Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage

Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage (Directors: Sam Dunn and Scot McFadyen): Toronto dir­ectors Dunn and McFadyen’s pre­vious efforts Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey, Global Metal, and Iron Maiden: Flight 666 were solid, if unspec­tac­ular, exam­in­a­tions of various aspects of the world of heavy music. With Rush: Beyond The Lighted Stage, they’ve taken their game to a new level, presenting a fas­cin­ating por­trait of the Canadian rock icons that will please fans and non-fans alike.

Fresh off win­ning the audi­ence appre­ci­ation award at the pre­vious week’s Tribeca Film Festival, Rush: BTLS made its Canadian debut at Hot Docs, which only seemed appro­priate con­sid­ering the number of Toronto and Southern Ontario ref­er­ences and amounts of local footage used in the film. Dunn and McFadyen were granted unpre­ced­ented access to the band and their archives, unearthing pre­vi­ously unseen pictorial gems and old video­taped per­form­ances of some of the band’s earliest per­form­ances, including one showing them playing a high school gig with ori­ginal drummer John Rutsey.

Extensive inter­views with bassist/lead vocalist Geddy Lee, gui­tarist Alex Lifeson, and notori­ously press-shy drummer Neil Peart (pro­nounced “peert”, not the com­monly mis­pro­nounced “pert”) are spread throughout the film, providing a revealing glimpse into what makes the band tick and how they’ve man­aged to stay together for more than 40 years and achieve a level of suc­cess that places them third behind The Beatles and The Rolling Stones for the most con­sec­utive number of gold or plat­inum albums. Chew on that fact for a few seconds. The early his­tory of the band is nicely chron­icled, laying out how Lee and Lifeson, child­hood friends, bonded over their misfit status and love of music, which even­tu­ally made Peart a per­fect fit for the duo. Interviews with the band mem­bers’ par­ents add addi­tional insight, including one par­tic­u­larly for­tu­itous clip taken from Allan King’s 1973 doc­u­mentary Come On Children, where Lifeson (then in his late teens and known as Alex Zivojinovich) is shown arguing with his par­ents over the point­less­ness of fin­ishing high school, which he asserts will have no impact on his career goal of being a musi­cian. It’s a com­pel­ling moment in the film, not for its unique view­point (how many times have we heard some vari­ation of this story from artists?), but for the fact it was actu­ally cap­tured indir­ectly by one of these artists for posterity.

Mid to later periods of the band’s his­tory are also given impress­ively in-depth explor­a­tion, with spe­cific sub­jects and time periods fit­ting neatly into the thir­teen chapters the film employs to tell its story. Two of the more not­able ones look back at the band’s 80s devi­ation into more of a synth-heavy sound, which ali­en­ated many fans and led to cre­ative ten­sion between Lee and Lifeson, as well as the dark years that nearly saw the band pack it in, brought on by the dual tra­gedies that befell Peart in 1997 and 1998 (Peart’s daughter died in a car acci­dent and his wife suc­cumbed to cancer just ten months later). Peart’s will­ing­ness to address the period and even just his par­ti­cip­a­tion in the film is a test­a­ment to the dir­ectors’ ability to put their sub­jects at ease, given his reluct­ance to do inter­views, espe­cially on-camera sit-downs. The drummer, easily among the most legendary in the annals of rock and roll his­tory, comes across as pleasant, shy, and a little guarded. He dis­cusses his his­tory of walking softly and car­rying a big stick (or two), which, along with addi­tional enlight­ening input from Lifeson and Lee on the sub­ject, turns out is the result of being extremely intro­verted and having a major aver­sion to the concept of fan wor­ship. An inter­esting aside: for someone so reluctant to be in the spot­light it’s fas­cin­ating to me that Peart has put so much of him­self out there via his lyrics (he writes all of the band’s words) and numerous books, including Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road, which was a remark­ably honest chron­icle of his struggles fol­lowing the deaths of his wife and daughter.

Lee and Lifeson sim­il­arly come across as very humble, nice people. The film also does a good job at showing the close­ness of the band, which is as much attrib­ut­able to their fiercely loyal friend­ships as it is their com­fort level on a musical level. One doesn’t get the sense that there’s any trace of the jeal­ousies and griev­ances that plague many long-time band mem­bers, which often res­ults in sep­arate plane or bus jour­neys and zero verbal con­tact until the moment they hit the stage. Another quality of the trio that might sur­prise non-fans is their sense of humour, which cer­tainly doesn’t come across in their music. For anyone who has seen or read any number of inter­views with Lee or Lifeson over the years this won’t be a sur­prise, though. Don’t forget that Lee sang with Bob and Doug McKenzie, and appeared on SCTV almost 30 years ago. Some of the more ques­tion­able fashion styles the band has adopted over the years (par­tic­u­larly the unfor­tu­nate kimono period) become comic fodder for the group to have a laugh at their own expense.

Fan testi­mo­nials get a sur­pris­ingly spare amount of screen time, which was a wise decision by the film­makers. Too many band docs that include such con­tent rarely deviate from the unin­ter­esting “man, this is my 79th time seeing them!” variety, although the con­ser­vative usage of it here still didn’t dis­ap­point someone a few rows in front of me, who let out a huge “whoo!” when either him­self or a Rush fan he knew was inter­viewed on screen. What elev­ates the film even more are the wealth of enter­taining testi­mo­nials from the band’s peers and celebrity fans. Jack Black gets the biggest laugh with his descrip­tion of Rush as “a band with a deep reser­voir of rocket sauce.” Sebastian Bach also delivers some comic relief with recol­lec­tions of how, as a 13-year-old metal­head, he felt oblig­ated to read the work of Ayn Rand because it was a large influ­ence on Rush’s 2112 album, and how he was fur­ther con­fused by what the hell this band was doing when they released some songs in French. Gene Simmons weighs in with his bewil­der­ment at the band’s lack of interest in groupies when KISS took them out on an early tour. Some of the other not­able names who talk about Rush’s influ­ence on their careers are Metallica’s Kirk Hammett, Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor, and Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan, who staunchly praises the band’s influ­ence on music and their place in its his­tory and bristles at their lack of respect from the music estab­lish­ment. The inclu­sion of CNN anchor John Roberts, con­nected to the band through his Toronto music journ­alist past as “J.D.” Roberts, is a nice touch.

Dunn and McFadyen con­tinue to demon­strate an admir­able talent for taking a sub­ject they’re clearly pas­sionate about and skirting around the mar­gins of fanboy adu­la­tion to deliver a sub­stantive, insightful work that also man­ages to enter­tain. In this case they’ve shown clear growth in their craft, pro­du­cing an engrossing bio­graphy of Canada’s biggest musical export.

Rush: Beyond The Lighted Stage will receive a lim­ited the­at­rical release on June 10th, make its tele­vi­sion premiere on VH1 on June 26th, and receive a DVD release on June 29th

Official site of the film

(9/10)

Tagged as: #hotdocs10, music