Given Canadas relatively small population (twenty-one million in1969, thirty-four million in 2009), manybut certainly not allofthe nations more ambitious musicians have pursued at least someof their career activities in the US and other foreign parts. Rushmainly demonstrates Canadianness by combining such Britishand American influences as progressive rock, hard rock, and indi-vidualism. However, the band has also included more specificallyCanadian references across its long career.

CanCon

The Canadian government implemented specific contentorCanConregulations in 1971, and broadcasters were thenrequired to include certain percentages of Canadian material. Formusic, at least two of a song recordings four main categories ofMusic, Artist, Production, and Lyrics (M-A-P-L) must beCanadian according to citizenship or location. The interpretationof this changed after 1991, due to a scandal involving BryanAdams failing to qualify as Canadian because of co-writing certainsongs, such as (Everything I Do) I Do it For You (Waking up theNeighbours and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, both 1991), withsuch non-Canadians as Mutt Lange and Michael Kamen. (Spellingthe word neighbours in the Canadian way apparently didnthelp.) The outcome is that even though Shania Twain similarly co-wrote the songs on Come on Over (1997) with her then-husbandMutt Lange and did not record any of this music in Canada, heralbum and its songs by that point qualified as Canadian.

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To explore the implementation of CanCon on commercial radio,in early 2007 I surveyed a five-hour play-list from Toronto,Ontarios classic rock station Q107. The station played exactly therequired daytime hours of 35 percent Canadian songs, and theartists were 33 percent Canadian, 32 percent American, 24 percentBritish, and 11 percent other. By comparison, the top artists onModesto, Californias classic rock station The Hawk were 60 per-cent American, 30 percent British, 5 percent Canadian, and alsoonly 5 percent other. However, despite this evidence of CanConas a successful survival tactic against American hegemony, the reg-ulations also ghettoized many Canadians. For example, of the four-teen Canadian artists played during the period of my Q107 survey,probably only the Band, Neil Young, the Guess Who, Rush, andBryan Adams (36 percent) would be played at all on commercialU.S. radio stations.

Anglo-Americanisms

Based on total album sales, until the ascendancy of Nickelback in2001 (How You Remind Me, US #1), Rush was Canadas mostinternationally successful band. Individual Canadiansespeciallywomenhave tended to be more successful than Canadian groups,but only a few of them (including Anne Murray, Celine Dion, andShania Twain) have sold more albums internationally than Rush. Inaddition, a certain number of other Canadian bands have beenmuch more successful on the US pop charts than Rush, but most ofthose groups, including the Guess Who (1970s AmericanWoman, US #1) and the Barenaked Ladies (1998s One Week,also US #1, for one week!), have sold far fewer copies of their var-ious albums than Rush has, and even Neil Young has sold feweralbums in the US than Rush.

By 2009, Rush had sold about 45 million albums worldwide: 33million in the US (including 43 album certifications for 24 differentalbums), 6 million in Canada, and much of the remaining 6 millionsplit between the UK, Germany, Japan, and Brazil. Rushs successthus cannot be explained primarily as a Canadian phenomenon,and it differs considerably from those artists who became highlysuccessful in Canada while remaining virtually unknown in the US,such as Stompin Tom Connors, the Tragically Hip, and Jann Arden.

Rush straddled its Canadian-international fusion in a number ofways, including occasional (and usually fairly subtle) lyrics, images,

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and music-industry activities involving Canada. The band mainlyinscribed Canadianness through its combination of tendencies fromBritish progressive rock (such as complex metrical constructionsand philosophical lyrics) and Anglo-American hard rock andheavy metal (such as distorted guitars, powerful drumming, coun-tertenor vocals, arena venues, and tendencies towards modalityand riffs). Such a combination also recalls Canadas own hybrid ofthings British (such as the Queen as Head of State and universalhealth coverage) and things American (such as individualism, rightsand freedoms, and libertarianism). Despite its extensive albumsales and tours, other than occasional humorous acknowledgments(such as the Harvard Lampoons 1993 induction of Rush asMusicians of the Millennium and references on TVs MysteryScience Theater 3000, 198899) and frequent feature articles in USmusicians magazines, for nearly its entire career Rush enjoyed verylittle mainstream visibility in the United States.

The parents of Rushs bassist-singer-keyboardist Geddy Lee(born 1953) and of its guitarist Alex Lifeson (born 1953) immigratedto Canada from Europe in the 1940s, and by the time the membersof Rush dedicated themselves in 1971 to becoming professionalmusicians, Canada had officially established a policy of multicul-turalism, which contrasts the tendency in the US towards a culturalmelting pot. The bands own comments about the greater flexi-bility of Canadians1 recall Marshall McLuhans comments about thecountrys flexible and philosophic or cool identity.2 Rushs con-tinuing interest in a wide variety of secondary stylistic elements(such as blues-rock, jazz-rock, new wave, technology, funk, andalternative rock) certainly falls under the rubric flexible, but thebands particular application of these things is arguably also oftencool and philosophic.

In 1980, Rush performed with fellow progressive-influencedCanadian rock band Max Webster on its song Battle Scar. MaxWebster sometimes opened concerts for Rush but never had a suc-cessful career in the US and folded in 1982, with front-man Kim

How Is Rush Canadian? 289

1 Dan Hedges, article-interview with Lifeson, Rush Relives 18 Years of Wide-

Screen Rock, Circus, 30th April 1992. See .2 Marshall McLuhan, Canada: The Borderline Case, in The Canadian

Imagination: Dimensions of a Literary Culture, edited by David Staines (Harvard

University Press, 1977), p. 247.

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Mitchell then enjoying a successful solo career in Canada. GeddyLee also provided the vocals for Bob and Doug McKenzies (SCTV)Canadian-themed 1981 comedy song Take Off (to the GreatWhite North). That song charted higher in the US (#16) thanRushs highest-charting US hit, 1982s New World Man (#21).3 Leealso sang the line Oh, you know that well be there in his high,countertenor vocal style (a minor seventh higher than Neil Youngscontribution) on Northern Lights 1985 charity-rock song Tears arenot Enough. In 2003, Rush played a selection of its 19771991album-oriented rock songs in front of 490,000 music fans at a post-SARS mega-concert in its hometown: Molson Canadian Rocks forToronto. The ten-hour event also featured the Rolling Stones andAC/DC (who played last and second-last, respectively, just afterRush) and about a dozen other Canadian and American artists. Tensof thousands of Rush fans probably attended the event, but in suchan extremely large context (and even in Canadas largest city,which is also the bands hometown), such fans would have com-prised only a very small minority.

In addition to having had only one US Top 40 hit, Rush hasnever won a Grammy (despite five nominations for Best RockInstrumental between 1982 and 2009) and has never been inductedinto the RocknRoll Hall of Fame (despite having been eligiblesince 1999). Also, until Rushs appearance on the US late-night talkshow The Colbert Report on 16th July 2008, the band had notappeared live on US television since the last of its very earlyappearances in 197475.

In Canada, however, a large number of cultural institutionshave compensated for Rushs lack of mainstream exposure in theUS. The band had several Top 10 Canadian hits (including NewWorld Man reaching #1), and it won eight Juno awards between1975 and the 1990s, including a special 1990 award (shared withBryan Adams and k.d. lang) as Artists of the Decade for the 1980s.In 1979, the Government of Canada named Rush its Ambassadorsof Music, and the band later won the Toronto Music AwardsMayors Award (1990), the Harold Moon songwriting award of theSociety of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canadas(SOCAN, 1992), a Torontos Arts Award (1993), a place in the

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3 Take Off appears on Rhino Records seven-CD compilation: Like Omigod!

The 80s Popular Culture Box (Totally). It was also used for an episode of The

Simpsons in which the family visits Toronto (which was also the home of SCTV).

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Canadian Music Juno Hall of Fame (1994), memberships in theOrder of Canada (1997), recognition on Canadas Walk of Fame(1999), the designation Most Important Canadian Musicians of AllTime (JAM! online poll, 2000), and a place in Canadas MusicIndustry Hall of Fame (2003).

Similar to Geddy Lees 1982 participation on Take Off (to theGreat White North), Alex Lifeson memorably guest-starred in a2003 episode of the popular Canadian cable TV comedy series,Trailer Park Boys. In the episode, the guitarist is kidnapped by theshows title-characters (who are Rush fans), and he also ends upteaching the shows character Bubbles how to play the guitar forthe 1977 Rush song Closer to the Heart. The episode alsoemphasizes the historical truth that Rush had not played in easternCanada (such as Halifax,