As they entered a new decade, the members of Rush decided it was time for a new approach. The Canadian prog rockers found success with epics like the title tracks from 2112 and Hemispheres but wanted to streamline their sound.
“It was time to try something a little different. The idea was to make shorter but still very complex songs,” guitarist Alex Lifeson told Louder.
They showcased the approach with “The Spirit of Radio,” the lead single off 1980’s Permanent Waves.
“That was the song that sparked most of that album from that point of view. We were able to throw a lot of different things into that song, in five minutes, and it worked,” said bassist and lead singer Geddy Lee.
Inspired by a slogan of CFNY-FM, a radio station in the band’s native Toronto, “The Spirit of Radio” opens with a dizzying guitar riff based on the movement of radio waves. The shifts between musical styles were meant to replicate someone tuning an FM dial, Lee told Louder.
“It’s not like a blues tune when you know exactly where everything’s coming from and where it’s all going which leaves it all down to performance and lyric; this tune has so many little aspects that are just totally off the wall and I love it for that very reason,” Terry Brown, Rush’s longtime producer, told band historian Ray Wawrzyniak in the album’s 40th-anniversary liner notes as quoted by 2112.net.
Fans loved it too. “The Spirit of Radio” was Rush’s first top 30 hit in Canada and it peaked at No. 51 on the Billboard Hot 100, the band’s highest-charting U.S. single at the time.
“It wasn’t about love and getting laid, the typical rock stuff. So it was fresh. And there’s a very positive sound to that song as well. There’s a life to it,” Lee said.
Permanent Waves was released Jan. 14, 1980. Neil Peart, the band’s drummer and lyricist, personally delivered a copy to the station that inspired “The Spirit of Radio.”
Ivar Hamilton, CFNY’s import music director at the time, will never forget it.
“We had a few bands that were coming to us, and letting us know that they were kind of influenced by CFNY,” he told Wawrzyniak. “But this was the first time we had a band of international stature come to us and say, ‘This record’s for you.’ When Neil Peart dropped Permanent Waves off at the radio station, it was unexpected. It was a pretty magical moment.”
