The album as a whole revolves around a song cycle. I still want to write about ideals, I’m not interested in writing about the sewer of life. Now I’m trying to make those symbols into real people and real conflicts in real people’s lives. ‘Permanent Waves’ was probably our first album that was in touch with reality-it was about people dealing with technology instead of people dealing with some futuristic fantasy world or using symbols for people. Only a few months after its release, Peart explained that the album had “more to do with writing about people and less about ideas. All of this gravitas hovers over the entire album, despite the rather whimsical cover of a dog ready to mark his territory on the neighborhood fire hydrant. Lots of honest men, however, populate Signals. There’s a Tom Sawyer lurking somewhere in the neighborhood, but even he avoids such heaviness of mood as found on the first side of the album. įrom the ominous opening notes of Subdivisions, the listener knows this is a Rush to be taken with deadly seriousness. Anyone can pick up a book” and learn a few heavy metal chords. “It’s just become a commercial thing, all pasteurized and homogenized. At one point it all came charging back and had a lot of energy, but it hasn’t really gone anywhere,” the bassist explained. “I don’t understand why any drummer would want to drop everything they learned like that and go back to kindergarten stuff.” Lee had similar thoughts, though without naming names. In one interview, he complained about his former hero, Carl Palmer. And, some rock appearing at the same time appalled Peart. Given such influences, Signals is the darkest and moodiest album from Rush thus far, as dense as rock albums come. The cassettes from the Signals tour, in 1982, neatly hand-labeled on the spine, “Rush Radio,” and with my drawing of the fire-hydrant logo from the album cover, offered a selection of lesser-known songs from that era, by New Musik, Simple Minds, King Crimson, U2, Ultravox, Max Webster, Joe Jackson, Japan, Thinkman, Go, XTC, Talking Heads, Jimmy Cliff, a couple of Pete Townshend’s solo songs, Bill Bruford’s jazz-rock excursions, and the ponderously-named-but-ethereal-sounding Orchestral Maneouvres in the Dark. The pre-concert mixed tapes that Peart created explain much: “Just as with many new wave groups, we have the same spirit of rebellion against mercenary forces,” Peart states in a phone interview. In particular, the band had been listening to the moody prog electronica of Ultravox and Japan, the moody pop electronica of Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark (OMD) and Spandau Ballet, and other synthesizer-driven and drowned in layers of sound New Wave bands. Īs each of the members of Rush have stated many times about themselves, they were sponges, soaking up the best in current music as well as in traditional literature. With Signals and the following concerts to support it, Lifeson claimed he felt “almost re-born” with the new sound. įurther, he claimed, the keyboards allowed Rush to expand beyond the trio without actually adding a new member of the band. Adding the keyboards was fascinating for me and I was learning more about writing music from a different angle. I felt like we were falling into a pattern of how we were writing on bass, guitar and drums. Not surprisingly, especially given Lee’s interest and the learning curve he needed to understand and overcome regarding synthesizers, the keys employed on the album had either 1) a deep, booming bass sound or 2) an airy, soaring feel. He never planned to become a “Keith Emerson,” but he loved the challenge the keyboards brought him. In particular, Lee had become more and more interested in keyboards and composing on them. They had done that album, accomplished what they had sought to accomplish, and they wanted to take their music in new ways. But the three main members of Rush decided that a second Moving Pictures would be too easy. On the Moving Pictures tour alone, fan attendance doubled at concerts, and almost anyone in the American Midwest could hear one of three tracks from the album almost anytime on FM rock radio. The pressure to produce something similar to the previous year’s Moving Pictures naturally proved immense, as they had never encountered such success. The last album produced by the then fourth-member of Rush, Terry Brown, Signals (September 9, 1982) marked yet again a major progression in the music of Rush as well as in the lyrics of Neil Peart.

Rush signals