Rush- Signals and the Space Shuttle
On the evening of November 11, 1982, I attended my third Rush concert during their tour for the newest album “Signals.”[1] This album is one of my favorite Rush albums from their legendary discography full of fantastic albums.
The main part of the concert (prior to the encore) [2], closed with Countdown, a song about the space shuttle. The stage set included a huge video screen behind the band. Listen to the song and picture the video playing- scenes of huge satellite dishes all swinging around in unison, the fumes flowing from bottom of the shuttle rocket, images of excited spectators around the Cape.
The song increasingly builds tension until you can hear a voice inside the music doing the countdown. As it hits “launch” in the music, the shuttle on the video lifts off and roars upward. It’s enough to give one goose-bumps and indeed this day even more so because that very morning at 7:19 a.m. EST on Nov. 11, 1982, the space shuttle Columbia had lifted off from Launch Pad 39A, carrying its crew of four astronauts and payload of two commercial satellites![3]
I came across this gem of an article online last night! [4]
Quote: Several NASA employees and a group of specially invited guests had gathered at 7am in a private viewing area within the grounds of the Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island, Florida to watch billions of dollars’ worth of technology and two flesh-and-blood astronauts be fired into orbit. And among that group of onlookers were the three members of Rush.
Lifeson sat with bassist/vocalist Geddy Lee and drummer Neil Peart on a blanket on the viewing area’s grass lawn, gazing over the lagoon in front of them to the launch pad a few kilometres away. As the countdown began, the already electric atmosphere began to intensify: five, four, three, two, one… Flames billowed from the shuttle’s booster rockets, a huge roar swept across the lagoon, and the Columbia lifted off.
“It was the most incredible thing I’ve ever heard,” says Alex Lifeson now, his voice still edged with awe. “It was so loud — the low end rumble of the rocket was incredible. It just screamed off in a plume of exhaust as it rose into the sky, and then it was gone into space and there was this eerie quiet.
Neil Peart was still processing what they’d witnessed as he boarded the plane they’d hired to get them to that evening’s gig.
“I remember thinking to myself as we flew back to Fort Worth after a couple days without sleep, ‘We’ve got to write a song about this!’” the drummer and lyricist later noted in a diary he wrote for Sounds magazine in 1982. “It was an incredible thing to witness, truly a once-in- a-lifetime experience.’
Rush did indeed write a song about what they saw on that April morning. Countdown would appear as the propulsive closing track on their ninth album, Signals, its build-and-release energy mirroring the launch of the shuttle itself. As real-life voices from the NASA control room punctuate the song, Peart’s words capture the wonder and promise of the moment. ‘This magic day when super-science/Mingles with the bright stuff of dreams,’ sings Geddy Lee, bringing the drummer’s lyrics to life.
Endquote
[1]
https://www.rush.com/albums/signals/
[2]
https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/rush/1982/wings-stadium-kalamazoo-mi-7bd1f218.html
[3]
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/40-years-ago-sts-5-columbia-s-first-satellite-deploy-mission
