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Rush: 'Our fans feel vindicated' Guardian article and blog discussion
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25-03-2011 11:03am#1Full article here
The queue outside the Cineworld just south of Piccadilly Circus in central London is about 300 yards long and made up largely of white men aged between 30 and 50, but if you look closely you'll spot a few rogue elements. Such as women: there are, perhaps, five or six dotted among the men. Most appear to have been dragged along, but a couple look like they actually might be here of their own volition. Near the front of the queue there is a group of three young, turbaned Sikhs, and there are a few Japanese fans who may, or may not, be tourists. But in the main this is a river of middle-aged white blokes, and so I, a middle-aged white bloke, join it. Happily.
We are all here for a special screening of a film called Beyond the Lighted Stage, a documentary about Rush, a Canadian rock group who last had a single in the UK top 40 in 1983, yet are now selling out bigger venues – often stadiums – in more parts of the world than they ever have done before. What makes tonight special for Rush fans is that Geddy Lee, the group's lead singer and bassist, will be taking part in a Q&A directly after the film. To get us in the mood and break the ice, tonight's compere asks how many of us have seen the film before. Every single person – every last one – in the room puts their hand up, and a Mexican wave of laughter spreads across the room. The crowd relaxes into their seats and waits for the lights to go down. Five hundred outsiders have suddenly become a lot less outsiderly.
Rush, and Rush fans, are long used to being the butt of the joke – kimono-wearing, book-learning, heavily moustachioed Canadian prog-rock overlords never seemed likely to be at the cutting edge of cool. But what's really interesting is how their fan archetype – that nerdy, computer-club, Dungeons and Dragons-playing, comic-reading, sci-fi geek – has moved from the margins right into the very heart of the mainstream. Rush have been uncool for so long that they are, finally, perhaps the coolest band in the world.
"We've been vindicated!" laughs guitarist Alex Lifeson down the phone from his home in Toronto a few days later. "A lot of fans feel vindicated, too. There is a segment of our audience that are outsiders and some have grown into power and influence, but that bond they feel to us is still there. It's very, very deep and I don't think it's like that for a lot of other bands."3
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