Memorial Arena, Pekin, Illinois, April 17, 1976

Excerpt from Q Classic Special Edition, Vol. 1 Number 5, July 15, 2005

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"On 17 April 1976, a funny thing happened to Thin Lizzy's Scott Gorham; his initiation into the strange world of Rush. The location was Pekin, Illinois, a small town 130 miles from Chicago. Rush were headlining a show at the Memorial Arena, with Lizzy as one of the supports.

Gorham figured he knew what to expect. Rush were a terribly serious band. They played complex virtuoso rock, wore slim robes on stage and had an almost professorial air. Their new album, 2112, a socio-political sci-fi epic, was on a different cerebral plane to the drinking and fighting songs on Thin Lizzy's latest record, Jailbreak. 'We were street rock and they were on the progressive side,' offered Gorham. 'I thought they'd be these really introverted, geeky guys.'

He was in for a surprise. The laid-back Californian had witnessed some shocking sights during his tenure in Thin Lizzy. Some of it, he says, 'went beyond human boundaries'. But what Rush had in store for him was simply weird. It was a couple of hours after the show had ended when Gorham heard a knock at the door of his hotel room. Loaded on booze and weed, and busy entertaining two local girls, he cautiously opened the door and peered out. When Gorham saw the three figures standing outside, he nearly dropped his spliff.

Rush were dressed as characters from the late-'50's American sitcom Leave It To Beaver: guitarist Alex Lifeson as dad Ward Cleaver, his long hair slicked back, wearing a smoking jacket; bassist/vocalist Geddy Lee as mom June Cleaver, hair in pigtails, wearing a floral-print night dress; and drummer Neil Peart as son 'Beaver' Cleaver, in school uniform.

Gorham invited them into the room, where the trio began to act out scenes from the TV show, to the bewilderment of the two girls sitting on the bed. 'At first we were all totally confused,' recalls the Lizzy axeman. 'We were stoned, and this was just so bizarre.' By Gorham's reckoning, the act went on for 45 minutes, by which time he was laughing so hard there were tears rolling down his face. 'Talk about an ice-breaker. I thought, Oh, that's what they're REALLY like.'

...Gorham was 'blown away' when he watched Rush playing the material (2112) live. 'The musicianship was incredible,' he remembers. 'All that musicality, all the intricacies, and all that power from just three guys. This wasn't like all the pansy shit you'd hear from some progressive bands - they really powered down on it. We respected the hell out of them.'"