UPDATE - 4/1@10:07PM: APRIL FOOLS!!!! ... in case you hadn't already figured it out. Hopefully you all enjoyed this year's joke - I know I did. Thanks for playing along and being good sports about it. This one was especially fun because I teamed up with John of Cygnus-X1.net and Eric at the Power Windows site to execute the ruse. John and Eric did 99% of the actual work on the joke including coming up with the idea and doing all the photoshopping - I was mostly just along for the ride. It was just believable enough to hook a lot of people, but there were a couple of clues if you looked for them; such as the date of April 21, 2012 ... 4/21/12, and the fact that we used a recycled photo. And - who knows? With the big Clockwork Angels media blitz Roadrunner is planning maybe Rush will end up on the cover of Rolling Stone sometime this year.... Yeah, right. :)

UPDATE - 4/1@8:01PM: As promised, Rolling Stone has posted a short excerpt from their Rush cover feature online here along with a photo gallery at this link.

According to a source at Rolling Stone magazine, later this month Rush will be featured on the cover of the magazine for the first time ever in the band's nearly 40-year history! The April 21st issue of Rolling Stone will contain a multi-page cover feature titled Clockwork Excellence: Canucks still ticking after nearly 40 years, along with a side article titled Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Scandal: Why Rush really isn't in the Hall (should be interesting!). You can check out a high-res working copy of the cover at this link or by clicking on the thumbnail. Apparently a short excerpt and photo gallery will be posted online at RollingStone.com sometime later today or tomorrow, which I will link to when available. Other members of the online Rush community including both John at Cygnus-X1.net and Eric at Power Windows have also been contacted by the same source at Rolling Stone. As I'd mentioned in my latest Friday Rush updates post, the coming month will be bringing a storm of Clockwork Angels media coverage of which the Rolling Stone cover is just the beginning.

Over their decades-spanning career, Rush has been featured on literally hundreds of rock and music magazine covers with the one glaring exception being Rolling Stone. Early in Rush's career, Rolling Stone's critics would continually pan the band's albums but the magazine otherwise ignored Rush out-of-hand. This all began to change a few years ago back in 2008 when Rush was riding a new wave of popularity due to their highly successful Snakes & Arrows tour. At that time Rolling Stone seemed to undergo a change regarding their attitude towards the band, dispatching a reporter to spend four days with them on the Canadian leg of their 2008 tour and interviewing all 3 members for a 6-page feature titled Rush Never Sleeps. Around that time they also published an online feature titled Rush vs. Rolling Stone Qualitative Analysis where the magazine tries to counter the argument that Rolling Stone hates Rush (the article has since been removed). Since then the magazine's coverage of the band has been markedly more cordial, although positive might be overstating it a bit. Perhaps Rush's cover feature marks a new turning point in the magazine's relationship with the band. When links to the short excerpt and photo gallery become available, I will post them here.

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