Tape Deck January 29, 1975 / speculations on band's early era non-pro live recordings

[rocky chains]

Hi folks,

Just noticed this photo set on the exceptional Cygnus X-1 site from the beginning of the FBN tour in a small theatre in Hamilton, Ontario.

Rush "Fly By Night" Tour Pictures - Mohawk College Theatre - Hamilton, Ontario, Canada - January 29th, 1975

Rush 'Fly By Night' Tour Pictures - Mohawk College Theatre - Hamilton, Ontario, Canada - January 29th, 1975

www.cygnus-x1.net

The pictures were taken by a member of Neil's band J.R. Flood, and it's notable that there are a couple of great pictures of Neil and his early era kit. Among the pictures is this one of (presumably) Howard's mixing board, and there is a cassette tape player/recorder in the set up in the upper right of the photo. I suppose it could simply be what Howard used to play the intro tape as the band took the stage.

Does anyone have any knowledge or thoughts about whether the band recorded themselves in the early days for their own enjoyment? We know that at some point the crew (Skip G I think) made soundboard recordings of the band for their personal use - and that's where the soundboard recordings of Tucson, Detroit, and Offenbach from the Hemispheres tour came from. But before that became a practice, isn't it safe to assume that the band would make informal recordings of key gigs here and there? Particularly Geddy, who has a yen for history and tendency for archiving. I'm thinking that the shows at Massey Hall before the 2112 tour would qualify, as well as gigs here and there from the Rutsey years.

Rainy day musings...

 

[By-Tor X-1]

A big can of worms here but I'll have to keep it brief.

I've seen those photos before, and you're seeing Ian Grandy's mixing desk. You're right about the intro tape being a cassette and probably the main use of that tape deck. In 1974 it was called "Death to the Peasants" according to Grandy, the one we hear cuckoo clocks and Nazi chants, etc. Sometime in 1975 they had switched something similar but different, using various sound effects such as Disney's Haunted House record, which can be heard in the Toronto 1975 recording. Not exactly sure when they'd have switched the intro tapes. Seems like they used nothing in Northampton, and then Agora cuts it out. Then a little bit later, Nights Winters Years may have become the intro by Caress of Steel in fall 1975, but all we know for sure is it was there by March 1976, possibly earlier. The Necromancer and 2112 spoken vocals from Neil, and 2112 synth intro, were all also tape playback, but of course that stuff came after the picture in question. I have another picture set from the last US gig of the ATWAS tour in May 1977 which gets good shots of Grandy's desk from that period. Going on a bit of a tangent here, so getting back on track.

Ian Grandy was their front-of-house sound guy during the 70s and has confirmed before that he very rarely ever recorded. Most of his tapes have leaked out in one way or another, but at least one is still lost, Binghamton 1976. A lot of his own words can be read here, very valuable information:

Skip Daly's "Ian Grandy Interview Outtakes"

*Originally posted by Skip Daly on The Rush Forum on September 17, 2009* I figured on posting a copy of this here, since it was almost lost after The Rush Forum's engine upgrade broke some old formatting, until I thought to recover the text from the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. The...

rush-archives.net

I've long has zero optimism on the chance the band themselves have soundboard tapes from the 70s, especially pre-2112, however that doesn't mean they can't exist somewhere else. Grandy would've been the obvious guy to do it if the band wanted one done. Sure he could have traded a few to other crew guys and even other bands' engineers, that sort of thing wasn't uncommon. Technically Skip Gildersleeve, Liam Birt, or Howard Ungerleider all would've been in position to tap a line from another point in the sound system without Grandy's knowing at the FOH desk. There's also National Sound who were hired by Rush for the "PA" sound system, headed by Tom Linthicum. This for example is where the Poughkeepsie 1980 board likely came from. National Sound was with Rush since the first proper 1974 tour in the US. Tommy passed away about 20 or so years ago though. If he had kept any tapes after his tenue with the band, not sure if they survived the years since his passing.

Ian Grandy stopped doing sound after 1980 (and did security until April 1983), and Jon Erickson from Max Webster took over as Rush's new FOH at the start of the MP tour up through the end of the HYF tour. As Grandy says, Jon recorded way more often, and this has been verified as I've had the opportunity to get a visual inventory on Jon's surviving collection. Will we ever hear them? Probably not. Trust me, I've tried. Another story for another time that I've been thinking about putting out there at some point.

You also mentioned John Rutsey era. Before National Sound, Rush used a company called Band Aid, but that seems to have been exclusive to Canadian gigs, and may have been used even as late as the summer Canadian tour of 1975. From my memory, Band Aid didn't come in until approx April or May 1974. Could someone with that company have discreetly recorded something? Sure, who knows.

Alex Lifeson (and I think John Rutsey) had some cassette and reel tapes of super early school gigs circa ~1970, not soundboard, but open mic, basically audience recording from the stage. Will that ever come out? Highly doubt it. Could the band have done tapes similar to this as late as 1974 and 1975? Maybe.

Long story short, other than broadcast-purpose recorded stuff, I don't know of any typical private-use soundboard tapes existing of Rush prior to 1976, and don't quite have a good reason to strongly assume there are any hiding out there, at least certainly not with the band.

I could ramble on with more details about their sound companies and FOH guys over the years but, not directly related to your questions... so I hope that summary gives a good perspective of this stuff.

 

[rocky chains]

Yes that's a great perspective. Thanks for the info and corrections. And a nice tangent to provide all that info on intro tapes and the use of a deck for the Neil voice recordings in concert.

Rather depressing to think that there are likely few early recordings made by the band. I guess if they were playing gig after gig after gig, they didn't really feel a need to record. Still can't help but think that the band would have wanted to document some of the notable early shows, like the headlining shows at Massey Hall on FBN and CoS tours. But I suppose that doesn't matter since it would never be released to the public.

 

[By-Tor X-1]

We can always hope some mid 70s board tapes exist that we don’t know about. I keep faith that these things exist outside of the band/label, and that we can manage to get these out at some point.

I’m definitely not an optimist when it comes to expecting official releases, even with things we know they have. Nor do I at this point have optimism in official releases being done right.

What keeps me going is at least knowing that there’s no doubt many 70s audience tapes still out there to be discovered. Some that would blow our mind. We can’t save them all but we can get lucky sometimes. Win some, loose some.