1982 (26 page)

“Ee waved at us and we didn’t wave. Geddy Lee! And we didn’t wave.”

I wondered that night if we would ever forgive ourselves for not waving back at Geddy Lee—bassist extraordinaire and man with high-pitched vocals. Rock god. What if he thought we didn’t care? What if he concluded we didn’t know who he was? Or what if he thought we were not Rush fans and we’d been waiting for REO Speedwagon or Air Supply or some other preppy band? All of these possibilities were humiliating. But the following day, we had our chance to compensate. This time, we saw Geddy as he arrived. Once again he acknowledged
us, sitting there at the fence, as he got out of his car. But this time he decided to speak.

“Hey, guys!” Geddy Lee said.

“Hey, Geddy,” I replied.

“Hey, Geddy,” said Toke.

Then Geddy Lee locked his car and walked into the studios. It wasn’t much. But it was a conversation. We had talked to Geddy Lee. It seemed a little uncreative that both Toke and I had said the exact same thing to Geddy Lee. “Hey, Geddy.” You might think one of us would’ve gone out on a limb and said, “Good morning.” Or, “Have a nice day.” Or, “Have a killer day of rehearsal!” Or, “You rock!” But no such luck. And yet, we had spoken. This was progress. Just like when I first spoke to Wendy at the lockers and asked her to go to the Police Picnic. And that had turned out rather well. Or, I hoped it would. We heard Rush practising “Subdivisions” for the rest of the day, and Toke and I couldn’t wipe the smiles off our faces. We had spoken to Geddy Lee. It felt totally unreal.

On the second-last day of Rush’s practice time at New Media Studios, the unthinkable happened. At the end of another shift of sitting in the sun by the fence with our Adidas bags, we saw two men come out of the back of the studios and head towards us. It was Geddy Lee and a taller-looking blond guy. It didn’t take us long to realize it was guitarist Alex Lifeson. Toke started whispering under his breath. “Holy shit! Holy shit! Holy shit!” We stood at the wire fence, the top of which came to our chests. We were both frozen as the Rush members approached.

Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson walked right up to us. Geddy spoke first.

“See? These are the guys who’ve been sitting out here each day,” Geddy said to Alex. Then he turned to us. “Right, guys?”

“Um … yeah,” I replied. I had become very shy. No matter how long we’d been sitting outside the fence, we still hadn’t adequately prepared for this moment. Nor was it really possible to.

“Rush!” said Toke. No one understood why he said that. He seemed a little bit in shock.

Now Alex Lifeson spoke.

“Well, that’s really cool, guys. Thanks for hanging around. You want us to sign those?”

Toke and I had almost forgotten that we were holding copies of our Rush albums,
Moving Pictures
and
2112
.

“That would be really cool.”

Before we knew it, Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson had each signed their name on our Rush albums. Then they both got into Geddy’s car and drove away. As they were leaving, Alex waved at us. We waved back.

After almost three weeks of a musical pilgrimage only ten minutes from our homes, Toke and I had met a couple of our musical heroes. Rush were better than just a big rock band. They were nice guys. My faith in music and my idols was never stronger. I wondered what kind of car Bowie would have driven into that parking lot. I wondered if he would have signed all of my Bowie records. I imagined he would.

“Dat guy … Alex Lifeson,” Toke said. “Ee’s great.”

8

“ONCE IN A LIFE TIME” – TALHING HEADS

R
ock concerts can change your life. You have to trust me on this. They really can. They can also be boring. Just like REO Speedwagon albums released in the 1980s. Boring. So it is with concerts. There are concerts that are mundane, or predictable, or a waste of money. But sometimes rock concerts can change your life. And when they do, it’s magic.

Wendy and I were still jammed in the middle of a sweaty crowd as afternoon turned to evening at the Police Picnic in August of 1982. Amidst the pushing and excitement, we’d somehow managed to maintain our real estate on the floor only about twenty rows away from the main stage. In a gathering of forty-five thousand fans at the CNE Grandstand, our positioning was actually pretty stellar. Not bad for an aspiring New Wave kid and a diminutive blond girl with a Bowie-like glow. I wondered if Wendy was impressed with how close we were to the action. I wondered if she credited me for our positioning. And I wondered if she was thinking of us as a team the way I was.

The MC guy had now returned to the stage.

“Okay, everyone, please be patient! Please, you guys. We’ll be back in just a few more minutes with … Talking Heads!”

There was a roar of approval from the massive stadium of punters at the mention of Talking Heads. This must have come as some relief to the shell-shocked MC guy. He looked a little desperate. His job was to calm the restless crowd after the near mutiny that had just taken place, and simultaneously to get us revved up for the next act to hit the stage. Mind you, everyone knew the next band would go over better than Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. It couldn’t get much worse in terms of audience reaction. The promoters were probably crossing their fingers, hoping the show would get back on track.

It had been almost forty minutes since the premature end of the Joan Jett set and the debacle that had cost me my red-and-blue Adidas bag. I was no longer in possession of my jean jacket or my new Walkman or my hair gel or my mix tapes featuring the Police and the Beat and Heaven 17. All of those items were gone forever. But Wendy had been really sweet. She kept giving me affirming looks. That is, she kept giving me affirming looks from underneath that longer bit of straight blond hair that flopped in front of her face and sometimes covered one eye. As I might have mentioned, she had a short haircut with a longer bit in front like Bowie. And she had sparkling eyes. And I now realized she had kind eyes. And I noticed she was smiling at me a lot, too. Maybe it was to inspire me to smile as well. This was nice. But it was also a bit of a surprise. Smiling was not always very cool. Not in 1982. It was very controversial to smile in 1982. Siouxsie, from
Siouxsie and the Banshees, would never be caught smiling.

That wasn’t very New Wave. Or punk.

To be clear, the non-smiling disposition was not limited to Siouxsie and her band, either. It was much more of a widespread epidemic. New Wave artists were considered to have more credibility if they were brooding. At least, that’s what I’d concluded by the end of Grade 9. Smiling would undermine the idea that a New Wave artist’s life was hard, and dark, and goth, and serious. Hardship was an important part of what it meant to be New Wave. It was essential to communicate pessimism at every turn. When you heard Phil Oakey from the Human League sing in 1982, did he sound like he was smiling? No. Of course he didn’t. And neither did he smile in his videos. Smiling was superficial and preppy. Being preppy meant being well off and content and wearing bright clothes and having dodgy mainstream artistic interests. Preppies might regularly smile. Cool people did the opposite. The theatre students in 213 who were considered the real deal and only wore black didn’t smile much. Well, they might smile if they had to play a role from another time period. That is, if they had to act a role from an era when people smiled. Like in the old days, when life was less serious and people didn’t have thick eyeliner and synthesizers. But otherwise real theatre types didn’t smile in 1982. Just like New Wave bands.

I have made a short list of New Wave acts from the early 1980s that featured members who would never be seen smiling:

Siouxsie and the Banshees

the Cure

New Order

Depeche Mode

Duran Duran

Ultravox

As you can see, there were many cool New Wave bands that refused to smile in 1982. None of these groups had members who were allowed to smile. Not at that time. They would look very strange and out of place if they smiled, because no one else did. Sure, there were a few exceptions. The English Beat were allowed to smile sometimes, because they were partly ska. Playing ska music meant they were happy. So that was an exception. They jumped up and down because they were so happy. And then there were some bands, like Spandau Ballet, that were originally cool when they didn’t smile but then started to lose their credibility when they decided to begin smiling. As Spandau Ballet began to smile, they also became preppy and tanned and sang the saccharine and emotional saxophone ballad “True.” By then they were no longer cool. Obviously.