1982 (25 page)

Dungeons & Dragons

wrestling in gym class

Gobstoppers candy

Rush

As you can see from this list, being a devout follower of Rush was not a way to win Wendy’s heart. But even Wendy couldn’t deter me from my appreciation for Rush. They were musical heroes of mine, and to worship them I would have done whatever was required of me. I was also fourteen. When people get older, they have less patience for worshipping their musical heroes. It’s not that they don’t appreciate them or love them anymore. It’s just that increasingly they have things to do like getting a new filter for the furnace because a couple of times a year the furnace doesn’t work very well and they don’t know why and then they realize it’s because the furnace needs a new filter and so then they have to get a new filter so that the furnace will work well again. They have things to do like that.

But when you’re fourteen, you might camp out overnight to get tickets to see your favourite band. Or when you’re young, you might drive or take a bus for hours to get a glimpse of your performing idol. When you get older, you start saying things that demonstrate that you no longer have the patience for such epic worship. Trust me. Listen to what older people say at concerts. They get frustrated when they have to wait. Even if they’ve paid a lot of money to see a band they think they love. “This is ridiculous. Weren’t the Eagles supposed to be on right at 9 p.m.?” Or: “We’ve been here for at least thirty-five minutes now! I need to get up early and get a new filter for the furnace. This really isn’t worth it.”

See?

You might hear adults say things like that. These same people may have been willing to line up overnight for the Eagles when they were fourteen. An extra thirty-five minutes at the show would make no difference. But now they’re tired.
And they may need to change the furnace filter. Of course, if you’ve never been a fan of the Eagles, it would never be worth it to wait for them. But when you’re fourteen and a fan, it makes a lot more sense. And that’s what led to the great Rush pilgrimage of 1982.

By the end of June, I had little in the way of an agenda for the summer months except to work at SAVCO and perform a small role in the Thornlea Theatre Troupe’s outdoor production of
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
. I also needed to call Wendy and confirm that she was coming to the Police Picnic, and then, assuming the phone call went well, go to the Police Picnic with Wendy in August. Still, my calendar for July was relatively free. Open season. That was about to change.

One afternoon as the school year was ending and summer was finally about to begin, I heard the doorbell ring. It was Toke. He was standing on the front porch, huffing and puffing, totally out of breath. He’d obviously rushed over with some urgency. Something was up. Toke had been running. Toke was a bit chubby. Toke didn’t really run.

“Mitch just told me! ... It’s … they’re coming!” It was near impossible to figure out what he was going on about. “… They’re recording. Dat studio …” More panting. “On Doncaster. Alex Lifeson … dat guy … ee’s great!”

Toke was really out of sorts. But I could tell he was very excited.

“What? Who’s coming?” I was trying to keep up. “What is it, Toke?”

“Rush! Rush!”

“Toke, slow down.” I had to help Toke get a hold of himself. But with his mention of Rush, I was also feeling some
excitement. “What is it you’re trying to say? What’s going on with Rush?”

Toke began to catch his breath and compose himself. He explained that Mitch had got word from an insider source that Rush was recording up the street at a place called New Media Studios (at least, that’s how I remember the name) on Doncaster Avenue. I assumed this was a joke. But Toke looked quite serious. And he was panting.

It seemed inconceivable. Rush? Near us? The news was unlike anything we’d encountered in our quiet suburban hamlet. How were we to process the idea that one of our favourite bands was scheduled to record only a ten-minute walk away? But Mitch was pretty reliable. And Mitch had an insider source. So it must’ve been a reliable insider source. This must’ve been true.

When Toke had fully caught his breath, he explained that he thought we should keep the info about Rush to ourselves. He didn’t even want me to tell Tom Rivington. Toke was very specific about who he thought deserved to hear certain choice headlines.

In the days that followed, Toke and I did some digging around and learned that the members of Rush were in fact going to be cocooning themselves at New Media Studios on Doncaster Avenue, just up the street from where we lived. By “digging around,” I basically mean we asked Mitch about twenty times for more details. It turned out that Rush were not recording but were practising for their imminent world tour to support their forthcoming album,
Signals
. The word was that Rush would be at New Media Studios for most of July. Toke and I agreed we would not let this opportunity pass. Other than
our shifts at SAVCO Pet Food and Supplies, we had found our sole mission for the first half of the summer of 1982.

We mapped out a plan that was admirably consistent. Starting at the end of the first week of July, and for every single day over the following three weeks, Toke and I would get up early and make the trip to New Media Studios in the hopes of meeting Rush. Toke would meet me at my place and we’d make our way there. I put gel in my hair and wore my black boots in the hope that, if I met the Rush guys, they’d know I was cool. And maybe New Wave.

To be clear, we couldn’t get particularly close to the main doors of the building where Rush were practising. The entrance to New Media Studios was on a closed-off driveway where kids couldn’t be hanging around. But the building backed onto a large field and baseball diamond that was at the far end of our old Henderson Avenue Public School. There was a fourfoot wire fence between the parking area behind the studio and the field, where we could walk with impunity. Toke and I would go and sit by the fence each morning and peer through it from around 9 a.m. until dusk. We took shifts, always making sure one of us was present in case the other needed to go to the bathroom or run to get supplies. Our supplies included peanut butter sandwiches, Lolas, bags of nuts, and, on one special afternoon, some takeout burgers from the Golden Star bought with extra money my mother had given us for a healthy lunch.

Maybe the strangest part about our daily pilgrimage to meet Rush was our unwavering commitment. We didn’t get discouraged when for the first week we barely even caught a glimpse of them. We saw sports cars coming in and out of the lot, but our view was obscured and we couldn’t tell who was
in them. But nothing deterred us. Nothing. In our Adidas bags, as well as supplies, we had vinyl copies of Rush albums. We wanted to be prepared if they agreed to sign our Rush records.

We never saw them. Not for the first week or two. And it didn’t faze us. This was the devotion of two young guys sitting in a field, unconcerned with how long this wait might take. Impatience was for adults. This was about Rush. We were in it for the long haul.

By the second day we knew Rush were inside because we could hear them practising. This was very exciting. They seemed to play songs in twenty-minute stretches. They would practise one song and then stop. We would hear nothing for a while and wonder if they were still there. And then we would hear a loud bass, or Neil Peart’s drums, or some heavy synth sounds, and we’d know that Rush were still inside. We were getting a free daily concert, if a bit muffled and disjointed. When they started playing, Toke would put his finger in the air and scream “Rush!” He never tired of this. Toke was consistent.

Most often of all, Toke and I heard Rush practising the song “Subdivisions.” It would start with this heavy bass synth riff, and Toke and I would pump our fists in the air from outside the fence. “Subdivisions” had been released as a single in May. It was from the
Signals
album. We had heard it on the radio, but we hadn’t paid a lot of attention to the lyrical content. In the middle of the song, Neil Peart’s lyrics went,

Any escape might help to smooth

The unattractive truth

But the suburbs have no charms to soothe

The restless dreams of youth

Later, it would occur to me that Rush had been singing about us—kids trying to make sense of life in the suburbs. In some ways we were deep in the middle of that struggle to “conform or be cast out,” as another line in the song says. But Toke and I didn’t realize this at the time. It might have helped if someone had explained it to us. But no one did. And we really didn’t know much about the song’s meaning. And it sounded a bit muffled from outside the fence. We just knew it was the heavy new Rush song. And that we were getting an exclusive preview of the tour. Toke kept screaming “Rush!” with his finger in the air.

At times, during our days behind New Media Studios, other kids would come along and ask what we were doing. It was always at moments when Rush had fallen silent. We’d say we were just hanging out. Mitchell Toker’s inside source was someone who worked at the studio, but other than Toke and me, it seemed very few people were aware that Rush were practising right there in Thornhill. This was our secret. The only unrealized part of our mission was actually meeting our rock heroes.

In the third week of our daily routine of listening to Rush from outside of New Media Studios, Toke and I saw what looked like a new two-door sports car parked close to the fence where we’d been sitting each day. This parking spot hadn’t been used before. We stared at the car and wondered if it belonged to any of the members of Rush. We debated throughout the day who the car might belong to. Sure enough, at the end of that afternoon, a skinny guy with long black hair, dark jeans, and a black shirt came out from behind the studios and walked towards the car. Toke and I looked at each other and nodded.
It was Rush singer and bass player Geddy Lee. Geddy opened the car door, jumped in, and drove away. Geddy had walked near the fence to get to the car. We’d witnessed this. Now we’d not only heard Rush, we’d seen Geddy Lee. Our patience was starting to pay off.

For the rest of the third and final week that Rush were practising, we saw Geddy’s car consistently parked at the fence. On the third day, he came out and very clearly spotted us before he got into his car. Geddy looked at Toke and me and then smiled and waved. He waved the way people familiar with each other wave. Like the way you wave to your neighbour across the street, someone you’d say hello to, and if you’re not going to stop to speak to them, you still want to acknowledge them. He waved like that. And when you wave like that, it’s usually a reciprocal exercise. You expect the other person to wave back. But we must’ve been a bit stunned. Neither Toke nor I waved back. Geddy got in his car and drove away. Toke was very upset that we hadn’t reciprocated the wave with Geddy Lee.