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Rush is a Band

A blog devoted to RUSH:
Neil Peart, Geddy Lee & Alex Lifeson

Wed, Dec 25, 2024

Juno Awards this weekend; history of Rush and the Junos

Thu, Mar 24, 2011@11:51AM | comments removed/disabled

UPDATE - 3/27@11:13AM: The Bare Naked Ladies' Ed Robertson talks about meeting Geddy Lee backstage at a past Juno Awards (thanks RushFanForever):

"I met Geddy Lee for the first time at the Junos. Now, this is back a million years ago at the Hummingbird Centre [in Toronto], but it speaks to the fact that it's a chance for a lot of us to meet, run into and have a conversation with our idols. Despite our own successes and what we've gone on to do, we were all teenagers with our walls plastered with music posters and we were fans like everybody else. And it's an opportunity for us to not just go hang out with friends, but our idols are there and it's an opportunity to walk up to - for me, Rush and Kim Mitchell and say 'I know you know that I'm a fan because I've talked about it for years, but I need to tell you that.' It's an opportunity to get to be that 15 year old kid who always wanted to meet that person."

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UPDATE - 3/25@9:51PM: In today's Globe and Mail, Juno Award winner Dan Hill - whom I mentioned below - describes how he recently discovered that his Juno had been stolen just before he needed it for a photo shoot with Caitlin Cronenberg. At one point he mentions possibly borrowing Alex Lifeson's for the shoot:

... "You lost your Juno award?" Suspicion curled round the edges of Caitlin's usually friendly voice, leaving me with the sinking feeling that she suspected I'd never actually won a Juno. That for decades I'd been making false claims and finally my bluff had been called. "If you don't have your Juno, I can't photograph you," Caitlin explained. "Well, can I borrow, say, one of Gordon Lightfoot's Junos, or Alex Lifeson's? They both live pretty close by." ...

You can read the entire article at this link and see a photo of Dan with his Juno (thanks RushFanForever)

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The 2011 Juno Awards ceremony takes place this weekend at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto - the first time in over 10 years in which they will be held in that city. It's the 40th anniversary of the Awards so they are pulling out all the stops to celebrate. The Juno Awards are the Canadian equivalent of the US Grammy Awards and Rush has been nominated several times over the years and even won a few (unlike the Grammys). Their first Juno Award occurred exactly 36 years ago today on March 24, 1975 when they won for Most Promising Group (they really got it right with that one!). In 1978 they were named Group of the Year and here's a photo of Geddy and Alex accepting that award. Alex made the funny comment We'd like to thank Dan Hill for not being a group (Dan Hill had been nominated for his hit Sometimes When We Touch) when accepting the award. Photographer Bruce Cole took that photo and talks about his work with Rush and other bands in this recent Q&A interview with Cashbox Magazine (thanks RushFanForever for the info and links). They won another award for Group of the Year the following year in 1979 and didn't win any others until 1990 when they were named Artist of the Decade for the 1980s. For that award they were introduced by Sam the Record Man himself and you can watch a video of the presentation at this link. In 1991 their Presto album won Best Hard Rock/Metal Album and the following year in 1992 Roll the Bones won for Hard Rock Album of the Year. Then in 1994 they were inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and you can watch that presentation at this link. After a 10-year Juno dry spell, they were back in 2004 where they won Music DVD of the Year for Rush in Rio. This year the Rush documentary Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage is also nominated in that same category. Let's hope they can chalk up another Juno win with this nomination. In 1983 their single New World Man from Signals was nominated for Single of the Year but didn't win. Last month as part of the 40th anniversary Juno celebration the Junos ran a contest where they asked folks to vote on their Top 40 Canadian Songs that had been nominated over the history of the Awards. New World Man ended up making the list at #30 (thanks Sean). In addition to Rush being nominated for several Junos over the years, their album artist Hugh Syme was also nominated several times over the years for work he had done on various Rush albums, and won for Moving Pictures in 1982, Power Windows in 1986, Presto in 1990 and Roll the Bones in 1992. On Tuesday the Ontario Media Development Corporation held their VIP Juno luncheon celebrating Ontario Juno nominees and the companies supporting them, including record labels, music publishers, artist managers and agents. Geddy Lee along with Rush documentary filmmakers Scot McFadyen and Sam Dunn were in attendance. Here's a news story covering the Luncheon from CHCH News which includes some interview clips with Sam and Scot. Geddy did not appear in that clip but spoke a little about the state of the Canadian rock music industry as reported in this National Post article:

... Talking about the current state of Canadian rock, Lee said, "Metal didn't ever rely on huge mainstream support. And so the fact that the mainstream music industry has been hit so hard hasn't affected a lot of the more underground rock and metal scene as it has most of the other genres." ...

Both Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson will be presenters at the Juno Awards ceremony Sunday night which airs on CTV at 8PM EST. Here's a CTV news story (thanks bucklemyshoe) covering the history of the Junos which prominently features Rush. In one scene they show a rare Bruce Cole photograph of Geddy and Alex (thanks Power Windows) in the CHUM radio studios. They also talk about Rush along with Bachman Turner Overdrive being instrumental in reshaping Canadian rock music in the 70s and show footage of Rush performing Closer To The Heart live in 1987. You can check out the video at this link. Here's the video of Rush's presentation as Artist of the Decade back in 1990: