CONTENTS UNDER PRESSURE: First Steps On The Road To Rush
You could say author and music critic Martin Popoff hasRush in the blood. As a Canadian teen,he grew up listening to their music and playing it in garage bands. Once he became a music specialist writer, heparlayed his interest in the group into a series of books (four at the moment,more on the way this year and next). ContentsUnder Pressure, released in 2004, was his first entry in this distinctivemusic-lit subgenre and it remains a good entry-level tome on the band.
ContentsUnder Pressure is laid out in what has become the standardPopoff format for his books on bands: It tackles Rush's oeuvre album by albumand tour by tour, focusing primarily on their output as a way of understandingthe band and its history. Biographical details are included but they are thereto service the story of musical creation instead of trying to give you anin-depth portrait of the musicians as people.
This is a slim tome, a trade paperback that covers 30years in 236 pages with vintage photos a-plenty throughout. However, that is no judgment on its quality: GeddyLee, Alex Lifeson and Neil Peart were interviewed extensively by Popoff for Contents Under Pressure so we get thestory of their work told mainly via their voices. You'll learn how the critical/commercialdisappointment of Caress Of Steelled to a regrouping and new focus that produced 2112, the factors informing the difficult births of albums like Hemispheres and Grace Under Pressure, the ambitions that inspired the glossy,electronics-heavy Power Windows/Hold Your Fire era and the high-techfatigue that led them back to power trio basics afterwards. Popoff adds alittle critical commentary here and there to grease the narrative wheels butthese bits are never obtrusive.
Popoff also devotes a bit of page space to what groupsthe band toured with so you'll learn about what guitarists Lifeson enjoyedpalling around with after shows and a memorable tale of a certain headlinerthat wasn't kind to Rush during their 'opening act' years. There are no talesof debauchery in these sections, mainly because Rush isn't that kind of band,so you will instead learn about the hobbies they developed to fill between-showtime and how Peart developed his own unique cycles-and-motorcycles travelregimen in later years.
The narrative ends around the time of the book'spublication, 2004, on the eve of the band's 30th anniversary tour. Thus, youdon't discussion of latter-day Rush albums like Snakes And Arrows or ClockworkAngels but you do get an interesting exploration of Vapor Trails, one of the group's most controversial albums, as wellas the story behind the Rush In Riotour dates and subsequent live release. The input of the band members reallypays off in these closing chapters, fleshing out the chronicle of the band'sdifficult but rewarding comeback period with a nice intimacy.
As the title of this review suggests, Contents Under Pressure was just thebeginning of Popoff's Rush-journalism odyssey - he's currently in the midst ofreleasing a trilogy of books that cover the band's career in granular detail -but this early entry remains a worthwhile read. Newbies to Rush's work will geta solid feel for the arc of the band's career in its pages and even veteranfans might unearth a nugget of info or two they didn't know.