Location: Frankfurt Am Main / Festhalle / Germany
Date: Sunday, 29.05.2011
It’s not every day that Rush come rolling into Europe. This is one of those legendary bands that can’t and won’t grow old. Besides an extraordinary body of work, a treasure trove of unique musical artistry, this is a band that’s always had a killer sense for a refined dose of fun, juicy and deliberate mockery, often at their own expense. Even though the guys are well into their sixth decade, they keep an incredibly youthful energy and a relentless drive.
A Rush concert is a special experience. It runs three and a half hours. Built in two parts with a 15-minute break in between. On top of that, it’s spiced up with extra short films full of cheeky humor, where the lead roles are split between Neil Peart, Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson. In short, a Rush show is an event that shakes you up and wakes you up, from the inside out and back again. It pulls you into a world all its own, a Rush world you’d happily stay in and never wake up from again.
The new world tour is called “Time Machine”! This time, the guys only came down to the old European continent (not counting the British Isles) a handful of times. They played a few dates in Scandinavia and booked just one proper European date in the whole tour, announced for 29.05.2011 in Frankfurt, Germany, a good 800km from Ljubljana. No long deliberation was needed, because willpower was seriously unstoppable this time. When these guys promise to play the whole “Moving Pictures” album live, a classic that celebrated the 30th anniversary of its “birth” last year, going to a Rush concert simply becomes an absolute must.
Rush are grand gentlemen, but at the same time (and thankfully) they still make no secret of their endearingly childish side. An event like a Rush concert is an unforgettable adventure, a constant interweaving of intense feelings, created by the contrast of an exceptional performance, stage sets, the play of light and the sheer cheek of the film animation. The many moods strung together over the course of the band’s show are incredible in their seeming reality!
The Festhalle in Frankfurt, which holds just under 20,000 people, had sold out long ago. The concert was announced for 6:30 pm, and about an hour earlier the place was already boiling over. When the local promoter’s staff came to remove the first barrier, a euphoric roar went up from a delirious crowd of thousands, who stormed up the wide steps leading to the vast concrete plaza in front of the main entrance. The place went off in an instant, flooded with the adrenaline rush that the word “Rush” demands. But a second barrier held them back. A little more patience was needed.
It’s half past five in the afternoon, a quarter to six to be exact. People are crammed in front of the only merch stand in the whole place and nothing is moving. No. I forgot about the T-shirt. I can’t afford to miss a second, the stands are calling! The hall is packed to the last corner, surely 18,000 people, an even bigger crowd than the day before at the Iron Maiden show (same venue), even though both concerts were officially sold out. This time the seats at the back were completely full too. And people from all corners of the world. From heaps of Poles, Italians, Spaniards, a handful of hardy Slovenes, to visitors from Asia, even Chile, the USA and the United Kingdom.
They’re punctual! It’s half past six, the hall goes dark and every eye is on a short film full of that infectious brand of Rush humor, set in the hypothetical life (“it could happen”) of the distant galaxy of Willowdale, starring a loopy, overweight Professor Schlobowitz (Alex Lifeson), who invents a time machine! A lot of it revolves around sausages this time. Throughout the whole concert, not just the short film, where the greedy Schlobowitz nearly chokes on a sausage. Next comes a demonstration of the device in front of the Irish cop O’Malley (Neil Peart) and a mustachioed innkeeper with a monocle (Geddy Lee). For the experiments they pick the band Rush and their song The Spirit Of Radio, in a Finnish-Russian polka version, then a “disco Amanda Lear late seventies” version and a lazily shimmering “jazzy funk” version. Not one of them satisfies anyone present, until the fat inventor fires up one last “super dooper” sound on the miracle machine, accidentally hits the red button too, and it brings us out of the galaxy and the Gershon Rock joint, straight into the Festhalle in Frankfurt, where they burst out with the real The Spirit Of Radio (“Permanent Waves”, 1980), played by the real Rush.
It’s hard to describe the chain reaction that swept through the hall in those moments. A sea of hands in the air up in the stands, the floor going completely nuts up to halfway back,…. Euphoria everywhere. The trio’s classic opening punch is followed, through blasphemous strobing lights, by Geddy’s jump in his new All Star sneakers, and the band rides without a pause straight into the first real treat of an exceptional set list, Time Stand Still from the classic album “Hold Your Fire” (1987). Songs from that album aren’t exactly common, and Time Stand Still blasted us almost straight into the feel of the live album “A Show Of Hands”. Here Alex Lifeson (with a pick in his mouth, of course) jumped in on the synths in the chorus, while individual chords had the real pedigree of guitar-synth playing. The flux of positive energy had only just started flowing nicely in the hall when the next surprise followed. The title track of the album “Presto” (1989). Alex picks up a violet-red Gibson Les Paul and opens the song in an acoustic manner. Here Alex once again wandered a fair bit across his pedals, while the song brought Geddy some relief when it comes to straining his vocal cords.
A camera beneath the stage, cameras on the floor, giant microphones on stage pointed at the crowd. What could that mean? Rush are recording the concert. They’re probably recording every show of this tour, so we can look forward to a new DVD from it.
On stage, to the left and right of Peart’s drum fortress, stand replicas of a time machine. A classic. On the “Snakes And Arrows” tour the stage was decorated with stacks of chicken rotisseries, on the “Vapour Trails” tour with washing machines. Peart’s drums were decked out with markings tied to the current “Time Machine” tour, and so was his headgear.
The choice of repertoire is interesting, alternating faster, punchier songs with ones that call for a more sophisticated and multifaceted sound. So Presto was followed by the pounding Stick It Out, then by the sonically and melodically richer Working Them Angels from the latest album “Snakes And Arrows” (2007). Soon we’re back at “Counterparts” with the one-of-a-kind instrumental Rush classic Leave That Thing Alone, which brought a lovely new twist to the set list. Exceptional presence on stage, tight, focused, full-throttle, a gorgeous pacing of the song with the bombastic escapades of Neil Peart’s drum fills. They don’t miss. Not even in their dreams.
Geddy’s voice doesn’t go as high as it once did. So at times he was careful not to burn through his strength. In the opening The Spirit Of Radio he tweaked the vocal line a bit to a lower register in the chorus. Another such standout moment was Closer To The Heart in the second half of the show (the chorus again). Otherwise, though, his vocals built up as the night went on. At the end of the first half Geddy was excellent especially in Marathon and Subdivisions, while in the entire second half he sang the “Moving Pictures” album brilliantly. The first half also had room for a brand-new song, BU2B (in Geddy’s words: “I was Brought up to Believe”), which was among the loudest moments of the show, since it opens with an almost metalized lead guitar phrase from Alex Lifeson. Of course there’s no going without Freewill, and a true closing “crescendo” of the synthesizer era of Rush’s catalog flooded the hall when Marathon (“Power Windows”, 1985) and Subdivisions (“Signals”, 1982) came one after the other. Here Geddy takes on a triple role, combining keyboardist, bassist and singer in one. The difference is of course in the use of sounds: in the excellent Marathon, which booms through the hall at the line “…shot of the gun…”, it’s followed by Subdivisions, where Geddy works much like in Tom Sawyer and the lead sound is taken over by a recap of the primitive synthesizer tones that appeared at the end of the seventies (Oberheim brand), combined with a Moog. At the same time Geddy of course plays the bass lines on pedals. Fantastic. The middle instrumental section of Marathon once again takes your breath away, a showcase of the excellent harmonic harmony between all three building blocks on stage. In Marathon Lifeson uses a Gibson Les Paul with a built-in tremolo arm. Through a few gorgeous, fully crafted rolls from Neil Peart the last note of the first half rings out, and Rush take leave of the audience for a good fifteen minutes.
In the meantime a counter appears on the video panel, counting the years down from 1974 toward 1980. When the number 1980 shows up, the second half of the concert opens. A film. Again a barrel of laughs, as the lead roles alternate between Geddy Lee (director Cecil), Neil Peart (cameraman Percy) and Alex Lifeson (manager Ray Danniels). It all revolves around an invention again, and a few conversations bring tears of laughter (Geddy to Alex: “What a fascinating tuft you’ve got by your nose, can I comb it out?”).
Next comes the performance of the “Moving Pictures” album! In full. Vocally excellent! Of course the hall erupts in euphoria when the trio hits Tom Sawyer. The peak of the “Moving Pictures” performance is of course the more complex Camera Eye, Witch Hunt is cut with a bristling metal riff that makes the hall flash, and at the close the very pleasant Vital Signs sounds, a half-reggae song with a great melancholic drama-effect chorus! YYZ stands out in this lineup as the oddball of all Rush oddballs, and the crowd thunderously backs every note of this famous “S.O.S.” instrumental by the band.
The end of the second part is extremely interesting. A new Caravan follows, then a drum solo called “Love For Sale”, which is one of the highlights of the concert all by itself. If any drum solo is justifiable at concerts, it’s definitely Neil Peart’s. It’s a solo you can’t get enough of watching and listening to, and one where you never get the feeling that someone is stealing your time. The drums are rotating. Neil moves between kits during the solo, with percussion stacked up on one side and classic drums on the other. Of course, plenty of marimba was used too.
Finally something for the connoisseurs of seventies Rush. Here comes Closer To The Heart, followed by the first two parts of 2112’s Overture, which keep firing up the crowd. The choice of the newer Far Cry as the closer is interesting, and of course it doesn’t go without pyrotechnics.
The obligatory encore surprises with La Villa Strangiato, where Alex doesn’t treat us to the skit known from the live release “Rush In Rio” (2003), when he introduces Neil as “on skins Mr. Milton Banana” and Geddy as “The guy from Ipanema” and ends the skit with the remark: “I hate Getz!”. Too bad Rush didn’t spice up Frankfurt with that too. The band tackles the song completely differently from what we’re used to, and once again that magical stage chemistry of the trio fascinates, embodied in an exceptional performance of this excellent but fairly demanding instrumental. And to finish? Working Man. But with a cheeky reggae intro. A welcome twist, especially for a band that’s surely sick to death of playing this song on stage throughout their long career.
The light show is another element that creates the hypnosis of Rush concerts. Besides the rich film animation, where Rush combine a sophisticated shock element with an innate sense of healthy humor, the audience gets a constant barrage of a multicolored palette of spotlight beams, lasers and pyrotechnics.
It’s ten o’clock! The concert is over. A parody of the comedy “I Love You, Man” appears on the screen, showing the goings-on backstage after a Rush concert, as Jason Segel and Paul Rudd, the biggest Rush fans in the history of planet Earth, finally meet their “trio fantastikus” (Rush). They sneak backstage with fake “Access All Areas” passes (“valid” for three seasons) and, among other things, ruin Neil Peart’s sandwich.
In short. Even when they wrap up the show, they don’t let you breathe. And that’s that. The Rush world is a real fascination, a musical world that grips you tight with its essence and doesn’t release you from the bosom of its hypnotic daze. It’s a feeling you want to last. When the lights finally come on, that feeling just stays. And as you make your way out of the hall, it’s with you. It’s with you the day after too,…
The “Time Machine” tour rolls on into the summer, and this fall the band’s new studio album, titled “Clockwork Angels”, comes out. Let’s hope Rush will soon come back to Europe on a new tour to promote the new studio album. A Rush concert keeps its pedigree as a major attraction and a synonym for a grand concert spectacle. If you want music on stage to touch the deepest corner of your soul, the only real cure is to go see Rush live and soak up the magical world of Rush music. Three and a half hours of out-of-this-world playing from a Canadian band of modest size (a trio), brimming with a first-class feel for good, honest rock n’ roll fun. Pure musical perfectionism in human form, on stage!
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Setlist:
1.The Spirit of Radio
2.Time Stand Still
3.Presto
4.Stick It Out
5.Workin’ Them Angels
6.Leave That Thing Alone
7.Faithless
8.BU2B
9.Freewill
10.Marathon
11.Subdivisions
—second set—
12.Tom Sawyer
13.Red Barchetta
14.YYZ
15.Limelight
16.The Camera Eye
17.Witch Hunt
18.Vital Signs
19.Caravan
20.Drum Solo
21.Closer to the Heart
22.2112 Part I: Overture
23.2112 Part II: The Temples Of Syrinx
24.Far Cry
—encore—
25.La Villa Strangiato
26.Working Man
