Rush-Rush (1974)

Rush's debut album was released in Canada in March and in the United States in July 1974. It was reissued on compact disc with remastered sound in 1997. Due to the tight budget for the recording, the sessions were scheduled during times when the recording studio was usually free, which were generally late at night, resulting in lower rates. This has been quite common for many rock bands (in fact, Queen was forced to do the same for the recording of their first album). The band was not satisfied with the work of the original producer, Dave Stock, so manager Ray Daniels ended up hiring Terry Brown for an additional $9,000, whose remixing work significantly improved the sound quality. The album was originally released under the auspices of the Canadian company Moon Records in a run of only 1,000 copies. One of these songs reached Donna Halper, a DJ at radio station WMMS in Cleveland, Ohio, who selected "Working Man" for regular airplay on her show. The song was so successful that the number of calls the show received caught the attention of executives at Mercury Records, who signed Rush to a contract and reissued the album in the United States, where it was very well received, achieving gold status. After the release of their first album, John Rutsey left the group in July 1974 due to his diabetes and his reluctance to perform live. To replace him, the remaining members held a series of auditions and ultimately hired Neil Peart. Peart officially joined on July 29, 1974, two weeks before their first US tour. They played their first concert together, opening for Uriah Heep and Manfred Mann, before more than eleven thousand people at the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on August 14th. In addition to becoming the drummer, Peart became the main songwriter, at the expense of Geedy Lee, who showed little interest in writing, despite having written the lyrics for the debut album. And it shows that he was the missing piece, as this album has a more basic and simple sound than what they would later demonstrate, with a rock style that includes no keyboards, a particularly screaming vocal style, and a clear influence from Led Zeppelin's music, as in "What You're Doing" and a few others. Despite everything, they left us with a couple of tracks that became classics in their repertoire; in fact, they never stopped playing them live, such as "Finding My Way", "In the Mood", and "Working Man". The track "Here Again", with an impressive guitar performance by Alex Lifeson, also stands out.