http://www.salon.com/2013/08/06/rush...d_of_all_time/
Rush: How I learned to forgive — and even like — the most hated band of all time
They're the most hated band ever. Yes, classic rock radio played them to death in the '80s, but it's time to let go
By Rob Sheffield
Excerpted from "Turn Around Bright Eyes: The Rituals of Love and Karaoke"
It was a woman who introduced me to Rush: Miss Blake, my sixth-grade music teacher at Pierce Elementary School. The seventies, obviously. A typical 1978 suburban public school scenario—we studied “2112″ in music class, while in English, we spent the whole year studying “Lord of the Rings.” Our teacher believed that spending the golden hours of our childhood frolicking through the Shire with orcs and hobbits would make us peace-loving members of an agrarian future society. Instead, it gave me a lifelong grudge against wizards.
Miss Blake always seemed so mild-mannered, with her corduroy smocks and beaded necklaces and straight black hair. I never thought of her (or any teacher) as a rock & roller. She usually brought in classical records. But one week, she happened to ask, “Has anyone heard of a band called Rush?”
To my surprise, I was the only kid who raised a hand, and even then I’d never heard their actual music: I’d seen the newspaper ad for their latest album, “A Farewell to Kings.” I was intrigued by how dangerous the band members looked on the album cover, which probably gives an idea of how dangerous I was. The name Rush was also associated with a drug the older kids smuggled into school—bottles of amyl nitrate with a lightning bolt and the word rush on the label. So I assumed their music was scary older-dude stuff, full of drugs and the occult.
We spent all afternoon listening as Miss Blake taught us to appreciate the “rock opera” format by playing us “2112.” These songs had a plot, about a future society where music is banned and Geddy Lee defies the elders by learning to play guitar. His squeak-of-the-damned voice made the whole class giggle, as Miss Blake talked us through the libretto and explained the symbolism in “Temples of Syrinx.”
I heard tons of Rush in my college dorm, because we all listened to the local rock station WPLR, which apparently stood for “Plays Lotsa Rush.” My Rush friend (every North American male has a “Rush friend”) was Arun, now a neurosurgeon. He explained (Rush fans love explaining things) how the drummer Neil Peart wrote the lyrics, even though bassist Geddy Lee was the one who sang them. Arun could elaborate the Rush philosophy, with the individual’s struggle to choose free will in a conform-or-be-cast-out world. Over the years he has kept me up to date on how Rush have revised their philosophy, as their ideas keep changing in response to a world where changes aren’t permanent, but change is.
I was officially opposed to Rush at the time, so I enjoyed goading him about the band’s flaws. In all these friendly arguments, I developed a real affection for the band, as well as an admiration for their devotees, so I guess I was a casual fan. But casual Rush fans do not really count in the grand scheme of things. Real Rush fans are the hard-core believers, one of the most doggedly loyal audiences in the business. And then there are the people who hate Rush just as passionately, who for lack of a better collective noun we can call “the rest of the world.” The singular thing about Rush isn’t how beloved they are. It’s how hated they are.
* * *
Are Rush the most hated band of all time? The answer is simple: yes. (Not the band Yes, although they’re in the top twenty.) Rush are easily, beyond any rational dispute, the most intensely despised rock band who ever existed. Women famously hate Rush, but most men have hated them just a little less fervently. In a way, that hatred is as impressive as the loyalty of their fans. Hating Rush was a blast. These days I like Rush a lot, but I miss hating them. We will never agree on anything the way we agreed on Rush.
Rush are not so hated these days, because of “Beyond the Lighted Stage,” which has to be one of the best rockumentaries ever made. The band members are extremely lovable in this film—lifelong friends who never argue about anything except the keyboard solos. (Apparently certain members of Rush are the only people on earth who think Rush should have keyboard solos.)
They’re also up front about their lack of appeal to any female audience. Even when they pack a stadium full of fans, the clitoris count will be in single digits. The only person in the movie who mentions sex is Gene Simmons. He tells stories about the seventies, when everybody else was chasing groupies (“you could even be an ugly bastard like me and get laid!”) while the Rush guys went back to the hotel to read books.
So how did these huggable schlubs get so widely detested?
Blame it on the radio. In a saner world, Rush would have stayed a cult band; they could have kept stoking their quirks for their sizable cult audience, while normal people just ignored them. That’s what King Crimson did; it’s what Gentle Giant did. It’s what all the other bands like Rush did. But it was not possible for normal people to ignore Rush, because the radio was shoving them down people’s throats.
For reasons that remain murky, they got constant airplay, way out of proportion to their actual record sales. The details of how this happened are lost in the history of glittering prizes and endless compromises, but somehow, Rush snagged some kind of sweetheart deal where they became one of corporate rock radio’s flagship bands. So they got hyped on the airwaves on the same level as Journey or Styx or Genesis, bands that were much more popular and went down much smoother. And that created massive resentment among people who were not full-time Rush fans. There was a sense that Rush were getting forced on innocent bystanders.
Reply With Quote
(Yummy, the delicious irony of normal people getting Rush shoved down their throats by the corporate folks who had Rush shoved down their throats by the Rush cult, using their Rockholm Syndrome death grip.)
Originally Posted by notallwhowander
) aren't going to reach everybody and some may be turned off by either the lack of comprehension or blow to their intellectual ego. Some may even accuse Peart's lyrics as "He's compensating". 
Bookmarks