Rush, Rock Music, and the Middle Class: Dreaming in Middletown

Acknowledgments

acknowledgments viii T here are many people whose input, time, and generosity helped this project to develop, and I want to acknowledge as many of them here as I can. Thank you to my instructors, mentors, and colleagues, who helped shape the intellectual trajectory of my research. In particular, I thank Rob Bowman, Beverley Diamond, Bob Witmer, Susan Fast, Robert Walser, Daniel Yon, Kip Pegley, Austin Clarkson, and David Lidov for their instruction and counsel. Thank you to my colleagues and friends, with whom I shared, and in many cases continue to share, ideas, advice, and feedback, including Marcia Ostashewski, William Echard, Jonathon Bakan , Sherry Johnson, Jacqueline Warwick, Charity Marsh, Simon Wood, Brad Klump, Geoff Whittall, Durrell Bowman, Colette Simonot, Anna Hoefnagels, and Kim Morris. Special thanks to those who participated in this research as interviewed consultants and questionnaire respondents. Your time and candid responses made this book so much more than it would have been without the voices of fans. Thanks especially to Cat Ashton, Larry Carter, Dave Crothers, John Crothers, Paul M. Fournier, Alisa Frohlinger, Anthony Guida, Alex Hofstrom, William Johnston, Mark Joseph, Tanya Keenan, Joe Kositsky, Allen Kwan, Tim Smith, Laura Sypien, Kes Theodosiou, and Dave Ward. Thanks to those who helped with questionnaire distribution in various venues, including Ed Stenger at Rush Is a Band, Anthony Guida at The Rush Interactive Network, and Terry Pidsadny in Toronto. Many thanks to Alex Lifeson, who agreed to an interview in December 2001, and whose candid and articulate answers to my questions provided valuable primary data for this project. The interview took place during a very busy time in Rush’s career, and I very much appreciate Lifeson’s willingness to speak to me, even as Rush prepared for a new album and tour. x Acknowledgments Thanks to the courteous and helpful staff at Indiana University Press, including Jane Behnken, Katherine Baber, Jeff Magee, and the anonymous peer reviewers for their detailed attention to this book. Thanks to Eric Schramm for a great copyedit. Thanks to Sander Taylor and the research department at Cape Breton University for their help in setting up the research ethics guidelines. Thanks to Rod Nicholls and Richard MacKinnon for their support at Cape Breton U. Thanks to my family, Jim and Dianne McDonald, for their years of love and support as I became a musician and scholar. They also provided apt models of patience and tolerance during my early years as a Rush fan, when roaring power chords, shrieking vocals, and my attempts to master Neil Peart’s drum figures and Lifeson’s guitar licks were (I imagine) not always suffered easily. My heartfelt thanks to my partner, Heather Sparling, who supported this project in more ways than I can count. She listened to my ideas, provided invaluable feedback, kept an eye out for useful resources, and read each of the chapters. I am so fortunate to have a partner who shares my love of music, ideas, and writing, and knows intimately the discipline and profession of an ethnomusicologist. Some passages of chapters 1 and 2 are reprinted with the kind permission of Taylor and Francis. These passages originally appeared in my article “Open Secrets: Individualism and Middle-Class Identity in the Songs of Rush,” Popular Music and Society 31, no. 3 (July 2008): 313–328, available from www.informaworld.com. Rock M u si c a nd t h e M id dle Class R u s h ...