Adventure Rocketship! Let's All Go To The Science Fiction Disco

by Jonathan Wright

  But this isn’t a man who’s slowing down. He’s just recorded a new Deviants album that he’s hoping to release by summer 2013. A new collection of his journalism and lyrics, Elvis Died For Somebody Sins But Not Mine has just been published by Headpress. A new short novel, Road Movie (“a graphic novel without pictures, moving pulp fiction into a more surreal, almost poetic, flow”) has recently been released by Penny-Ante Editions. He’s already working on a new one. He has one more coughing fit before – reluctantly, with night already falling, and foxes starting to roam around the gardens behind his flat – I have to leave.

  “I’m not dying,” he says again, defiantly. I believe him. Or at least, I hope to God he’s right.

  Clockwork Angels: Rush and Kevin J Anderson

  - Rob Williams -

  “I was a nerdy kid with thick glasses and a bad haircut, and I didn’t have girlfriends to leave me anyway,” laughs SF author Kevin J Anderson, when asked to recall why and when he originally fell in love with the music of Rush. “I was in high school, I wanted to be a writer and it spoke to me in ways that popular ‘my girlfriend left me’ type of songs did not.

  “I was much more interested in these grand epics of exploring a black hole and finding where the Greek Gods have gone to hide and this dystopian thing about a guy in the future finding a guitar…” he continues. “These lyrics talk about things we deal with in science fiction as opposed to Call Me Maybe. The philosophical underpinnings of Neil Peart’s lyrics are things that I want to put into my novels. To add content instead of just a veneer.”

  Neil Peart being, of course, the drummer and lyricist for the much-loved Canadian power trio Rush. They of the five-decade career, the 25 million album sales in the US alone, and the slightly – shall we say – nerdy reputation of their immensely passionate fanbase. Songs about a council of trees will do that for you (“There is unrest in the forest, there is trouble with the trees, for the maples want more sunlight, and the oaks ignore their pleas,” from Hemispheres, 1978).

  That may sound vaguely demeaning to Rush fans when it really isn’t meant to be. I’m a longstanding Rush fan myself – having fond memories of my vinyl copies of Power Windows (1985) and Hold Your Fire (1987). They’d moved to 80s power suits by this point, away from the bell-bottoms and the rather impressive moustache of the inside cover of their classic 2112. But there was enough in the way of dazzling bass runs, un-work-outable drum fills and meaning in the ‘deep’ lyrics to appeal to a teenager whose record collection consisted of Iron Maiden and Mötley Crüe.

  To paraphrase The Blues Brothers, if you grew up in the industrial, Thatcher-wasteland of the South Wales valleys in the early 80s you were privy to both kinds of music – heavy and metal. The Rhondda isn’t a place exactly known for cultural diversity and the mountains surrounding the valley were a long way off being punctured by the internet revolution. As a result they kept a lot of things out. Influences came via the schoolyard, and everyone seemed to like heavy rock.

  “Ooh, are you ready girls? Ooh, are you ready now? Ooh yeah! Kickstart my heart,” plaintively sang Mötley Crüe. “The blacksmith, and the artist, reflect it in their art, they forge their creativity, closer to the heart,” sang Rush. Which would have more appeal to a sensitive, arty teenager?

  I recall an interview, almost certainly from Kerrang! magazine, where Neil Peart claimed his drums talked to him onstage. Considering that his songs were filled with the Priests of the Temples of Syrinx, I could believe it. These men were plainly seers and deep thinkers with strangely high voices. I liked the way, on their live albums, that the helium-fuelled singer Geddy Lee bade farewell by turning “Thank you very much, goodnight” into a strange one-word “ThaguverymuGooNiiiiIII!!!” “What about the voice of Geddy Lee, how did it get so high?” asked Pavement on 1997’s Stereo, raising the question a lot of us had pondered. Also, Alex Lifeson’s guitar riff on Working Man was, and remains, the business. Such things still go a long way.

  Rush’s virtuoso playing is as much a part of their appeal as their lyrics – and many of their songs are not 10-minute long suites featuring dystopian future scenarios. Nevertheless, Rush’s 1975 album Fly By Night featured Rivendell and a nine-minute track entitled By-Tor & The Snow Dog. Case closed. And this sense of faraway world-building is the very lexicon of the musical sub-genre. Look at the cosmic landscape album covers of Yes, as depicted by the artist Roger Dean. Still, by the time the mid-80s had come around, Rush had turned their attention away from the stars to impending nuclear Armageddon. That was enough to gain the attention of an enthusiastic young science fiction author.

  “When I started working on my very first novel, the Rush album Grace Under Pressure came out, and it seemed to me that the songs on Grace… were very relevant to the story I was developing,” says Anderson today, quoting lyrics from the 1984 release. “‘Android on the run,’ ‘The enemy within,’ ‘No swimming in the heavy water, no singing in the acid rain.’ I made sure that everything from Grace Under Pressure was inside my novel, which was called Resurrection Inc.

  “When Resurrection Inc was published I put in the acknowledgements: ‘This novel was inspired by Rush’s Grace Under Pressure.’ I autographed three copies and mailed them to their record company, and assumed it was going to be stored next to the Arc Of The Covenant somewhere in a warehouse. And a year later Neil Peart wrote me a seven-page, single-spaced letter saying he’d got the novel, read it and enjoyed it. That was in 1989 and we’ve been not just correspondents but friends ever since.”

  Fast forward almost 30 years and Rush’s 19th studio album – Clockwork Angels – is a (yes) concept album with a central narrative created in collaboration with one Kevin J Anderson who, in the time since his first Rush-inspired novel, has written more than 100 books, 52 of which have appeared on international bestseller lists.

  “When Neil was developing the story behind it he was very interested in steampunk,” recalls Anderson. “He’s known that I’ve written a bunch of steampunk. We had lunch with him, my wife and I, one day in a diner – and he was all excited that maybe this could be a Broadway musical and a novel, and my wife immediately asked, ‘A novel? Who’s going to write the novel?’ and he said, ‘Well, Kevin is, of course.’”

  This was dream-come-true material for a lifelong Rush fan.

  “They had two of the songs out – Caravan and BU2B – and they formed the basis for a lot of the story. Neil and I met and climbed a mountain and brainstormed a lot of the plot, and then I would outline the book in detail. I’d send the outline back and get his feedback, and then I’d develop it. And that’s when I started really putting together the coal fire and the alchemy and the airships, the city of Poseidon and where all this technology leads and this sparked other ideas in the story and it was, I don’t want to say circular, but an upward spiral where it got bigger and better.”

  What Rush and Anderson’s fans ended up with was a novel that told the story of the album and an album that acted as soundtrack to the novel. And Clockwork Angels is very much a typical Rush story in terms of its themes, with the ordered society of the Clockmakers and one individual railing against it, leaving behind his smalltown environment and hitching a ride about one of the steam-powered airships to see the world. There are certainly similarities to 2112.

  “I think it’s interesting to compare the two of those because in 2112 the oppressive society is really dark and violent and the hero ends up killing himself at the end,” says Anderson. “In Clockwork Angels unless you’re trying to buck against the tide, the Watchmaker’s society is not that bad of a place. It’s a colourful dystopia if you have to use the word. Our hero is someone with a sense of wonder who wants to see the world. I grew up in a small town. I wanted to go out and see places and the people around me threw up passive roadblocks to me; ‘You don’t want to do that. You should get a real job.’ But it was still a pretty nice place where I grew up.

  “Dreamers have always struggled with being square pegs in round holes and no
t quite fitting in. It doesn’t have to end with you slashing your wrists because they’ve taken your guitar away.”

  Neil Peart’s lyrics have been described as “left-leaning libertarianism” and much has been made of his dedicating 2112 to the “genius of Ayn Rand” (her book Anthem inspired the lyrics). Rand, of course, is now the inspirational darling of the Tea Party in the United States and has become synonymous with comments regarding the poor being ‘parasites’ upon the rich. The connection of one science fiction-inspired 1978 dedication seems too easy a brickbat to attack Peart with, however. And Rush’s lyrics have always seemed to come from a good-hearted place.

  “I don’t want to speak for Neil’s politics but I know that he likes to experience many things,” says Anderson when queried on this. “He’s experienced different cultures. The guy bicycled across Africa by himself a bunch of times. He is a very well-travelled and curious person who wants to see and learn different things.”

  He may not want to speak for Peart but, during the creation of the novel and through interviews such as this, Clockwork Angels sees Anderson living out a Rush fan’s dream. Almost becoming a fourth member of the band…

  “This is certainly a more personal Rush album for me, more than anything other than Grace Under Pressure. I’ve seen them in concert now on this tour twice and to see the visuals on the backdrop, the images derived from the scenes I created in the book. It’s hard to separate what I came up with and what they did.

  “What I wanted to do is do something of a different kind of art form. As far as I know there’s never been this album and novel at the same time. Music communicates a story in one way and a novel communicates it in a different way. And I have to acknowledge the contribution of Hugh Syme too – the artist who did the album cover and the booklet. We’d look at his illustrations and they inspired me to describe things differently. So it was very much a team effort. I’m obviously not objective but I thought this turned out really well. I’ve had 120 books published and very few other ones I’ve been as proud of as I am this one.”

  The symbiotic relationship between science fiction and prog rock seems embedded in its history and perfect in its partnership. Both somewhat derided by the mainstream. Two fanbases that spill over into each other to the point where it’s difficult to see the join. It’s something that Anderson and his wife, science fiction author Rebecca Moesta, have previously explored, even creating their own prog rock supergroup.

  “Oh, music’s a huge part of my life,” Anderson says, with something approaching glee. “I have a trilogy called Terra Ingognita about sailing ships and sea monsters, and I’ve always wanted to do a project like this – an album and a book together. One of my fans owns the label Prog Rock Records and he suggested we create a group called Roswell Six, which was kind of a supergroup we put together. The lead singer was James LaBrie from Dream Theater, Steve Walsh from Kansas, Jon Payne from Asia, Michael Sadler from Saga, Erik Norlander from Rocket Scientist wrote some of the music. We wrote the lyrics. It’s a pretty awesome album.” (The album, by the way, being Terra Incognita: Beyond The Horizon, released in 2009.)

  When I finally saw Rush live in 2004, they had a giant animated dragon onstage with them. It was, despite the deep-seated philosophy of Neil Peart’s lyrics, an unreservedly fun evening. Everyone sang along on the chorus’ of the old favourites. (It’s quite something to hear an entire arena all singing a high-pitched: “We are the Priests Of The Temples Of Syrinx.”) We had all, I felt, reached the age where no one was worried about what was cool and what was not. Instead there was only enthusiasm.

  Rush’s Best SF and Fantasy Moments

  2112, 1978

  White kimonos and bell bottoms. BIG moustaches and a suite that takes up one half of an album where a dystopian science-fiction future is punctured by the freedoms that come from one bloke stumbling upon an electric guitar in a cave. Where did Ben Elton get the plot from for the Queen musical We Will Rock You, we wonder? And the opening ‘cosmic’ keyboard sound of Overture is about the most science-fiction sound you’ve ever heard.

  Fly By Night, 1975

  Good quality owl on the cover. The album launches with Anthem, inspired by Ayn Rand. By-Tor And The Snow Dog is almost nine minutes long and split into four sections including Across The Styx and 7/4 War Furor. There’s also the five-minute Rivendell (featuring lyrics not by Peart).

  A Farewell To Kings, 1977

  An 11-minute track (featuring a five-minute instrumental section) inspired by the Samuel Taylor Coleridge poem Kubla Khan, you say? Hmmm… I’m on the fence. It’s called Xanadu? Sign me up! Also features Cygnus X-1, a 10-minute-plus song about a spaceship exploring a black hole. PROG!

  Hemispheres, 1978

  Ignore the fey and The Trees is a bit of a classic (what rational person could not empathise with the disappointed oaks who shake their heads?) while the entire first side of the album is an 18-minute sequel to Cygnus X-1. The explorer aboard the spaceship Rocinante from Farewell To Kings has now passed through the black hole and emerged to find the Greek gods caught in a war between heart and mind. Olly Murs’ recent album Right Place Right Time is believed to have been heavily influenced by this track (NB, not really).

  Clockwork Angels, 2012

  Author of the accompanying novel Kevin J Anderson described the album’s storyline as being: “In a young man’s quest to follow his dreams, he is caught between the grandiose forces of order and chaos. He travels across a lavish and colourful world of steampunk and alchemy, with lost cities, pirates, anarchists, exotic carnivals, and a rigid Watchmaker who imposes precision on every aspect of daily life.”

  Bill Nelson: Jets at Dawn

  - David Quantick -

  There’s a William Gibson story called The Gernsback Continuum, a slightly comic piece about our universe being colonised by the chrome flying wings and blonde heroes of William Gernsback’s Amazing Stories. It’s a story I always think of when I listen to Be-Bop Deluxe, the band formed by Bill Nelson in the 1970s, because not only did Be-Bop Deluxe use a lot of science fiction imagery (even down to using a photo of the robot from Metropolis on the cover of Live! In The Air Age) but also – more even than contemporaries David Bowie and Roxy Music – they sounded like science fiction. And like that kind of science fiction, too. Be-Bop Deluxe’s world wasn’t the dystopia of Diamond Dogs or the synthy JG Ballard broken motorways of John Foxx, but a shiny planet, where singers wore huge rocket brooches and giant TV watches that only showed the sleeve of the band’s own Axe Victim (the cover of – what else? – their fourth LP Modern Music).

  Bill Nelson’s strangely echoing voice and his extraordinary guitar playing, on songs that seemed more like unravelling spiders’ webs than conventional rock tunes, were a lot more unearthly than most of the denim-and-potatoes rock of the time. And when he disbanded Be-Bop Deluxe in 1978 to form Red Noise, a band whose electronic pop and constructivist clothing were utterly contemporary, it was as if he’d gone back to yet another future, a witty Orwellian world of clanking synths and computers with gears. His subsequent career has been experimental, lyrical, ambient and always fascinating; as a musician and an artist, these days he lives in the future more than he writes about it.

  But were Jets At Dawn, Honeymoon On Mars and Between The Worlds just fashionable nods to the tinfoil space rock of the era or was Nelson’s music more deeply rooted in the world of Amazing Stories than that? Fortunately, Bill Nelson is happy, in his own words, “to be asked something a bit different from the norm.”

  “I’d long had an interest in sci-fi and projections of the future, particularly in terms of how the future might look. Visual design was, and still is, of interest to me,” he says. As a teenager, Nelson was fascinated by two artists, Fritz Lang (“I remember seeing stills from Metropolis when I was a young boy and being fascinated by the architecture of Lang’s imagined future city”) and Frank Hampson, the creator of Dan Dare (“His images of the future, particularly of future cities, had an inventiveness and
elegance that was very seductive”).

  It’s this great paradox that attracts many of my generation to the future that never happened. I grew up reading ‘educational’ annuals that claimed there would be underwater cities by 1978 (it was always 1978 in these books) while our children would be going to school on Mars (because we’d also be living there, not because we’d sent them to boarding school). We believed it, because technology seemed to be logically evolving in that direction; from the Wright Brothers to Spitfires to jets to spacecraft. But it never happened: no food pills, no moving sidewalks, no videophones. It’s been a great disappointment, and it makes total sense to most people that there is, as we speak, a group called We Were Promised Jetpacks. And perhaps this is why Be-Bop Deluxe’s music is run through with what Pete Shelley called “nostalgia for an age yet to come.”

  “It’s very much part of my generation’s mythology. It’s an idealised, highly romantic view of the future… I’m sure many men of my age feel we were cheated out of our flying cars and personal jet packs!” says Nelson. “I used to read imported American ‘science’ magazines that featured all kinds of weird and wonderful inventions and sported extremely colourful front covers illustrating features on ‘how to build your own flying saucer’ and so forth. There was so much optimism in those magazines that I believed the future was going to be a very positive and utopian place.”