Will Rogers Auditorium
3401 W Lancaster Ave
Fort Worth, Texas 76107

My introduction to Rush came the year before I saw them, in circumstances that couldn't have been much further removed from a rock concert.

In the summer of 1976 I was in the marching band at A.D. Lewis Junior High, just outside the back gate of Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. I was rehearsing things like the Strategic Air Command March and the theme from Hogan's Heroes on alto saxophone (all while trying to march). One day after practice, our drum major, Sherri, invited me to her house, which was within walking distance of the school.

Her older brother had just bought 2112.

Sherri had two pairs of headphones and, impressively for 1976, a Y-adapter that let us listen at the same time. We put them on and sat there as the "2112" overture began.

I already had a record player and headphones of my own. I owned Tommy and Jesus Christ Superstar—the double albums, thank you very much—so the idea of rock music carrying a story or working across an extended theme wasn't new to me. Rush was.

The range of the music, Neil Peart's lyrics, Geddy Lee reaching for those high notes, the emotion and the scale of it were unlike anything I'd heard. The music seemed to fit perfectly with the overture as it unfolded in my ears. My teenage response was considerably less analytical.

Mind blown.

Rush's own history of 2112 describes the album as the record their label didn't want them to make: another concept album after Caress of Steel. Rush made it anyway, and it became their first major commercial success. Hearing it in 1976, none of that history had settled yet. For me it was simply something startlingly new.

My father retired from the Air Force, and the family moved to Arlington the following year. When I had the chance to see Rush in Fort Worth in October 1977, I jumped at it.

Getting concert tickets in North Texas in the late 1970s was its own institution. If you wanted good seats—or sometimes any seats at all—you camped out all night at local record stores for tickets weeks before the show. Yes, before Ticketmaster, this is how we did it. Looking back, the ticket line was an analog social network. Teenagers interested in the same music gathered in one place for hours, comparing bands, records and concerts long before cell phones or the internet. It was a chance to meet people and find your musical tribe, although nobody would have described it that way at the time. The store would close the night before, and throngs of music loving teens would gather with sleeping bags, cots, or nothing at all - and wait. If you were first in line when the store opens the next day (normally around 9am) that could mean front row.

But I digress.

Bill and I were at Will Rogers Auditorium on October 21, 1977. It was general admission, and with the tenacity available to teenage boys at a rock concert, we worked our way forward until we were nearly at the edge of the stage.

The clothes are part of what I remember. Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee were fully participating in the 1970s: blue jeans mixed with flowing robes, scarves and the general suggestion of young musicians trying on what a rock star was supposed to look like. From that close, they somehow still struck me as Canadian kids who had launched themselves into a much larger world.

Of course, they were already experienced professional musicians. But they were also at an interesting point in their development. 2112 had broken through, and A Farewell to Kings had been released only weeks before the Fort Worth show. They were moving from ambitious Canadian hard-rock band toward something much larger, and we were watching that transition in real time.

The show was loud, which was hardly unusual in 1977. What I remember much more clearly is the energy and passion.

Neil Peart was an absolute powerhouse.

During the drum solo I was close enough to see the red star logos clearly on the double bass drums. Stage lights glared off the chrome hardware and cymbals, throwing colored reflections across the kit. I could catch glimpses of Neil behind it as he moved. What survives now isn't a complete visual record so much as a flash: red stars, reflected light, motion, and this extraordinary musician appearing and disappearing behind the drums.

The level of musicianship was difficult to miss. That kind of technical command wasn't something I encountered routinely in rock music then, and from a few yards away the precision and physical force of his playing were even more apparent than they had been through headphones.

The surviving set list fits the night I remember. Rush played nearly all of the "2112" suite—"Overture," "The Temples of Syrinx," "Discovery," "Presentation," "Soliloquy" and "Grand Finale"—along with newer material including "Xanadu," "A Farewell to Kings," "Cygnus X-1" and "Closer to the Heart." The set also reached back through "Bastille Day," "Lakeside Park," "By-Tor & The Snow Dog," "Working Man," "Fly by Night" and "In the Mood," with the drum solo near the end.

Hearing "2112" live closed a very short but important loop for me. A year earlier Sherri and I had been sitting in her house with shared headphones, hearing that music for the first time. Now I was close enough to the stage to see the red stars on Peart's drums.

The rest of the bill has held up remarkably well in memory too. UFO were there, and I distinctly remember seeing them perform. Phil Mogg, Pete Way and Michael Schenker embodied the excess of 1970s rock stars. Max Webster were there as well, with Kim Mitchell and a stage presence that was, well, unique.

The Max Webster connection became more interesting later. I owned their Universal Juveniles album, on which Rush joined them for "Battle Scar." Max Webster lyricist Pye Dubois would also share the lyric credit with Neil Peart on "Tom Sawyer". None of that was part of my understanding that night. It is simply fun, looking back, to realize how closely those Canadian musical circles overlapped.

At the time, though, they were three bands playing one night in Fort Worth, and I was a teenager who had been completely captured by one of them since a pair of shared headphones the previous summer.

After Rush, UFO, Max Webster, 2112, Neil Peart's drum solo, the volume and all that accumulated rock-and-roll energy, the final logistical detail was considerably less glamorous.

One of our moms had to come pick us up.