CHEMICALLY BALANCED
With no offstage drama to account, Chemistry details the creative process of each Rush album
BY DOUG FRENCH

The odds of any rock 'n' roll band making original music and filling large concert venues for 30 years with the same lineup are extraordinarily long. In a business where egos, immaturity and lack of business acumen rule, most bands burn out or bust apart long before middle age. The Canadian power trio Rush is the exception. Still making music in their third decade the band fills arenas with mid-aged men who likely, as one local reviewer put it, have "office jobs to return to on Monday." Rush crowds will never be confused with Dead Heads. 

Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson and Neil Peart, known collectively as Rush, have always been known as the "thinking man's rock band" because their song lyrics speak of motivation and freedom, while celebrating individual achievement and denouncing conformity and collectivity. 

The appropriately titled Chemistry chronicles the life of the band and its three members through the end of the band's R30 tour of 2004. The author Jon Collins looks to be a Rush fan taken from central casting, pictured on the book jacket in a white lab coat sporting a bow tie. Collins knows his audience as the book is extensively footnoted, and has appendixes featuring Personology, Discography and numerous references. However, I must confess that an index would have been nice as well as pictures of Rush album covers, given the author spends much time on how the cover images were created. But the book is much different than typical rock band books, which are long on pictures and short on substance, with most stories revolving around, not the music but the off-stage antics. 

The subjects of Collins' book, however, don't fit the rock image. "I can unequivocally state that they are the most boring band on the road," Rush photographer Andrew MacNaughtan told Collins. "We would leave the concert, get on the bus, eat hot dogs, watch a movie and go to bed. They're three boring guys. There aren't chicks; there aren't parties; it's not them!" 

With no offstage drama to account, Chemistry details the creative process of each album. While Geddy and Alex concentrated on writing music, drummer Neil Peart, nicknamed "the professor," handled the majority of the lyrical work for the band. The voracious reader, Peart, joined the band in 1974 after the band's first drummer, John Rutsey, decided a rock 'n' roll career was not for him. 

Peart had picked up a copy of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead a couple of years prior to joining Rush. "For me, it was a confirmation of all the things I'd felt as a teenager," Peart said. "It is simply impossible to say all men are brothers or that all men are created equal - they are not. Your basic responsibility is to yourself." The Fountainhead's hero, architect Howard Roark, became Peart's inspiration, "the ambitious individual who had no concept of compromise," explains Collins.

Rand inspired a number of the band's songs and "2112 Overture" contains an "acknowledgement to the genius of Ayn Rand." Working with Peart's lyrical ideas, Rand became the band's artistic figurehead. 

But the rock 'n' roll press, especially in 1970s socialist Britain, did not take kindly to Rush's individualist, pro-capitalist message. Journalist Barry Miles was shocked by the band's view. "They really did think that market forces would provide everything and I do remember that they had no idea about the conditions of the poor in Britain in Victorian times, or in Ireland in the 19th century when there was no state intervention -something they were advocating."

But the band didn't back down, releasing a statement: "For us, capitalism is a way of life, it's an economic system built on those who can do, and succeed at it." Miles called the band 'junior fascists' and made references to Auschwitz, which particularly incensed Geddy, whose parents had survived the death camp.

Rush's songs exalt the talents and greatness of the individual versus big government's attempts to subdue and homogenize people. As Carol Selby Price wrote in her book Mystic Rhythms: The Philosophical Vision of Rush: "In songs such as 'Red Alert,' 'Big Money,' and ''The Weapon,' [Rush drummer Neil] Peart argues that the gifted individuals (with whom Rush fans surely identify themselves) must strive to advance and find fulfillment against the gravity, against the current, of society."

Chemistry provides a glimpse into how three musicians conquered the rock world without compromising, by building their music on a firm philosophical foundation, perfecting their respective musical crafts and maintaining a strong work ethic and discipline. LW

Doug French, associate editor of Liberty Watch: The Magazine, is an executive vice president of a Nevada bank. He is the 2005 recipient of the Murray N. Rothbard Award from the Center for Libertarian Studies.