniderman, who is a very accomplished keyboardist, and he played some grand piano on about three or four tracks. That made a nice difference in sound, too. It was nice having a real piano on the record.
[Track 11] Question: You've always used foot pedals on stage to trigger keyboard parts. Are you going to have a real keyboard player on this tour?
Geddy: No, I think I'll be struggling through. I'm gonna let Alex help me out a bit more on this tour as well. He took some responsibility off my shoulders in the last tour. More and more, as our shows get more complex, our feet become more important in the triggering all these little devices, sequencers, and sampling devices to provide those little details and keyboard nuances.
[Track 12] Question: Who's voice is that at the end of "Chain Lightning" that goes "that's nice?"
Geddy: A lot of people think it's Neil. It's not Neil. It's actually Alex with his voice slowed down electronically. It was kind of snared as a joke while he was doing some acoustic guitar takes. Our engineer, Stephen Taylor, always keeps this little sampling device at the ready. And every time Alex would say something he would snare it in the sampling device, then start detuning it and playing it back to him, you know?
[Track 13] Question: On the song "Scars" you drop from your normal high range of singing into a lower range. Why?
Geddy: That's something that I probably will do more of in the future, because I like singing in a more natural range. The older I get, funnily enough, I think it has more to do with more sort of classic sense of singing than rock 'n' roll singing. I think those can be two very different things. It depends on the nature of the track. If it's a hard rock track it's very hard to sing in kind of dulcet tones. You know, you've gotta have energy in the vocal performance, and I think it's a different kind of vocal styling, so it depends on the track, and on that track, "Scars," there was room for me to do a different kind of vocal delivery.
[Track 14] Question: What is the song "Anagram" about?
Geddy: It doesn't really say one thing; it says a bunch of little things. And I think that's okay as long as it sounds good. You know, as long as it rolls off the tongue kind of thing. So I think different songs are different exercises to a degree, and I think if they feel like exercises then there's something wrong with the song. But if they can slip by in a kind of cohesive and, you know, fluid way, or if the effect is to be disjointed, sometimes that's what you're after. Sometimes you want it to be jarring, and disjointed, and nonsensical. So I think it depends what you're trying to do, and whether you've achieved it in your mind, you know, whether it actually worked. And "Anagram," I think, did work even though it's a game. The whole song is a game. The choruses are quite smooth and quite interesting. They have a nice sound to them, and they kind of mock the whole song itself, so I think it was effective there.
[Track 15] Question: How do you, Alex, and Neil write songs together?
Geddy: If Neil has written some lyrics before we've started, before we've actually got together, then we can either take those and write to them. But usually when we get started off small...just to start fresh and just to write some music, and write something that excites us musically. So we'll put verses together or sometimes we'll put three-quarters of the song together, and give it to Neil. Other times we'll just take the lyric and use it as a script, and write the song around it. So, really, we do both things and he'll spend most of the afternoon on his own, working on lyrics, and Alex and I'll be working together musically. And then usually in the evenings we get together, and start piecing these together and talking about what Neil has written, and he'll talk about what we've written and, you know, it's kind of an open forum for a little bit 'til we get an idea of which ideas will survive.
[Track 16] Question: How do you feel about singing Neil's lyrics?
Geddy: I have to understand them, and I have to feel something for them. And I have to decide whether my role is one of relating to these lyrics personally, or one of just having respect for them, and being able to interpret them, and deliver them properly. So both are fine with me, you know? If I agree with the lyrics all the better, because it gets me more emotionally involved in what they're saying, which is what I like to strive for. But sometimes I just like the way they sound, and sometimes I appreciate what they're saying, and just have respect for what's being done, and I can do that as well. But they have to be discussed fairly in-depth, unless it's very clear to me. Unless I get a very strong feeling from them right off the bat, and I'm quite happy with what they say, then I don't bother to discuss it. 'Cause it's my interpretation that I'm concerned with, but if I'm having trouble, then I have to talk to him about it and then we sit down and we try to point out...I try to at least act as an editor then, and say "I don't get this part of it," or "what I think you're trying to say is not really what you're saying here," you know, so I've become a sounding board for him as he does for something that I've written or something Alex and I have written together. He plays that role for us. You know, we bring him some piece of music that we think is real cool, and he might inform us that "it ain't real cool," you know, "it's not as cool as you think it is," or "it doesn't come across the way you think it's coming across," so we play that role with each other.
[Track 17] Question: What was your first big gig in the U.S. like?
Geddy: Oh, it was so exciting for us. You know, it was our first big...it was our first major tour. And everything was so new and exciting, and we didn't even have cases for our equipment yet, you know, we were just...really felt green out there. And we were opening for Uriah Heep, and the special guest artist was Manfred Mann's Earth Band, and we had exactly twenty four minutes to get on and get off the stage. And we were playing while people were coming in the building and, you know, it was kind of over before it started, it felt like. It was so quick, and we got a decent round of applause, and we came off feeling very triumphant. Also, it was the very first gig we'd ever done with Neil so...we'd never played in front of anyone with him before, and he was only in the band two weeks before that show, so it was a lot of expectation that moment.
[Track 18] Question: Capturing a good live performance on tape is not easy. Yet Rush has three live albums out. Why?
Geddy: Well, I guess we keep doing them because we never feel we're getting them right. The first live album we felt was just too raw, and didn't really feel like...we only had like a couple of nights. So I was like "this is how we played on those nights," and we didn't really feel it was indicative of our best night because unless you record a lot of dates you're not always gonna get your best night. You're gonna get your kind of average night, so I guess we felt that the first live album was "average Rush," and we kinda overcompensated with the next live album by, you know, doing a lot of kind of repair work in the studio, and we spent a lot of time mixing and making it sound as perfect as we can. And I think we overdid it to the point where it kinda drained the liveness out of it, and I thought this last one was very faithful. I thought it sounded very much...it was very live, and there was very little done to it, and we tried to keep the mixes fresh and as they should sound live, whether they did or not you never know.
[Answers Only (Neil Peart)]
[Track 19] Question: What is "Chain Lightning" about?
Neil: I'm a weather fanatic. I really love weather and, you know, I watch the weather and look for a good weatherman, and one night I was watching it, and there are two incidents in that song that are synchronicity to one weather report where the weatherman showed a picture of sundogs and described them. And they're just two little points of light that appear at sunset, often in the winter when the sky is clear and crystalline, and they're like little prisms and they sit, I think, about ten degrees north and south of the setting sun. And they're just beautiful little diamonds of light and often times there's a circle of light, one line that connects them, so they're a really beautiful natural phenomenon, and I love the name, too: "sundogs" just has a great sound to it. And in that same weather forecast the weatherman announced a meteor shower that night, and so my daughter and I went out in the lake in the middle of the night and watched this meteor shower. So the whole idea of the song was "response," and how people respond to things, and it's a thing I've found a lot in traveling around the world too. It's not enough just to travel and see things, you have to respond to them. You have to feel them, and a lot of the thrust of that song is that how things are transferred, like chain lightning, or enthusiasm, or energy, or love, are things that are contagious, and if someone feels them, they're easily transferable to another person, or in the case of watching a meteor shower, it's made more special if there's someone else there, you know? "Reflected in another pair of eyes" is the idea that it's a wonderful thing already, just you and the meteor shower, but if there's someone else there with you to share it, then it multiplies, you know? It becomes exponentially a bigger experience, so "response" is a theme, again, that recurs in several of the songs, and was one of my probably dominant sub-themes in the writing.
[Track 20] Question: Tell us about "Red Tide."
Neil: It's a bit of a selfish concern, really. I really love wildlife and I spend a lot of my time in the outdoors when I'm not working, so that's important to me. One of my main hobbies is cycling, so air quality kind of becomes of critical importance. So it is a selfish thing, and it's something I've written about before on the previous album, the song "Second Nature." So, again you want to say things in a way that is not only not preachy, but also not boring. So finding the images like "Second Nature," I was really fond of that analogy of saying "we want our homes to be a second nature." You know, that was, again, taking a common phrase and being able to twist it to say what you want it to say. So "Red Tide:" I was a little more adamant because I think the time is a little more critical, and I had to be firmer about it. But still there are ways of getting at it; to me there are jokes in there, too, that probably no one in the world will ever get. But in the first verse when I'm talking about "nature's new plague," and then "lovers pausing at the bedroom door to find an open store," and all that. To me, that was obviously referring to AIDS, but it was the irony of modern life. You know, where spontaneous love still certainly does occur, but here are two lovers who have just met in the middle of night, and they have to go find a store before they can consummate their new relationship. To me, when I put those things down, I have a smile, but I know that it's one that'll never be shared.
[Track 21] Question: What were your intentions in writing "The Pass?"
Neil: There was a lot I wanted to address in that song. It's probably one of the hardest ones I've ever written. I spent a lot of time on it, refining it, and even more doing research. There was one song previously, called "Manhattan Project," where I wanted to write about the birth of the nuclear age. Well, easier said than done, you know, especially when lyrics...you've got a couple of hundred words to say what you want to say, so each word counts, and each word had better be accurate. And so I found, in the case of the Manhattan Project, I was having to go back and read histories of the time, histories of the place, biographies of all the people involved. And that's not without its own rewards, but it's a lot of work to go to, to write a song, having to read a dozen books, and collate all your knowledge and experience just so you can write, you know, if the scientists were in the desert sand, well make sure they were and why, and all that. So with this song it was the same. I felt concerned about it but, at the same time, I didn't want the classic thing of "oh, life's not so bad. It's worth living," and all that. I didn't want one of those pat, kind of, clichéd, patronizing statements. So I really worked hard to find out true stories, and among the people that I write to are people who are going to university at MIT, and then collecting stories from them about people they've known and what they felt, and why the people had taken this desperate step, and all that. And trying really hard to understand something that, fundamentally to me, is totally un-understandable. I just can't relate to it at all, but I wanted to write about it. And the facet that I most wanted to write about was to demythologize it, the same as with "Manhattan Project," to demythologize the nuclear age, and the same thing this facet, of taking the nobility out of it, you know, and saying that "yes it's sad," and "it's a horrible tragic thing if someone takes their own lives," but let's not pretend it's a hero's end. It's not a triumph. It's not a heroic epic. It's a tragedy. You know, and it's a personal tragedy for them, but much more so for the people left behind, and I really started to get offended by the Samurai kind of values that were attached to it like "here's a warrior that just felt it was better to die with honor." All that kind of offended me. I can understand someone making the choice; it's their choice to make. I can't relate to it, and I could never imagine for myself, but it still, I thought, was a really important thing to try to get down.
[Track 22] Question: What is "Scars" about?
Neil: I think it's part of everyone's experience that a certain record reflects a certain period of their life. And that's a pleasurable scar, you know, there's a mark left on you, a psychological fingerprint left by a very positive experience. Like I say: music is an easy one, but it translates to so many other parts of life where it's a given that, for instance, the sense of smell is one of the strongest forces in your memory. Where a given smell will suddenly conjure up a whole time of your life. And, again, it triggers another scar, it triggers another psychological imprint that was left by a pleasurable thing. So I was just, again, the metaphor of scars, and using it to say, as the song does, that these are positive and negative aspects of life that have both left their mark. Trying to make it universal, it's not autobiographical, and I say I took a whole autobiographical story of my own and made it one line, basically. But there are other things in there, parts of life that I have responded to, in the sense of joy and in the sense of compassion. And there's the exaltation of walking down a city street and feeling like you're above the pavement. And Christmas in New York is the perfect time to feel that, really, where you just get charged up by the whole energy, and the positive feelings of it all.
[Track 23] Question: Tell us about the title track "Presto."
Neil: It's setting up the drama of...you know, according to the Big Bang theory and so on, we are essentially made of stardust, and according to evolutionary theory it is the oceans that run in our veins, so I was taking very factual scientific things, and trying to romanticize them. And then taking the romantic aspect of a plane, taking off at night above the lights, and all that. And then stabbing in that, you know, thing of wondering about somebody, you know, some particular person down there among those millions of lights. So it was a conscious attempt to do that. And the idealistic wish that if you could change things, you would fix it up alright.
[Track 24] Question: In the liner notes for Presto you thank Mike Roberts 'for the acorn of "Superconductor."' Who is he?
Neil: He's a friend of mine who's actually a scientist by profession. I had written him saying "hurry up and invent the superconductor," you know, just as a joke, because it's really the work he's involved in. So he wrote back saying that it was a great idea for a song, and he wrote a little poem based upon that and I thought "yeah, that's a great idea." So I kind of stole his idea, so I thought I should give him the credit.
[Track 25] Question: Tell us about "Hand over Fist."
Neil: This was a time when I adopted a dramatic scene, and I wanted to have these images of the two people walking along arguing, but it was by no means autobiographical...completely invented. But it was a kind of thing that I wanted to express, basically. It's something everyone has experienced and certainly it does, in a sense, reflect my experience. But it's not about me or anyone I know; it's about a whole lot of people, you know, and probably most everyone has those kind of experiences of the failure of communication. The failure of contact, again, is a theme that I've addressed before, and I've tried to keep refining it, and a lot of times I'm writing songs about the same things but really trying to get it right this time, and coming back to it. But that was an important one: the essence of contact, too, of how you stop hostility and how you calm it down, and the hand over fist idea.
[Track 26] Question: What is "Available Light" about?
Neil: It's a fundamental expression of hope, of saying that, you know, "I'm not going to look at the world through rose-colored lenses. I'm not gonna look at it through black lenses." The available light in photography is what's there, you know, this is what it is, and that's the way I want to see it. So I want to go to the savannas of Africa. I want to go to the cities of America, and see them as they are, and see them the way they look, not see them in a film with a filmmaker's slant on them or see them in a nature documentary, which is necessarily sensational, and slanted for the most dramatic moments. I want to see what it is. I want to go to China and see the way Chinese people live. Every place I go, you know, get out and see it the way it is in the available light.
[Answers Only (Alex Lifeson)]
[Track 27] Question: Do you see Presto as a step in a direction away from previous Rush records?
Alex: Most of our albums end in a cycle. They seem to carry on for three or four records, then we finish up with a live one, and it's either that last one or the one that follows the live one that establishes a new era, if you will, or closes one off. I think with this record it's gone back to, maybe, a more direct rock style that we have always enjoyed playing, and combine that with a lot of the things that we've experimented with, and explored over the last couple of records, from Hold Your Fire and Power Windows, specifically. I think, in a lot of ways, this record's a lot more accessible in the sound, in the directness of it. The production isn't as, perhaps, involved as Hold Your Fire was. There was more reliance on the keyboards on that record, which we've tended to use much more as a backdrop, and as a coloring, rather than as a primary instrument. So certainly, as a guitarist, [chuckles] I prefer that route.
[Track 28] Question: How did the cover for Presto come about?
Alex: Hugh Syme has been doing our covers since the third record. What we did with this one is: Presto was a leftover name from the live album, and we thought "well, it's a good title for an album. Let's use it for the next studio." It played up on the idea of "presto," and the magic, and that, and left it with Hugh. You know, "watch me pull a rabbit out of the hat," kind of thing, and he came up with the cover, and we immediately thought it was pretty funny. It's nice to have a laugh [chuckles].
[Track 29] Question: Who is the Wrabit Wrangler?
Alex: He was the actual rabbit wrangler, who put all the rabbits together for the shoot. It wasn't easy to find all those rabbits.
[Track 30] Question: Has your friendship with Geddy and Neil been a critical factor in the longevity of the band?
Alex: I think it's certainly been important. Plus, the fact that we love what we do. I mean, touring makes that a little more difficult, increasingly as you get older. It becomes less of that, you know, "wild dream come true" kind of thing that it was when we were younger, when we started out. I mean, fifteen years later, it's a little tough to sit around in a hotel room, and on a bus, and in a dressing room, all for two hours of the day. You feel like your life is passing you by. But we still really like to play, and we love to record. I mean, we had a great time doing this record, like a really, really great time. And I don't think we'd ever wanna really give that up, so long as everything else around it worked well. The friendship is important, the fact that we like the music, and it's a vehicle for Geddy and myself creatively, as well as for Neil lyrically, so it's got everything right going for it.
[Track 31] Question: Would you agree that Rush is a "thinking man's hard rock band?"
Alex: Yeah, we've always been that way, other than the first album. Well, when Neil started writing lyrics, he felt it was a lot more important to write about something that had some kind of depth to it, that you don't listen to once and that's it. Something that you have to sort of digest a bit, and certainly his lyrics are like that. I mean, I have a tough time understanding his lyrics, and getting the full meaning of his imagery out of those lyrics. But, in the long run, I think it's more valuable. You tend to stay with those kind of albums and songs a lot longer. They make you think, and they just last that much longer.
[Track 32] Question: Has drawing the line between creating art and selling a product ever been a problem for Rush?
Alex: Well, so far it really hasn't. We've managed not to compromise, really, throughout our whole career. I mean, the way our deal reads: we are responsible for making a record, making a jacket, and delivering the whole thing to the record company. And they take it, and they put it in the stores, and hopefully push it so that they can sell lots and lots of them, so that they can make their money back. This is the whole idea. It doesn't always work that way, but this is the idea. So we've always had the freedom to do what we've wanted. Now, that's easy to say when you can sell a million records, and not have to worry about pressure from the record company, or pressure from management, or any of that outside pressure. But we've done something right, so we've just carried that on, doing it the way we think is right without very much concern, really, for what will sell, actually no concern for that. But, as I said, it's easy to say when you are selling records. If things were different, I don't think we would think differently, but it's tough to comment on that.
[Track 33] Question: Has Rush ever considered corporate sponsorship?
Alex: No, we've been approached, but we've always stayed away from it. A lot of these companies make it very tempting. They're willing to pay you lots and lots and lots of money to endorse their products. These days, it's gone beyond just a banner on a stage, or the product's name on a ticket. They want the artists, who people connect with, to go out and endorse the product. So that's something that we've always really been against. We never felt that it had much to do with music. Where I think it's helpful is if there's a young act that needs the help. I know what it was like for us for the first five years. We were heavily in debt for that whole period, and it would be nice if there was support for that kind of thing. But, unfortunately, it's those people that the majority of people don't really connect with, 'cause they don't know them, so it's a Catch-22, and they don't end up getting the support. It's the same story when you get into this position. A guitar company calls you up and says "look, would you endorse our products? We'll give you twenty guitars." Now, when you can afford to buy twenty guitars, is not when you need them.
[Track 34] Question: Rush is known for its really diehard fans. Why do you think they're so dedicated?
Alex: Well, I like to think that it's the music that we provide. You know, we're not a "let's party all night long" kind of rock band. We've always felt it was important to have a little more substance to what we do. We try really hard - when we make a record, and when we play live - we really try hard to be the best that we can. And I think our audience appreciates that, and they recognize that, and it makes us a little more special to them. And it's a very satisfying thing for us. It's great to be able to talk to, you know, listeners who, on the one hand, say "I got the new album. I really like these tracks, but I think this song really kind of stinks," and "I think it stinks because..." You know, they're not...It's an important criticism, and I think we all value that.
Promo CD ID: PRCD 3200-2
Label: Atlantic
Tracks:
1: Rush Profile (27:51)
2-6: Station Liners (0:23)
7-18: Answers Only (Geddy Lee)
19-26: Answers Only (Neil Peart)
27-34: Answers Only (Alex Lifeson)
Answers Only (tracks 7-34) total time: 26:39
Credits:
Coordinator: Liam Birt
Executive Producer: Judy Libow, Perry Cooper
Interviewer: Dan Neer, James Fahey
Producer: David Bailes, DeWitt Nelson, Neer Perfect Productions
Recorded by: Valerie Alter
Special Thanks: Ray Danniels, Peggi Cecconi, & Kim Garner
The "Wrabit Wrangler" Alex refers to on Track 29 is credited as Mark Demont of "Fins, Feathers, and Furs" on the album's liner notes.