UPDATE - 1/11@1:06PM: One thing I forgot to mention is that the interview segments from the special (usually around 20 minutes worth) should be posted to the In The Studio website by early next week (in the player on the home page).

Rush's Permanent Waves will be the subject of an hour-long In The Studio with Redbeard rockumentary radio show airing this week. The show will feature interview segments with all 3 members of Rush presumably from past In The Studio interviews where they discuss the album. Permanent Waves celebrated its 30th anniversary this past January 1st. In The Studio ran a similar special celebrating the 35th anniversary of Rush's debut album back in April of last year and did not include any new interview segments - just bits and pieces from old interviews. So I'm assuming that this special will be no different. From the In the Studio website:

Rush - Permanent Waves 30th Anniversary

There is no more democratic band in rock than Rush. They have always divided up various responsibilities equally among the three members, including doing interviews. Therefore, album after album and tour after tour it would be one bandmember’s turn to "meet the press." While Rush has always been graciously accessible, I must confess that never was more than one member ever made available.

By the time this session occurred I had already interviewed Rush bass guitarist/singer Geddy Lee twice, so I was reasonably confident on what to expect. Imagine my shock when Lee (family name Weinrib) matter-of-factly answered my first question ,regarding his earliest recollections of music while growing up, by replying," I came from a family of immigrants, basically. My parents survived the Holocaust in Poland, and then married after the war and moved to Canada. I was basically brought up in a household that had survived turbulent times, to say the least, so there was a total rebuilding in a new country, in a new culture, & trying to adapt. Music wasn't a prevalent and over-riding thing in our family."

I was stunned. There was nothing in any rock reference book or band biography to prepare me for this revelation. The enormity of what Geddy was saying, in a measured but sober tone, left me speechless for several minutes, although it felt like an eternity before I regained my composure. Everything I had prepared to ask Lee about Rush's breakthrough 1980 album Permanent Waves suddenly seemed so trivial, so shallow and inconsequential. Since then I have tried to keep some perspective on the relative importance of this rock’n’roll game in the search for real truth, real meaning in life.

-Redbeard

And here's an excerpt:

REDBEARD: I asked Rush drummer/lyricist Neil Peart how the breakthrough success of their January 1980 release Permanent Waves affected their approach to playing live.

Neil Peart: Each stage of our development has been a real struggle on our part where we have been holding tenaciously onto the last level, and when we graduated to headlining the small theaters, the 3000-4000 seat theaters, the vaudeville leftovers, we clung to that so tenaciously. We were starting to get so big that we were doing three or four nights in most place, five nights in some of those theaters, and it just wasn't practical because there were so many people who weren't getting to see us! (laughs) Because we were spending five days in one city! And it wasn't fair, really, when you came down to it, that people wanted to see Rush and couldn't. So we couldn't justify it anymore. We couldn't say it (playing arenas) was a compromise. It was a limitation that we faced, that too many people wanted to see us. It's not something that we're able to control. So we were pushed into the arenas basically by the laws of supply and demand.

The special will run on various radio stations across the country all this week. For a list of stations and air times go here.

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