Cities Made of Song, 1976 - 2112 by Rush
"I wish that it might come to pass / Not fade like all my dreams / Just think of what my life might be / In a world like I have seen."
There is an interesting phrase bouncing around the world of music discussion, by the name of "dad rock". Nobody can seem to precisely define this funny little term (Dad Rock, comma, the Horror of), but one apparently knows it when one hears it. Just about any rock or metal tune before 1990 can be brushed with this paint - and as generations age, that boundary creeps distressingly closer to the century mark.
In my case, any accusations of liking "dad rock" will be quite literally true: like my unfortunate sense of humor, and my less unfortunate nose, I inherited my taste in music from my dad. Growing up in the Seventies and Eighties, he was steeped in the heyday of rock's popularity and counted himself among Rush's adolescent legionaries. He perked up when I mentioned that this was the next thing I was writing, actually, and enthused at me about the album "2112", along with "Moving Pictures". Dad saw the band at the Spectrum arena in Philadelphia on 22 May 1981 when they were touring for the latter album. He recalled a haze of pot smoke wafting above the crowd and being forced to bring along his kid brother for the occasion.
At the same time, Dad was tuning in every Saturday afternoon at 3:00 to watch Tom Baker as Doctor Who. Starting in 1979, WHYY-TV, Philly's local PBS affiliate, broadcast Fourth Doctor episodes on an ever-shifting schedule, sometimes Saturdays, sometimes weeknights. The only constant was that, for four years, young Philadelphians could reliably tune in to follow the curious adventures of the bohemian Time Lord.
It's notable that during a period when Doctor Who was increasingly challenged by glossy American imports licensed by ITV, the show was beginning to find purchase in the United States for the first time. PBS affiliate stations were blazing the way, buying the license to broadcast Doctor Who on the cheap and introducing it to a new generation which became unexpectedly enchanted by this curious import.
It must have been a little shocking for fans in Philadelphia when, after WHYY Channel 12's omnibus broadcast of Logopolis on 4 December 1982, it was announced that no further adventures of the Doctor would be broadcast by the station. The expense of the license was cited as the reason for the chop from the schedules, prompting Philadelphia's very own Doctor Who cancellation crisis a couple of years early. Nevertheless, it wasn't to continue long, as an outpouring of strong fan opinion forced WHYY to reconsider. The $32,000 that the fans raised also helped to grease the wheels a bit.
The official statement from WHYY following this affair, seven months after the would-be cancellation, reads with the bemused tone of stiffs who just don't "get it, man".
"Partly because of a flood of cards, letters and calls, 'Dr. Who' will live again on Channel 12.
"Tomorrow at 6:15 p.m. the public TV station will air a 90-minute 'Dr. Who Challenge' that will feature the last show of the series that ended with Who's apparent death and the first installment of a new series in which he is resurrected as a new character. It will not be the same Who, however. Tom Baker has been replaced in the title role by Peter Davison. [...] Mike Quattrone, the station's program consultant, said many fans were upset when the British sci-fi series went off the air last year."
One imagines that Mike Quattrone had a talent for understatement.
The show would continue to enjoy popular attention and support on Channel 12 for some years, now featuring adventures from the Fifth Doctor onward, as well as other Doctors before Tom. It slipped later into the schedules in 1989, dying a quiet death with the end of the Classic series.
Sorry, this is an awfully long time to go without talking about Rush. The point I'm driving at is that, clearly, this underdog program resonated strongly with a certain segment of the young population in America. This is the same generation that was becoming enchanted by another import, this one from Canada. Guess who?
Rush had their start in Toronto in 1968, a rather low-key beginning which saw a revolving door of participants which had stabilized with guitarist Alex Lifeson and bassist Geddy Lee as its core duo by 1971. Their eponymous first LP finally landed in 1974, bearing a striking resemblance to a band that sounds nothing like Rush, falling into the same Led Zeppelin knock-off territory that most hard rock bands experienced in their adolescent years. The breakout single Working Man is their sole standout track from this period. Dropping original drummer John Rutsey shortly thereafter, the band picked up Neil Peart instead, who also took over as the chief lyricist and drastically altered the band's trajectory.
With a fresh confidence and a new, progressive bent, the band put out "Fly By Night", a vastly more accomplished record than their last. As well as being quite good, it marked the arrival of Neil Peart's own philosophical leanings in the lyrical content of the band; the title of its first track, Anthem, should alert you to the fact that we're now in Ayn Randy territory.
For those who don't have the displeasure to be acquainted with it, Objectivism is the right-libertarian philosophy formulated by Russian-American writer Ayn Rand between the 1930s and 1960s. It's an ideology all about happiness and accomplishment, as long as you only give a crap about your own. Objectivism expounds the value of so-called rational egoism, the natural expression of which, Rand says, is laissez-faire capitalism. I won't go on, but the point is that it's a fairly stupid and socially irresponsible ideology, and so naturally has a strong following today among certain pundits and would-be intellectuals.
Unedifying political themes aside, the band's more sophisticated songs on "Fly By Night" heralded a new era for the band, which almost came to a screeching halt with the fairly underwhelming "Caress by Steel" in 1975. Alex Lifeson would reflect several years later that the icy reception to this record almost killed his confidence in the band, which struggled to fill concert venues while performing tracks from the LP. Challenged by record executives with threats that there wouldn't be a future for Rush unless they moved in a more commercial direction, naturally, the next thing they did was go further down the prog rabbit hole.
You have to admire the balls of this decision, which could very well have killed the band had they not managed to pull it off. One has the sense that Rush felt that if they couldn't make it doing what they loved, they didn't want to make it at all. As it happens, "2112" would prove their greatest success so far, providing a much-needed win for the prog camp just before the punk rock revolution was due, and inspiring a new generation of rock and metal musicians along the way.
It would probably be fair to say that technical and progressive metal in general owe a good deal of their existence to the success of this record, with members of Death and Dream Theater among others counting themselves as Rush fans in their early years. "2112" proved that a harder rock sound and a progressive bent were perfectly compatible in the right hands. And there were no righter hands in all of the world of music than Alex Lifeson, Geddy Lee, and Neil Peart - respectively, one of the best guitarists, one of the best bassists, and one of the best drummers to ever live. Combined, they were a musical trio of uncommon power - one might even say unparalleled.
This talent is borne out by the title track, which in true prog tradition spans the entire A-side of the LP. The twenty-minute tune begins with a salvo of pounding drums and guitar, a section titled Overture in a clear reference to Tchaikovsky, complete with the fire of artillery guns. At last, it's broken by Geddy's plaintive Biblical refrain, "And the meek shall inherit the Earth," before it goes into the driving strains of The Temples of Syrinx.
With the implication of a devastating war to start us off, the story fast forwards into a tribute to the plot of Rand's novella Anthem, with occasionally eye-rolling consequences. Still, the song is never bad, as it swings through its parables about conformity and artistic expression, some of which even verge on the thought-provoking. Really, the song comes across exactly as intended: an epic rock opus meant to show off the versatility and complexity of which the band was more than capable.
The B-side isn't really worth talking about, in my opinion. Something for Nothing and A Passage to Bangkok are the only songs there that really stick in the memory. But that title track is so incredibly good that nothing else really matters, least of all the lyrics.
When I asked him about the philosophical content of the album, Dad admitted that he thought next to nothing about it at the time and internalized none of the record's themes. Despite the imperfect level of understanding, he did say that he was impressed back then by the sophistication of the songs and said that there really wasn't anything like Rush in the popular music of the time.
I was still surprised to hear him say that he didn't think there were many other Rush fans around where he was back in the early Eighties. I'm fairly sure that this is a case of the memory cheating, because I know for a fact that there would have been scads of them everywhere. It's very possible that the kind of people who were enthusiastic about Rush at the time were also the type to not be very sociable about it - all staring at their own belly buttons instead of talking to each other, you could conjecture. But whether they knew about it or not, there was a sort of kinship to be found in this shared love of something quirky and different, one which has persisted to this day even now that the band has broken up and Neil Peart has passed on.
I'm sure that Dad wasn't really aware of the Doctor Who fan battalions in his city, either, but that $32,000 of raised money really does point to a robust community. On a local level, or a global one, that bond of community over a strange little band - or a strange little TV show - can really do some marvelous things.
For example, it was Dad's interest in Doctor Who, dormant all those years, which arose again after the 2005 revival, and eventually convinced me to give the show a look. A decade later, here I am, even dorkier than the old man before me. Success?
The Face of Evil is next.
(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 7 May 2021.)
