The late 80s were not kind to Rush (depending who you ask).
From 1985 to 1994 with the release of Counterparts, the band was neck deep in synthetic sounds, lush arrangements and veering far away from their rock roots and alienating fans in the process. While the band ultimately learned what they didn’t want to sound like and came back to their rock roots, it was a time of much needed experimentation as the band admitted in their documentary, Beyond the Lighted Stage, and ultimately created a group of enduring fans that would stick with them through the highs and lows of their career and through whatever experiment they could throw at them.
As the band was hitting peak synth, the band cut a single for their 1987 album, Hold Your Fire called ‘Time Stand Still’. It was the band’s most straightforward pop single to date. It followed the verse-chorus-verse formula, a relatively simple chord progression and beared a catchy hook provided by guest vocals from singer-songwriter Aimee Mann.
MTV launched 6 years prior in 1981 and the industry was warming up to the idea of using music videos, visual accompaniments to songs for both marketing purposes and to add an extra dimension to the consumer listening experience. In support of the band’s single, Rush put out this music video:
At the time, this video might have been considered innovative and neat. It might have been considered ‘edgy’.
Today, it looks like a mess. Like a high schooler got a hold of an early version of Adobe After Effects and Photoshop and went to town.
It’s a music video that raises two very important questions:
- Who directed this? This video was directed by Polish film director and visual artist, Zbigniew Rybczyński. Rybczyński, for those that don’t know, is a very respected filmmaker in Poland with numerous accolades and awards to his name including a star on the Lodz Walk of Fame and a recognized pioneer of HDTV. He also produced a number of other music videos throughout the 1980s for acts including the Supertramp, Grandmaster Flash and Mick Jagger. Here’s a collection of the videos one YouTuber put together. See if you can’t spot a similar artistic pattern.
- What were they thinking with this? Well, as it turns out Glen Lazarro, the editor for the ‘Time Stands Still’ music video had this to say about Mr. Rybczyński’s vision for Rush’s music video:
“Zibig had shot footage of country landscapes for Rush. The idea was to shoot short pieces of Rush performing the song against green screen, then composite them together. When we started working, Zbig decided he loved the stage and wanted to composite Rush over that instead. I suggested that we shoot them live in the stage, but Zbig wanted everyone to “float” around it. He also insisted that everything had to happen “live.” Each new layer would be placed on top of the preceding layer without making protection copies or “laying off” a copy, as we used to say. The green screen footage was shot with the same giant studio camera Aimee Mann is using in the video. Zbig would give some vague direction to Rush; I would set up the effects, play the audio track and press record, causing multiple one-inch tape machines to roll up on the third floor.”
It’s also important to remember that thousands of dollars were spent and multiple eyes saw this music video, including those of the band, before it went live.
Regardless, it was a time when standards weren’t really set for what a music video should be or look like. Record executives and MTV personnel just wanted moving pictures (ha. ha.) put to sounds to put on TV to move albums off shelves. This, to them, also might have been good enough to get by.
In this bigger picture that is Rush’s collective body of work, music videos, oddly enough, have never been the band’s strongest point. One would think that Neil’s ideas of faith, suicide, individualism, existential crises and countless other themes would make for excellent music videos, if not for a short film or two with very deep, rich character and story development. At the very least, articulate big ideas in a different way for Rush fans or newcomers to the band to understand. But unfortunately, Rush’s music videos usually come off as bizarre or just compilations of live footage with lots of fades in and out of shots.
Maybe it was the fact that the band was hitting musical strides when music videos were still new and cutting edge. But that wouldn’t explain how some videos like Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ or even Aerosmith’s ‘Walk This Way’ video turned out so well. Maybe Rush’s deep conceptual ideas didn’t translate well to a short 4 minute music video.
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