“All of our early albums were written on acoustic guitar. When Geddy [Lee, bass and vocals] and I would write the music, we’d sit down with a cassette recorder and two acoustic guitars, in spite of the fact that we were a hard rock band.- Thanks to RushFanForever for the headsup!
"‘Closer to the Heart’ is a sweet, ballady type of song, but we mix it up. It takes an interesting course as the arrangement builds. Once we got the basic arrangement down, we knew that the intro would be acoustic, and then we took it up a notch dynamically and brought the whole band in.
"The 12-string intro gives it the illusion of being an acoustic piece, and then the rhythm section comes in and the song changes into a kickin’ rock tune.”
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UPDATE 4/29 - Yesterday Kevin J. Anderson announced: "First release from CLOCKWORK LIVES: The Bookseller's Tale is now available in all eBook formats. Cool multiverse tale of Mrs. Courier! Also includes an afterword on the writing of the project with Neil Peart...and a cameo from Vertical Horizon's Matt Scannell."
You can purchase the ebook of The Bookseller's Tale now at Smashwords.com.
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"In Clockwork Angels, #1 bestselling author Kevin J. Anderson and legendary Rush drummer and lyricist Neil Peart created a fabulous, adventurous steampunk world in a novel to accompany the smash Rush concept album of the same name. It was a world of airships and alchemy, clockwork carnivals, pirates, lost cities, a rigid Watchmaker who controlled every aspect of life, and his nemesis, the ruthless and violent Anarchist who wanted to destroy it all.For more info, check out Kevin J Anderson's 35 minute Rushcast podcast interview given on March 1st where he speaks at length about the the new novel.
"Anderson and Peart have returned to their colorful creation to explore the places and the characters that still have a hold on their imagination. Marinda Peake is a woman with a quiet, perfect life in a small village; she long ago gave up on her dreams and ambitions to take care of her ailing father, an alchemist and an inventor. When he dies, he gives Marinda a mysterious inheritance: a blank book that she must fill with other people’s stories — and ultimately her own. Clockwork Lives is a steampunk Canterbury Tales, and much more, as Marinda strives to change her life from a mere 'sentence or two' to a true epic."
Well, we're not finished as a band. We still talk about recording.Check out the full interview here.
Who knows, there may be an opportunity in the future to do not a big tour, but a series of concerts ... like a week in Massey Hall or Radio City Music Hall.
Ged and I are just itching to get back into writing. He just revamped his studio, and he's not a tech kind of studio guy. He doesn't know how probably even one per cent of that stuff works. But he's had this renaissance of being a musician and wanting to play and study more — it's really inspiring to see. When things slow down we'll start to do some writing, for whatever purpose. We've always talked about doing some soundtrack work.
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"A man of talent, curiosity and diverse enthusiasms that include baseball, birds and bottles of fine wine, Geddy Lee, of Rush, feels a particular attraction to London. The band, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary with a North American tour that kicks off in early May, has spent a lot of time recording and performing in Britain, and Lee is a regular visitor to a a city that he summarizes as 'his and enduring.'"You can read the full interview on page 28 of the Spring issue here. - Thanks to RushFanForever for the headsup!
Humble Bundle is running a special bundle highlighting books by Kevin J. Anderson's own small publishing company, WordFire Press. It's an amazing deal of 16 books, where you pay what you want, and a portion of the proceeds goes to charity and the rest gets divvied up among the authors.
Last year photographer Glen Wexler sat down with Travellersintime.com to discuss his career in shooting album covers. Glen talks at length about many covers, including the work he did for Rush's Hold Your Fire album cover and linernotes art. Glen tells how the original actor chosen to play "the juggler" was Dennis Hopper, and that the set piece still exists in his garage:Hold Your Fire was my only Rush cover. In the mid to late 80s Hugh Syme and I collaborated on several projects. Hugh worked with Rush as their art director from very early on. We were both art directing conceptual album covers, although I was creating the images with photography, and at the time, Hugh was primarily a painter. The collaboration was an interesting and productive mix.You can read the full interview here. - Thanks to RushFanForever for the headsup!
I often worked with miniature sets, and suggested the approach for staging the fire juggler. Many of the miniature buildings were recycled from a Yamaha advertising campaign featuring Michael Jackson, which I had created a couple years prior. I brought in my set team, who built a very impressive set, but very small, only four feet across.
I cast the fire juggler, this great character actor, Stanley Brock, who's mostly known for his role in the film Tin Men. We originally had Dennis Hopper on board, but kept running into scheduling conflicts.
I shot the miniature street scene in my studio on 4x5 film. The other elements were shot medium format with a Hasselblad. The fireballs are a basketball that was coated with rubber cement and torched. The dog, full size fire hydrant, and actor were shot separately. I combine all the elements with multiple exposures on 8x10 film in my darkroom, which was the primary method I used to combine images pre-digitally. When everything was combined together on one piece of film, it was sent out for a dye transfer print and final retouching, which was the typical workflow back then.
In the original version, we also flew in the boy who modeled for Hugh's painting for the Power Windows cover. He was seen looking out of the apartment window, but it was decided that he didn't really enhance the shot...there was so much going on. Earlier Rush covers are referenced in the image, and Power Windows was covered by the period TV sets in the room.
In hindsight, both Hugh and I regretted using that image in the inside of package. It was a little too "clever" using the three red balls for the cover, and leaving the more epic and memorable image for the inside of the packaging. While it might not look like it, the cover with the red balls is photography, as well. I had my set guys physically sculpt the RUSH text into a 4' x 8' surface that was then painted a high gloss red by an auto body shop. The printer combined the red billiard balls during the pre-press. I still have the set piece in my garage. I thought it would make a cool door.
UPDATE: I hope you enjoyed our April Fools' joke. We again teamed up with John at Cygnus-X1.net and Ed at RushIsABand, and Kevin J. Anderson even joined in the fun. Big thanks to John for creating the poster, with suggestions bounced back and forth by Ed and I. Who knows, this idea might not be too far fetched, we will see what the future holds...
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"...it’s some kind of a story—with a bittersweet ending and renewed faith in humanity. A small dark blot in my past, with its fading nebula of pain and regret, has suddenly flared into a bright star of relief and gratitude. You can’t make that stuff up."You can check it out here.
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