RUSH-mania as Anika Assumes Control

Anika Nilles - a powerhouse performance

It's quite a week for fans of Canadian prog-rockers RUSH. Social media is alive with comment and footage from the first shows of their 'Fifty Something' world tour. 

As a long-time fan - I first saw Rush at Hammersmith Odeon in 1978 - it's been emotional seeing them rejuvenated like this.

The excitement is all around their new drummer, Anika Nilles. Replacing the seemingly irreplaceable Neil Peart, Anika has proved the many doubters wrong with a phenomenal display. 

And the most heart-warming aspect of it is the great cheers that have gone up in the audience every time she nails one of Peart's iconic drum fills. 

If you have seen the clips on youtube, you will already know how amazing it is to see someone other than Neil Peart pulling off those amazing drum patterns and fills. 

For those that haven't - feast your eyes on this.

Locked in and having fun

Opening song - Xanadu 

YYZ

La Villa Strangiato

Multi-cam view of Annika on Tom Sawyer

The Trees

2112 - Overture, Temples of Syrinx and Grand Finale

Any way you look at it, Anika is just phenomenal in the way she not only plays those iconic drum fills, but how she captures the feel and spirit of the songs. And then to lock in with two guys who have been playing this stuff for 50 years! That's special and it's why there has been such an emotional response from fans around the world.

Peart, who tragically died six years ago, was an inspiration to drummers and wannabe drummers, who were drawn to the music of Rush for its anthemic qualities. This was especially true in Rush's early career in the late 1970s, when their music was epic in its scope.

Spirit Of Radio...The Trees...Xanadu...YYZ...Tom Sawyer...Closer To The Heart...2112 - all classics

Neil's drumming provided every teenage fan's dream of what a drummer could be. He showed you didn't have to sit back there and just keep the beat. His musicality on the kit meant that Rush songs became known as much for the drum fills as the guitar licks. Moreso, in fact. 

Which makes this new incarnation of Rush so intriguing. Anika Nilles had already gained a reputation as a jazz fusion drummer - here she is with Jeff Beck. But most mainstream rock fans would not have heard of her until Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson announced they were reconvening Rush for a world tour. 

Rush in their 1970s pomp

As a trio, Rush were the perfect blend and showed how, in the rock idiom, a three-piece band is often the most dynamic and cohesive musical unit.

Back in the day, as a Rush fan you were definitely outside of the mainstream. None of my friends were remotely interested, but I was a fan of their first live album All The World's A Stage, which featured excerpts from their recent breakthrough album 2112, as well as earlier songs like Fly By Night and Lakeside Park.

So I took the opportunity to see them live at Hammersmith in 1978, in their full prog rock pomp, playing their early classics. The show was later released as part of the Different Stages CD package.

It was the glam-prog era of silk kimonos and their extended pieces like Xanadu - "To seek the sacred river Alph, to walk the caves of ice" - and 2112

My ticket for Rush live in 1978

"Attention all planets of the solar federation! 

We have assumed control". 

This interview sheds some light on the recording of A Farewell To Kings, Rush's studio follow up to the breakthrough album 2112.  

The second live album, Exit...Stage Left, reflected their evolution from the 1970s to the early 80s (shorter hair, no more silk kimonos) and is probably the best of the early live recordings.

Later on in their career, the Rush In Rio DVD showed how much their music meant to people all over the world. And South Park's send-up was so good that Rush incorporated it into their live shows as the intro to Tom Sawyer. They are using it for this tour too. 

A perfect example of how much Rush meant to their fans, is the Foo Fighters doing 2112 at the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame.

If you haven't seen it and you're a fan, check out the documentary Beyond The Lighted Stage for the full story of how Rush defied expectations and became one of the biggest bands in the world.

The Professor hits the road

Neil had an uncomfortable relationship with fame, and the pressures of being on the road and away from loved ones. He once said, “I don’t like to puncture illusions. I know I represent some kind of fantasy to a lot of people. But there is no fantasy.”

His way of dealing with the isolation and distractions of life on the road was to ride the back roads on his motorcycle. 

“Every day when I’m on tour and travelling between cities on my motorcycle, I have half-a-dozen pleasant encounters with people. I’ve spent a lot of time in truck stops and diners and cafes, very casual, low-grade places, and those are the encounters I have: stranger to stranger, I guess you could say. I love the anonymity of my travels.”

Here's a rare televised interview with the Professor himself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=311&v=q_mKr28G7og&feature=emb_logo

If Neil was looking down now, he would surely see millions of people of all ages still air drumming to his songs - and mesmerised by Anika's skill at helping to recreate the Rush magic.

Here, Rick Beato gets to know Anika Nilles

And here, Neil Peart performs a drum solo on the David Letterman show

IF YOU LIKE MY BLOG, PLEASE HIT THE FOLLOW BUTTON ON THE SIDE PANEL THANKS

 ALSO ON THIS BLOG:

Vinnie Colaiuta - Master of the polyrhythm

What Mike Shrieve did after Santana

The Day David Bowie Died 

My Visit To Abbey Road Studios

The Genius of Hendrix's Electric Ladyland

Pink Floyd On Tour in 1974 and 1977

Wish You Were Here - A Flawed Diamond

As Pink Floyd’s 1975 opus Wish You Were Here gets its obligatory 50^th anniversary re-release, I feel duty-bound to reflect that I've always been ambivalent about it.

It's undeniably an outstanding record in parts. Sonically, an advance on its predecessor, Dark Side Of The Moon, and containing two absolute Floyd classics in Shine On You Crazy Diamond and the title track.

I've just never warmed to the rest of it, despite the fact that I saw them perform it live twice in the mid-1970s and again 20 years later.

By 1974, having produced the aforementioned Dark Side - their masterpiece – and hit the big time, the members of Pink Floyd were in a bit of a bind. The record company wanted more product. The band freely admit they struggled coming to terms with having peaked creatively and commercially. Roger Waters especially, began to feel like he was being treated as a commodity to be exploited. 

Live at Wembley Arena, November 1974

In the course of working up new material and road testing it on tour in 1974, they came up with three new songs. It was clear that a cynical mood had descended.

"You gotta keep everyone buying this shit"
– lyrics from ‘You Gotta Be Crazy’, one of the new songs.

It’s well documented that Waters, as the chief lyricist and conceptualist, was increasingly at odds with David Gilmour over the material and arrangements. Having written all the lyrics for Dark Side Of The Moon, the sessions for Wish You Were Here mark the point at which Waters pushed for even greater control.  

Of the songs being developed for what would become Wish You Were Here - Shine On You Crazy Diamond, You Gotta Be Crazy and Raving and Drooling - only the first one would make the cut. Despite Gilmour’s protestations, the latter two were held over, used in slightly different form on the 1977 album Animals. 

Shine On You Crazy Diamond - Waters' tribute to the Floyd's fallen leader, Syd Barrett - was certainly the most impressive of the new songs I heard when I saw them at Wembley's Empire Pool in November 1974.

In its early form, in those 1974 live shows, the four note guitar figure, the chiming signature motif at the start of the song, was already well on the way to being iconic. In the studio, the band and the engineers took it to another level.

Gilmour recording the Shine On riff in Studio 1 

The Floyd recorded mostly in Studio 3, the smaller of the studios at Abbey Road. To gain maximum ambience for Gilmour's iconic guitar figure, the engineers had his amps placed in the cavernous Studio 1, where Sir Edward Elgar had recorded many of his orchestral classics. 

Waters wanted the next album to have a thematic core, based around the  concept of isolation, the loss of friends and family. Shine On You Crazy Diamond was a heart-felt plea to a talented former colleague, brain-damaged and sidelined owing to his over-indulgence in LSD. The music more than does that tribute justice. It's a sad, mournful tune at times, but with a hopeful message, and stands as one of the top 5 Floyd tracks ever recorded. 

The song Wish You Were Here would also be in many people's top 5. Its universality is a stroke of genius. A simple guitar riff and words inspired by the loss of Waters' father in WW2 (not forgetting his grandfather who died in the Great War) and his friend Syd. But the lyric can be appreciated by everyone.

So, so you think you can tell
Heaven from hell?
Blue skies from pain?
Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?

Did they get you to trade
Your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
Did you exchange, a walk on part in the war
For a lead role in a cage?

How I wish, how I wish you were here
We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl
Year after year
Running over the same old ground, what have we found?
The same old fears
Wish you were here

lyrics © Roger Waters Music Overseas Ltd, Pink Floyd Music Publishers Ltd

The sessions at Abbey Road in 1975 were made all the more poignant by the strange episode of Syd Barrett's unexpected appearance. Fat, bald and with no eyebrows, he went unrecognised for a while; truly a stranger in their midst. Realising it was him must have been quite upsetting for them. 

The reason for Syd's visit was never fully explained and that was the last time some of them ever saw him. A tragic conclusion to their lives together and confirmation that the Syd they knew was gone, never to return.  

Waters' other main theme for the album was the sense of being manipulated by the system; reflective of Roger's sense that as a band they were now just "riding the gravy train".

The early lyrics to You Gotta Be Crazy (renamed Dogs on the Animals album) indicated a dark sarcasm already prevalent in the classroom.

Lyric page from '74 tour program

"You gotta keep climbing, you gotta keep fit, you gotta keep smiling, you gotta eat shit".

Although that seems fairly consistent with the 'riding the gravy train' sentiments expressed on WYWH, Waters was adamant You Gotta Be Crazy didn’t fit with his concept for the album. Having got his way, Waters then delivered Have A Cigar and Welcome To The Machine. This is where I start to have issues.

I like Roy Harper and he does a great job on Have A Cigar in conveying the insincerity and cynicism of a certain type of record business executive. But it's that very cynicism that makes the track so unedifying for me. The "by the way, which one's Pink?" line fits well, but only adds to the dark sarcasm at the root of the song.

Waters and Gilmour fought over the inclusion of Harper’s vocal and on this occasion Gilmour prevailed. Roger Waters dislikes the vocal to this day, saying Harper laid the smarminess on too thick. 

The tune itself is charmless, and this mood of relentless cynicism is compounded by Welcome To The Machine, a clear indication of where Pink Floyd's music would go on their next two albums, Animals and The Wall.

One of Scarfe's images for
Welcome To The Machine

Enhanced in their live shows by the nightmarish visualisations of Gerald Scarfe, Welcome To The Machine is a doom-laden dirge, sonically brilliant but not remotely uplifting lyrically or melodically.

Which was the point, I suppose, and I think this is my issue with the album. I have always found it hard to empathise with Waters’ protestations that he was now a slave to the music business – a business that had supported him and the band for several years in the late 60s and early 70s when Pink Floyd were noodling about looking for a fresh direction, after their initial success with Syd.  

The contrast with Dark Side Of The Moon is striking - there's an empathy behind the cod philosophy of Water's lyrics on their 1973 masterwork. But by 1975, there was only despair and rage. Woe is me, I'm a millionaire rock star tied to a life of mass adulation and million-selling albums (regardless of their quality). 

So, for me, Wish You Were Here is a good album, but not their masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination.

I'll be checking out the new mixes of Shine On You Crazy Diamond, though. That's definitely worth a listen. 

Here's the full audio of the Pink Floyd show at Wembley Empire Pool in November 1974
Starts off with everyone's first hearing of Shine On You Crazy Diamond and continues with Dark Side of the Moon, in full and an encore of Echoes. What a treat, and I was there. 

IF YOU LIKE MY BLOG, PLEASE HIT THE FOLLOW BUTTON ON THE SIDE PANEL THANKS

Also On This Blog:
Pink Floyd On Tour in 1974 and 1977

Reviewing Pink Floyd at the V&A: Their Mortal Remains

March 1973 - 'Dark Side of the Moon' enters the charts https://bangnzdrum.blogspot.com/2018/11/march-1973-dark-side-of-moon-enters.html?m=1

Vegetable Man - Syd Barrett's last Floyd recordings

Pink Floyd - On tour in 1974 and 1977

  The program on the left is from Pink Floyd's UK winter tour in 1974.
                                                  On the right, the program from the 'Animals' tour in 1977

This a tale of two concert programs. Somewhere along the line in the 1970s, concert programs became expensive and rather boring.

Certainly between these two, from 1974 and 1977, Pink Floyd became a corporate monster and their programs became all style and no content.

The 1974 tour program was a treat though, being made to resemble a comic, with each member of the band given their own comic strip: Rog Of The Rovers, Captain Mason, R.N. - you get the idea.

Little quiz pages were interspersed and, most notably the program included the lyrics to the new songs the band played in the first half of the show.

Lyrics to the new songs

Pink Floyd's way of working up new material was to take it out on tour and gauge audience reaction, before committing it to record. Hence, the prototype for Dark Side Of The Moon was premiered as Eclipse - A Piece for Assorted Lunatics at live shows in 1972.

During the winter tour of 1974, the songs being tried out were Shine On You Crazy Diamond, You Gotta Be Crazy and Raving and Drooling. Of the three, Shine On... was the most impressive and the one clearly more complete than the other two. 

It was ready to appear on their next album, Wish You Were Here. Despite its unfamiliarity, Shine On You Crazy Diamond got a great reception from the audience at Wembley's Empire Pool.

You Gotta be Crazy and Raving and Drooling, with alterations to their lyrics and arrangements, would become Dogs and Sheep on the album Animals. So fully three years before they would appear on an album, these songs were being road-tested.

First half: New Songs
Shine On You Crazy Diamond
Raving and Drooling (Sheep)
You Gotta be Crazy (Dogs)

The circular screen and rapid-fire projections

Second half: The Dark Side of the Moon
Speak to Me
Breathe
On the Run
Time
The Great Gig in the Sky
Money
Us and Them
Any Colour You Like
Brain Damage
Eclipse

Encore:
Echoes

The show was spellbinding and the audience loved it - the recordings show that clearly. But not everyone was impressed. That sniffy hipster at the NME, Nick Kent, a man who almost certainly never played a three-hour show in his life, thought the Floyd were too detached from the audience.

My bootleg CDs of the '74 Wembley shows,
bought about 20 years ago from record shops in Tokyo

Kent missed the point, then. With Pink Floyd, it was never about the band members as rock stars. They were not throwing shapes and projecting themselves in the manner of other groups. Above all, it was about the music and the visuals. Right back to their earliest shows at London's UFO club in 1967, the light show was the focal point.

And by the time of the Dark Side Of The Moon tours, the show was all about the images projected on the circular screen, stage centre.

My ticket

Melody Maker's Chris Charlesworth, reviewing an earlier show in Edinburgh, said of Dark Side of the Moon: "On this tour it takes on magnificent proportions with that truly brilliant movie screen designed, I think, to take the observer on a space flight to the other side of the galaxy."

In the Classic Albums show about Dark Side, they show many of the visuals projected on the circular screen. This was innovative staging at the time.

Nowadays, stage lighting and visuals are way more advanced at arena shows, but the Floyd were at the forefront of concepts to transform live shows into a much more visual and engaging spectacle - a process that developed into flying pigs with the Animals tour and, ultimately, The Wall.

'74 tour

"Visions flash past all too quickly," said Charlesworth. "But stand-out bits include various tumbling buildings, a pilot’s view of a take-off, coins and clocks in profusion, plenty of sea and surf, and the closing sequence depicting prominent politicians apparently well satisfied with the Floyd’s performance."

The Wembley '74 show climaxed with the giant screen showing the sun being eclipsed by the moon.

On the bootleg recording of the Empire Pool show, you can hear the audience response as the Eclipse reaches its crescendo. It was very well done, the whole thing, topped off, let's not forget, by this timeless classic of an album.

Here's an audio recording from Wembley 1974

UPDATE: I have just found some great quality film of Pink Floyd live from June 28 1975, at the Ivor Wynne Stadium, Hamilton, Ontario. Filmed by Jim Kelly 'Speedy' in super8 reels. With thanks to the Genesis Museum for 4k reel conversion, and audio sync by Ikhnaton and NUFF.

Here's the link

By 1977 and the Animals tour, the Floyd had taken the live experience to another level. "Roger had an idea for the next Pink Floyd album," according to the withdrawn liner notes for the new 5.1 mix of Animals: "He borrowed from George Orwell’s allegorical story, Animal Farm, in which pigs and other farmyard animals were reimagined anthropomorphically.

"Waters portrays the human race as three sub-species trapped in a violent, vicious cycle, with sheep serving despotic pigs and authoritarian dogs. You Gotta be Crazy and Raving And Drooling perfectly fitted his new concept."

The show was again split into two halves.

First half: Animals
Sheep
Pigs on the Wing (Part I)
Dogs
Pigs on the Wing (Part II)
Pigs (Three Different Ones)"

Second half: Wish You Were Here

Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts I–V)
Welcome to the Machine
Have a Cigar
Wish You Were Here
Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts VI–IX)"

Encore:
Money
Us and Them

Part of the show at the V&A

If you saw the Pink Floyd exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum a few years ago, you will have seen the flying pig, the war plane and the various other stage props that made up the Animals show. 

The album cover photo shoot of the pig flying over Battersea Power Station has passed into legend. Apparently they hired a marksman to shoot down the flying pig if it broke free of its moorings. 

Unfortunately, on the first day of the photo shoot, the weather was not conducive and so the session was postponed. 

But the marksman had only been hired for the one day, so when the pig broke free and entered London airspace untethered, there was no one to shoot it down.

Contact sheet from the Battersea photo shoot

The 1977 live shows were suitably over the top, to match the music. The pyrotechnic stage lighting was choreographed from two articulated towers. At the climax of Sheep, fireworks burst out from the towers.

At various points during the first set, an inflatable family, larger than life household items like a fridge or a car and various animals would appear. 

I believe these concerts utilised quadrophonic sound and the band made good use of the available technology. The sound of dogs barking and pigs squealing was particularly freaky.

The four-piece band was augmented by second guitarist/bass player Snowy White. The overall sound was much more punchy and aggressive than the 1974 show had been. 

My ticket

I suppose that's a lot to do with the songs. The lyrics by Roger Waters became darker and more political on Animals. There's a barely disguised anger at the heart of the album. 

The unused liner notes to the 5.1 mixes of Animals said: "Despite being recorded in London during the long summer heatwave of 1976, Pink Floyd’s Animals remains a dark album. Its critique of capitalism and greed caught the prevailing mood in Britain: a time of industrial strife, economic turmoil, The Troubles in Northern Ireland and the race riots of Notting Hill."

The alienation and distance from the audience, that Nick Kent sensed in 1974, also became quite real, particularly on the last date of the North American tour in Montreal. By all accounts, including his own, Waters became increasingly angry with the rowdy American audiences. It culminated with him spitting in the face of a fan at the front of the stage. The experience fed into the writing of the next Pink Floyd album, The Wall.

1977 Animals tour program

Despite the improved audio facilities, there were no official recordings made of the Animals tour and no decent unofficial audio exists from the Wembley shows. Here's a recording from the US tour

The Animals tour program was black and glossy. It contained no words, apart from Pink Floyd - Animals on the cover; just a bunch of so-so photos. A waste of money frankly, but a memento nonetheless all these years later.

I gave up buying concert programs after that.

IF YOU LIKE MY BLOG, PLEASE HIT THE FOLLOW BUTTON ON THE SIDE PANEL THANKS

Also on this blog:

Reviewing Pink Floyd at the V&A: Their Mortal Remains

March 1973 - 'Dark Side of the Moon' enters the charts https://bangnzdrum.blogspot.com/2018/11/march-1973-dark-side-of-moon-enters.html?m=1

Vegetable Man - Syd Barrett's last Floyd recordings

Wish You Were Here - A Flawed Diamond

The YES Album - 50 years old and still sounding great

Advert in Melody Maker, February 1971

The February 6th 1971 edition of the UK music paper Melody Maker  carried a rather enigmatic full page advert, mostly in black, with a small photo at the top and "The Yes Album - Available tomorrow" at the foot of the page.

For such a momentous album, Yes's third but destined to be their first success sales-wise, it was a strange bit of promotion. 

And since The Yes Album celebrates its 50th birthday this month, fans are recalling the effect it had on them. 

Many regard it as their best - with good reason. There's something about the musical virtuosity, their sheer power as a band and the melodic and climactic nature of the music that make this record such a classic. 

Every band member contributes strongly, whether it's the thunderous bass of Chris Squire - that jumps out of the speakers on my vintage vinyl copy - or Tony Kaye's anthemic Hammond organ playing, or Bill Bruford's distinctively snappy drumming. 

Notably, The Yes Album was the first to feature guitarist Steve Howe, who had replaced original guitarist Peter Banks the previous year. Howe gave the band a shot in the arm and it's that freshness and vitality - of a band relaunched that comes across on this record. 

Howe had been introduced in July 1970, just as Yes were releasing their previous album Time And A Word, though he didn't play on it. They started recording in the Autumn of that year.  

An interview in Melody Maker at the time indicated there had been rumours of a split. MM was one of the music papers that had predicted big things for Yes way back in 1969, but a hit record had so far eluded them. They took a break and parted ways with Banks.

"Steve is a fine guitarist and very cooperative," said Bill Bruford. "Peter was a player who never said anything. Steve talks about it, so we know where we stand."

Bruford also mentioned that Steve Howe's singing allowed them to do three part harmonies. "We are also doing Simon & Garfunkel's America, which has been given a great Yes arrangement." This recording was not used on The Yes Album. It was subsequently included on the Yesterdays collection of the best tracks from their first two albums.

Yes were expected to break big in 1970

I didn't buy The Yes Album on release - I was still listening to Mungo Jerry and Slade in 1971. But I can still remember the first time I heard it. I was struck by Howe's guitar playing above all. He obviously wanted to make an impression as the new guy, and the rest of the band must have been happy to give him the chance, because he absolutely dominates side one of the vinyl record. 

Not only did he have a whole track to himself, Clap, showing off his Chet Atkins influences. His guitar breaks in the opener, Yours Is No Disgrace, and the climactic Starship Trooper, took each song into the stratosphere.

Howe's arrival was the beginning of the musical chairs that have been a constant feature of Yes ever since. After The Yes Album, organist Tony Kaye was shunted in favour of the more versatile Rick Wakeman.

A couple of years later Bill Bruford left to join King Crimson and was replaced by Alan White. Wakeman left the following year and Patrick Moraz joined for one album. Perpetual Change indeed. 

There's some excellent film footage available of early Yes, particularly around the time of The Yes Album. Here is a film of them made in 1970 to promote songs from Time & A Word.

By the end of 1971, Rick Wakeman had joined, as shown in this footage from October that year.

I also have a bootleg CD of them playing at The Roundhouse in London, on this day in February 1971, just after the release of The Yes Album.

The poster I had on my bedroom wall, mid 70s

 

 

Worth watching is the 'Sounding Out' documentary filmed in 1971 (parts 2, 3 and 4 are also on YT) 

Yes live in 1972 at Crystal Palace Bowl audio only

Also on the this blog:
1970 - Steve Howe join Yes, Rick Wakeman joins The Strawbs

Yes headline the Reading Festival in 1975

Below, Jon Anderson interviewed in 1973

IF YOU LIKE MY BLOG, PLEASE HIT THE FOLLOW BUTTON ON THE SIDE PANEL THANKS

Also on this blog:
2-Tone and possibly my best gig ever

Queen's 1976 Free Concert in Hyde Park

Memories of the Reading Festival, 1975

Five Days of High Drama at the Isle of Wight, 1970

From Pinner to LA - Elton's Big Breakthrough, 1970

My Woodstock 50th Anniversary Diary

A Wizard, A True Star - my all-time favourite album

Blonde On Blonde - Bob Dylan's Artistic Peak in the 1960s

 Joni Mitchell - The Hissing of Summer Lawns