13. RushPermanent Waves
This is my all-time favourite record, my number one desert island disc, my never-leave-home-without-it security blanket record. This is another transitional album where Rush are about to leave the proggy Hemispheres/A Farewell To Kings era for the Moving Pictures mega stardom era. But first they had to make this record, and I truly think it’s their best and most meaningful album.
This is Rush in their finest hour – this is when they really figured it out. All the pieces have fallen into place perfectly, and they’re good to go. Everything about it: the longer songs, it’s the record where they’ve really arrived. I just saw them at Madison Square Garden and they actually played ‘Jacob’s Ladder’. This is probably their last tour. It’s a really big deal. I think they’ve played one song off every single record, so they played songs they’ve never played before.
The first time I saw them I was probably like 14. Rush are this thing I’ve grown up with. It’s like a weird suit of armour, for me. It’s pretty personal, and it’s kind of ridiculous that my entire life these three guys have been in a band churning out records still. They’ve always been there – it’s sort of my own little world, it triggers all these memories if I hear older stuff. I like some records more than others, but I have every Rush record on vinyl, I have most of them on digital, I have them all on CD, and I have a lot of them on cassette. In fact I have multiple copies on vinyl.
