Wow, 1978 was a long time ago, eh?
I still vividly recall procuring this one on compact disc (!) on the last day of school, in 1987 (!) back when CDs were still trickling out, one by one. And at the time, it was already a “classic”; not even a decade old. Yikes.
But let’s give it up for a band who, while Disco raged and Punk roared, and Prog Rock was already deep into its death-spiral, was just getting started. Indeed, Hemispheres represented at once a summation and a point of departure for what Rush had been trying to accomplish throughout the ’70s.
Check it:
This was the last side-long “suite” Rush attempted, and it remains the last necessary one any prog-rock group ever did. Not as incendiary or influential as 1976’s 2112, it will have to settle for merely being flawless, and the pinnacle of the band’s output to this point. By 1978 the trio was truly hitting on all cylinders, musically: arguably the most ambitious of all the progressive bands (which is really saying something), Rush had spent the better part of the decade trying to make a cohesive statement where all elements came together. Interestingly, if not ironically (since irony is anathema to prog-rock) this album/song that studies, and then celebrates the separate hemispheres (of our left/right brains, of our organized/emancipated natures) matches the smarts and technical proficiency with the ingredient that would play an increasingly obvious and vital role in the band’s subsequent work: soul.
(The last words on all-things-Rush, according to me:
In the final analysis, most bands—for better or worse—conjure up a time or mood or era (if they are even capable of doing that much). Even bands that have staggered past their expiration dates (say, The Rolling Stones) are more like drunken grandfathers out after last call. Rush, as much as any rock band, represents the eternal present tense. They adapted, and evolved in real time, reflecting the issues, sounds and styles of their day. And one reason, aside from merely making excellent music, that they endure, and remain so popular is that their audience has grown with them—in most senses of the word. Rush has mirrored, and described that journey, so they are never a nostalgia trip; it’s very much about the here and now.
From 1974 through 2013, and counting: Rush went from good to very good to great to as perfect as a band can be to, arguably, very good and good (your mileage may vary). Put yet another way, and perhaps the most important way: Rush has never been less than good. By all accounts they have never turned in a live performance that was less than competent (you don’t attract—and retain—lifelong fans unless you show, every night, that you care).
Regardless of whether the results, Moving Pictures aside, produce universal consensus, there is this bottom line: somewhere along the line Rush reached a different stage wherein they are the only band they can measure themselves against. This is something exceedingly few bands, in the history of rock music, can ever claim.)
For a lot more on what they had done, check this out.
For a lot more on what they did next, check this out.
For a lot more on their masterpiece, check this out.
For a lot more about why the band was rightly inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame, check THIS out.
For more about what makes Hemispheres so amazing, all these years later, stop, look and listen to what is right below these words…
