Rush Subdivisions

Musically it was influenced by some of the newer bands they were listening to, and sonically it took Rush further into the world of synthesisers and not all of the trio were happy about that.

- Dave Everley

Rush were holed up in Le Studio, a residential recording facility tucked away in the mountains of Quebec, when it all got too much for guitarist Alex Lifeson. It was the summer of 1982, and the band were mixing Subdivisions, the track that would open their ninth studio album, Signals.

Change was in the air in the wider music world. The hegemony of the guitar – for so long the weapon of choice for rock bands – was under threat from the technological advances made in the realm of electronic music. Synthesisers were moving in from the sidelines to become the pre-eminent instrument of the era.

Rush themselves weren’t immune to this new trend – certainly not singer/ bassist Geddy Lee, a self-professed “synth geek” who had been incorporating synthesisers into the band’s music since 1977’s A Farewell To Kings. But for Alex Lifeson, Subdivisions marked the point where the balance between guitars and synths tipped in the wrong direction.

“I was sitting there thinking: ‘I can’t hear guitar,’” says Lifeson, recalling the mixing process. “I’m a very easy-going guy, but I thought: ‘This is not right.’ So I pushed that fader up. I do remember Terry [Brown, producer] turning to me and smiling, and reaching over and pulling it back down. I could barely hear my guitar on that mix, and that just screams ‘wrong’ to me.”

By Rush’s normally equable standards, this kind of passive-aggressive tussle was a blow-out of the highest magnitude. But Subdivisions certainly did feel like a departure. As the compact, synth-heavy opening track on