“Rush: Beyond The Lighted Stage” review

Did I mention that I have to move to the Hinterlands in a month? I checked, Roger Waters’ The Wall tour isn’t coming anywhere near us. Neither (was) U2, Bruce or anybody else, except a handful of B-Listers and I-Thought-They-Were-Dead nostalgia acts. For instance, Jackson Browne will be there when we are. If Jackson were the type to traffic in irony, he might consider doing his Running On Empty album in its entirety this time around.

Why not? Everybody else is doing tours centered around performing whole albums; even Canadian power trio supreme RUSH, who will be mounting a summer tour with no new album to support, but will be playing its seminal Moving Pictures from beginning to end. (Hint: That’s the album Tom Sawyer came from. If that doesn’t ring a bell, you might as well stop reading now.)

It will have the distinction of being the first RUSH tour I’ll have missed since 1980. It hits Christmas Island a month after we move, and isn’t going anywhere near Boise. I guess Jackson Browne will be playing the local entertainment coliseum the night RUSH needed it.

Fortunately, even though I already have one foot out the door, The Last Boy Scout is still looking out for me. The award-winning Rush documentary, Beyond The Lighted Stage played for one night in our town yesterday and he made sure we were there. I even met a friend of his, a local celebrity with a hit radio show who couldn’t be nicer. And Troy, who gave me better parking instructions than TLBS did. Thanks, Troy.

I didn’t even know the band had participated in the movie until after arriving at the theater downtown. I thought it was going to be a fan-propelled geekfest with a few big-name fans tossed in, adding their endorsements. I heard that it won a prestigious film-fest award, too, which made me worry that it would suck.

If rich hipsters like it, how good can it be?

Fucking great is how good it could be! The hoi-polloi got it right for a change.

The film is a straightforward, linear chronicle of the band from awkward teens in Canada all the way up to the awkward international superstar rockers they are today.

Celebrity testimonials include A-Listers Gene Simmons; Billy Corgan from Smashing Pumpkins; the scary, devil worshipping-looking dude from Metallica; and both guitarist Alex Lifeson and singer/bassist Geddy Lee’s moms. Even famously-reclusive RUSH drummer Neil Peart speaks extensively.

Moreover, there’s actually grainy color footage from Lifeson’s teen years of an uncomfortable moment at the family dinner table where his future—or rather the perceived lack of same—is being discussed, and his look of sulky petulance, dark angry eyes glaring out from under weird blond bangs, is iconic. What other rock star of Lifeson’s vintage—before videoing every waking moment of one’s life became commonplace and reality TV passed for entertainment—has tape of his teen years getting all angsty?

Great moment. The documentary is filled with them, and with the band’s full cooperation, including access to previously unseen/heard early performance footage, is a treasure trove for RUSH fans and casual cultural historians alike.

The band members, two of whom have been friends since junior high school, even throw a few jabs at themselves, mostly over questionable fashion decisions over the years. I guess discussion of Lee’s evolving mullet through the ’80s got left on the cutting room floor.

The thing I came away with was what regular guys these three were, and how much they love each other. I know that’s the goal of any kind of effort like this, but this one felt earned rather than manufactured. The moments of casual interplay backstage are hilarious in their adolescent banality, and mirrored by their onstage personal interplay. If a band was going to put on a persona, it wouldn’t be this one.

Gene Simmons complains that on an early tour together, they shared hotels, and while the KISS boys were off enjoying being proper rock stars with their female fans in a Caligula-esque bacchanalia, the lads from RUSH were in their rooms, watching TV. Or in Neil’s case, reading.

I also admire how they edited the film in such a fashion that I was half-way home before I realized the movie had divulged no personal details of their current personal lives. An early mention of getting married and starting families, then the requisite examination of the tragedies that befell drummer Neil Peart, then bupkis. It further painted them as regular guys, who don’t want to drag their loved ones into the limelight with them. Lee’s parents were both concentration camp survivors; I can’t help but think that some of that protect-your-family-first ethos proceeds from that history.

Love these guys. Their music, if it ever appealed to the listener, still stands the test of time. The movie is generous with both their time and their music and was a lovely final RUSH show to go to with the guy who’s been my RUSH-buddy since I moved up here in 2001.

Future columns will focus more exclusively on feeling sorry for myself and how much I hate change, but for one night, my head was pulled out of my ass by friends both old and (relatively) new. Thanks you guys.

(The movie is out on DVD at the end of the month.)