HeadRUSH

After 35 years of crit­i­cism, Rush is now con­sid­ered cool

By Christo­pher Bor­relli | Tri­bune reporter

April 15, 2009

 

 

If you have waited decades for the sig­nal to come out of the closet and declare your alle­giance to “The Holy Tri­umvi­rate,” as Jason Segal dubs Rush in “I Love You, Man,” con­sider this your offi­cial notice.

 After 35 years as one of rock music’s most per­sis­tent punch lines — the singer sounds like a girl, the songs are long and pedan­tic, some fans are obses­sive, the band is indul­gent and Cana­dian — Rush is sud­denly cool.

In fact, even more remark­ably, lik­ing Rush is cool.

“You heard right,” said TBS sports announcer Chip Caray, grand­son of leg­endary Chicago Cubs announcer Harry Caray. “I’m a fan of Rush, to put it mildly. I tell peo­ple, and they go, ‘Really?’ which is sad. How many hate what they do? [Rush enjoys] what they do. One song goes, ‘The pride of pur­pose in an unre­ward­ing job.’ I’m a 44-year-old who quotes Rush — so be it. I’m proud to be a fan, and I don’t mind say­ing it. We’re every­where now.”

Recently, the band played a major role on “The Col­bert Report”; they have had gush­ing pro­files in Rolling Stone and non-ironic inter­views in Enter­tain­ment Weekly; they’ve been a plot thread in “I Love You, Man,” ref­er­enced on “Fam­ily Guy” and effu­sively adored in the new coming-of-age drama “Adven­ture­land.” Later this year, the band will receive a star on the Hol­ly­wood Walk of Fame.

But even more notable, per­haps, is that these days Rush is less likely to be a tar­get of snark than rev­er­ence. And with rea­son: The Rushi­nati have infil­trated the power struc­ture. For instance, the Rushi­nati con­trol the media: Stephen Col­bert is a fan; “I Love You, Man” direc­tor John Ham­burg and “Adven­ture­land” direc­tor Greg Mot­tola are big fans; Vic­tor Lisle, cre­ative direc­tor for WGN-AM (owned by Tri­bune Co.), will talk your ear off about the grandeur of a Rush con­cert; Metal­lica lob­bied for Rush’s inclu­sion in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame dur­ing its own induc­tion speech this month; Paul Rudd is a long­time fan, as is Billy Cor­gan, who, before form­ing Smash­ing Pump­kins, honed his chops cov­er­ing Rush in high school bands.

“The Rush fan is a seri­ous guy,” said Mot­tola, who also directed “Super­bad.” “He has a fer­vor in his eyes. I have a vivid mem­ory of a Rush guy doing a drum solo at my high school tal­ent show and tak­ing more time than any­one needed. But Rush inspires that kind of … insis­tence. They have this unswerv­ing integrity, and it’s trans­lated to some fans into a sort of religion.”

In Chicago — for decades, one of the band’s pri­mary mar­kets — the Rushi­nati have stayed silent but present. They have held the mound at Wrigley Field (for­mer Cub Matt Clement is a die-hard Rushi­nati). They are col­lege instruc­tors. They run com­put­ers at finan­cial insti­tu­tions. They own scores of busi­nesses around Chicago, and they have their hands on the world’s purse strings.

Ster­ling Smith, 44, a Chicago eco­nomic ana­lyst and vice pres­i­dent of trad­ing firm FuturesOne, said he has been a devoted fan since high school — so devoted he rou­tinely attends fan gath­er­ings in the area, gath­er­ings which are attended, incred­i­bly enough, by sev­eral dozen like-minded Rush devo­tees who work at the Chicago Board of Trade. “Talk to any male on the floor [of the Board of Trade] and if they’re under 55, I would bet you they’re at least 50 per­cent likely to be a fan. And I think I know why: The Rush fan is a per­son who val­ues pre­ci­sion and analy­sis, and the music is often about the rights of the indi­vid­ual — and any of these things would be inter­est­ing to some­one who trades com­modi­ties all day. We’re a math­e­mat­i­cally ori­ented group.”

Indeed, Alex Life­son, Rush’s gui­tarist, said he has noticed that fans who grew up with Rush seem “a lit­tle more detail-oriented in their pro­fes­sional lives.” He said, in mid­dle age, they seem dis­pro­por­tion­ately made up of engi­neers, chemists, econ­o­mists and businessmen.

“Just yes­ter­day I got an e-mail from an astro­naut,” Life­son said. “A guy up in the space sta­tion. He brought a copy of our last album with him into space. I mean, this is amaz­ing. You know how many Rush fans there are within NASA? A lot. I’ll leave it at that. And I’m not just talk­ing about the guys out in the field. Our fans are inside, close to the big pro­grams. They run everything.”

It wasn’t always like this.

For Chris Schneberger, 38, who teaches pho­tog­ra­phy at Colum­bia Col­lege, it has been a long road. “I kept [my Rush fan­hood] to myself when I was in col­lege,” he said. “I admit I always felt a lit­tle ashamed by it. For years, I felt like one of those early Chris­tians who would draw a cres­cent in the sand and wait for some­one to come along and draw a fish beside it — to give out a sig­nal that they are part of a broth­er­hood. But I think I’m at the age now where I have stopped caring.”

For Dan Lan­gosch, 42, who lives in Naperville and runs IT for a major bank, to be com­mit­ted to Rush was “to carry around a chip on your shoul­der. They sing songs about the space shut­tle. They don’t play love songs really. But some of the sci-fi aspects [of the music] faded, and I think, like the band, the fans have learned to relax a lit­tle more and deal with real life. But being an out­cast is fine.”

Indeed, direc­tor Ham­burg said that when he was think­ing of a band to put at the cen­ter of “I Love You, Man,” it came to “the ques­tion of what band would two guys in their late 30s feel a gen­uine bond over. Rush was ideal because when you meet another fan cer­tain truths are self evi­dent: Neil Peart is the great­est drum­mer ever, and ‘Lime­light’ is the great­est song. But what I noticed is that fans are com­ing out of the wood­work, and they don’t all look like organic chem­istry majors.”

Or per­haps we all do.

Every­one is a nerd these days. “We’ve only had to wait 35 years for this to hap­pen,” Life­son said. Tolkien is main­stream. Comic book movies are the new west­erns. And the idea of an 18-minute song called “Cygnus X-1 Book II: Hemi­spheres” would not seem out of place on a new Kanye album. “To be hon­est,” Life­son said, “I’m not lis­ten­ing to music like I was when I was in the ‘70s. And when I do, you know who’s really great? I’d rather lis­ten to Radio­head. Every­thing else — who has the patience?”

cborrelli@​tribune.​com