![]() Limelight isa very rewarding read for the Rush fan because it offers a balanced portraitincorporating multiple viewpoints for each of the albums it covers, which isimportant because so many of the albums from this era remain controversialwithin the band's fanbase. Hine is aself-effacing interview subject here, insisting his role was merely to providean outside point-of-view, but the band members reveal his powerful influence oncrafting a spartan sound and Geddy Lee's choices for a lower, more naturalsinging style on the album. Though the result would have asleek sound light on guitars, it found the band moving away from the techobsession that drove much of their work in this decade and returning to more atrio dynamic with keyboards pushed to the background as they continued to chasetheir interests in developing songwriting and arranging skills. ![]() The book winds down with a look at the Presto album, which teamed the bandwith another pop-expert producer in Rupert Hine. Collins makes an intriguing interview subject in these chapters, freelyadmitting his irreverent, taboo-busting approach to recording the band and howhe'd do things differently in some respects after learning more aboutguitar-driven rock in subsequent productions. Theold-guard Rush fans blanched at the muting of the guitar on these albums andthe embrace of a sleek sound totally defined by synthesizers and sampling - butthe band defends these albums in a passionate, typically articulate manner,making the case that this is where their ambitions lay at the time as theysought to move beyond being players' players and developing as songwriters andarrangers. Though Collins would later become associatedwith hard rock via productions for bands like Queensryche, he was best known atthis time as a producer of pop and dance music with an electronic edge. You also get a lot of detail on the songs, which aresome the darkest, toughest work of their career from a lyrical standpoint andthe last stand for really intense, heavy guitar work on a Rush album until the'90s.įrom there, you get into the most controversial era ofthe band's career, the mid-'80s venture into high-tech record-making that foundthem working with Peter Collins. The drama heightens with the sessions for Grace Under Pressure, which become acrash course in self-production for the band when their initial producer dropsout on them at the eleventh hour and their final choice proves too indecisiveto guide the sessions. Both sides get to weigh on their misgivings about the musical approach and the difficulties of the recording sessions, while Popoff occupies a middle space that makes a case for how the album craftily blends electronics with the lush production values of their past to create a hybrid of enduring worth. ![]() The group's partnership with producer Terry Brown comes to an end with Signals, where the group's interest in new technology and new wave sounds drove what was sadly a permanent split with Brown. Stage Left, the narrative begins to experience the kind of twists that characterize a thriller. You get keen insight into the nature of Neil Peart's lyrics and their inspirations, the mixture of technically complex recording and between-sessions horseplay that was a hallmark of their sessions around this time and the desire to modernize in both the use of synthesizer technology and incorporation of new, non-prog/ hard rock influences that would come to define their work in this decade.Īfter a chapter on the perfectionist tendencies that informed their live album Exit. Limelight begins with the band at the height of their commercial powers: explorations of the classic Permanent Waves and Moving Pictures albums take up 90 pages, nearly the first third of the book. The band's fans will be happy to know the latest book, Limelight: Rush In The '80s maintains the same depth of detail as it confronts what is arguably the most hotly-debated era of the band's career. It offered more information on the band's formative years than any book to date and thus raised expectation for the next book in the proposed trilogy. ![]() With Anthem, Martin Popoff initiated his ultimate Rush book project: a history of the band that mixes deep-dive explorations of each album and in-depth interviews drawn from a previously untapped archive of interviews with the group's members and their inner circle.
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