Posted on 07/08/2004 12:18:18 PM PDT by My Favorite Headache
How the Holocaust rocked Rush front man Geddy Lee
by scott r. benarde correspondent
The Canadian rock trio Rush will draw from an impressive song catalog spanning four decades on its current 30th anniversary tour, including classics such as “New World Man,” “Tom Sawyer” and “Freewill.” The band also is performing tracks from its newest album, “Feedback,” a collection of favorite songs by other acts, including rock standards such as “Summertime Blues,” and “Heart Full of Soul.”
But it is another song in the Rush repertoire that concertgoers should pay close attention to when the band performs in the Bay Area July 9 and 10.
The 20-year-old song “Red Sector A,” from the 1984 album “Grace Under Pressure,” comes from a deeply emotional and personal place in the heart of lead singer and bassist Geddy Lee.
The seeds for the song were planted nearly 60 years ago in April 1945 when British soldiers liberated the Nazi concentration camp Bergen-Belsen. Lee’s mother, Manya (now Mary) Rubenstein, was among the survivors. (His father, Morris Weinrib, was liberated from Dachau a few weeks later.) The whole album “Grace Under Pressure,” says Lee, who was born Gary Lee Weinrib, “is about being on the brink and having the courage and strength to survive.”
Though “Red Sector A,” like much of the album from which it comes, is set in a bleak, apocalyptic future, what Lee calls “the psychology” of the song comes directly from a story his mother told him about the day she was liberated.
“I once asked my mother her first thoughts upon being liberated,” Lee says during a phone conversation. “She didn’t believe [liberation] was possible. She didn’t believe that if there was a society outside the camp how they could allow this to exist, so she believed society was done in.”
In fact, when Manya Rubenstein looked out the window of a camp building she was working in on April 15, 1945, and saw guards with both arms raised, she thought they were doing a double salute just to be arrogant. She did not realize British forces had overrun the camp. She and her fellow prisoners, says Lee, “were so malnourished, their brains were not functioning, and they couldn’t conceive they’d be liberated.”
It is easy to see why Manya Rubenstein had given up on civilization. She and future husband Morris were still in their teens — and strangers to one another — when they were interned in a labor camp in their hometown of Staracohwice (also known as Starchvitzcha), Poland, in 1941. Prisoners there were forced to work in a lumber mill, stone quarry, and uniform and ammunition manufacturing plants.
From Staracohwice, about an hour south of Warsaw, Manya and Morris, along with many members of both their families, were sent to Auschwitz. Eventually Morris was shipped to Dachau in southern Germany, and Manya to Bergen-Belsen in northern Germany. Thirty-five thousand people died in Bergen-Belsen from starvation, disease, brutality and overwork, according to information from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Another 10,000 people, too ill and weak to save, died during the first month after liberation.
Lee told his mother’s story to band drummer and lyricist Neil Peart, and “Neil took that sentiment and wrote [the lyrics to] ‘Red Sector A,’” says Lee, who wrote the music. For a song that’s supposed to be set in some unstated, undated future, lyrics such as, “Ragged lines of ragged grey/Skeletons, they shuffle away/Shooting guards and smoking guns/Will cut down the unlucky ones,” sound realistic and reportorial. Perhaps it is the music with its pounding drums, chilling guitar and ominous synthesizer that transport the listener to a yet-to-come time and place. But maybe it is simply easier for Lee to deal with this song as metaphor instead of family history.
Lee was born in Toronto on July 29, 1953. His parents had immigrated there in 1947 and opened a discount variety store. (They had reunited after the war and lived in the officers’ quarters of Bergen-Belsen after it was turned into a displaced-persons camp. They were also among 2,000 couples who married in the camp during the first few months after liberation.)
Unlike many Holocaust survivors, Lee’s parents did not bottle up or hide their experiences. Lee began hearing the horror stories as early as age 8. Though his mother insists she never spoke to her children about the Holocaust when they were young, Lee remembers the stress and nightmares the stories triggered. “These were the things that happened to them during the most formative time in their lives. Some people go to horseback riding camp; my parents went to concentration camp,” Lee says.
The couple gave their children a Jewish education, and Lee had a bar mitzvah at 13. Unfortunately, his father died the year before from chronic health problems that took root in the camps. Today, Lee considers himself a cultural Jew.
His mother, like many Holocaust survivors, was overly protective of her three children. During Lee’s teens, which he describes as “a selfish time,” he distanced himself from his parents’ history, and also discovered rock ’n’ roll. Singing in a rock band, Lee says, “was me yelling back” at authority. It was well after Morris Weinrib died that an aunt told Lee his father had played the balalaika at bar mitzvahs and weddings, but he had purposely kept that fact from his children. “He didn’t want us going into music as a career,” Lee says, adding, “It was a great feeling to know he was musical.”
Lee was 16 when he formed the first incarnation of Rush with guitarist Alex Lifeson and drummer John Rutsey in 1969, and released their debut album in 1973. Current drummer and band lyricist Neil Peart joined in ’74, thus the 30-year celebration now.
“Red Sector A” is not the only song Lee has written based on his mother’s life. Lee’s solo album, “My Favorite Headache,” released in 2000, includes the song “Grace to Grace,” which he co-wrote with fellow Canadian Ben Mink, a multi-instrumentalist and another child of Holocaust survivors. The song, Lee explains, is partially about his mother’s courage, survival instincts and “her ability to keep her head up” though all of the horror she lived through.
Lee’s mother, along with the rest of Canada’s Jews, has been reminded of Hitler’s Germany by a wave of anti-Semitism that included the April fire bombing of a Jewish day school in Montreal. The rise in anti-Semitism in Canada, Lee says, “is upsetting to all of us. … There is no such thing in the homes of Holocaust survivors as ‘It can’t happen here.’ They always feel it can happen again. My mother [has] never felt secure again.”
Except for possibly one time.
In 1995, Lee, his older sister and younger brother accompanied their mother back to Germany to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Bergen-Belsen. They met many other survivors as well as British army veterans who had liberated the camp. Their mother also took them back to her hometown in Poland and the house in which she grew up.
“The Holocaust doesn’t go away,” Lee says. “My mother still has a tattoo on her arm, but that was a great trip for her, a completion of something. It made her feel fantastic to stand on those grounds with her children. For the first time she felt like a victor, like, ‘I’m here and you’re not!’”
Rush performs 7:30 p.m. Friday, July 9, at Shoreline Amphitheatre, Mountain View, or 7:30 p.m. Saturday, July 10, Chronicle Pavilion, Concord. Tickets: www.ticketmaster.com, or www.tickco.com.
Scott R. Benarde is the author of “Stars of David: Rock ‘n’ Roll’s Jewish Stories” (Brandeis University Press)
Copyright ©2004, San Francisco Jewish Community Publications Inc., dba J. the Jewish news weekly of Northern California. All rights reserved.
This fits my brother to a T...
The other 1/2 of the Rush fanbase aren't quite metalheads, but like progressive music (Yes, Gabriel, Early Genesis, Floyd, King Crimson, etc.) and tend to be exceedingly intelligent, but slightly, nerdy engineers and such.
OK, this is me, but I also love Led Zep... As well as most blues and electric blues (which is where Led Zep fits in for me... Favorite song is "The Rain Song.").
Then at Yes concerts 1/2 the fanbase will be the general progressive rock/nerdy engineer guys, and the other 1/2 will be flower children tripping on acid.
That would be my sister! lol
Mark
Many years ago, I heard a radio interview with Rush, and a caller asked Geddy "how he was able to sing such high notes." I seem to recall Neil replying, "Clothes pins. Show him, Geddy!"
Mark
I'm Jewish... I don't celebrate Easter...
Just kidding... I didn't know that there were any on the DVD. Do you have to watch on a computer to get them, or can you get to them on a DVD player? What are they?
Mark
In the article, Geddy professed himself to be a "cultural Jew," which is similar to "lapsed Catholic," someone who still identifies with the group, but does not practice the religion, although appreciates the cultural aspects.
I wasn't aware that Rush's songs were "anti-G-d," but then I haven't really kept up with Rush since Moving Pictures. On the other hand, Neil has done nearly all their lyrics since he joined the band, and he's heavily influenced by Ayn Rand. And given his personal experiences, I could understand his loss of faith. For some people, personal tragedy can strengthen faith. For others, it can cause a loss of faith.
Mark
Have to brag a bit. Bought my first Rush album in 1974, when they were almost unknown. Think the Lp was Fly By Night. My age? 47. Only saw them once, during the 1981 Moving Pictures Tour. Still maybe the best concert I'd seen.
<><
46 trips around the sun and still rocking - to my wife's chagrin.
Easter Eggs here:
http://www.cheathappens.com/show_cht.asp?ID=14253
Clarification: Neil Peart writes the lyrics. Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson actually write most of the music. Kudos to Rush, Yes, Gabriel/Hackett Era Genesis, Frank Zappa, King Crimson, and Gentle Giant. Ironically quite a few years back the British Rock journalist Miles accused Rush of being anti-semitic.
I'm glad you brought up their first (RUSH) album!
The song "Here Again" is soooo freaking awesome. I get chills every time I here it.
The Guitar with it's semi-bluesy drawn out sound, and the inflections that Geddy uses are very over the top.
------
And I-- Oh I, I've seen your face before.
Is it ever gonna-- ever gonna change again?
....and I, oh I I've been in one Place too long.
Is ever gonna ever gonna change again.
------
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
Hey, I'm a big "R" republican who leans to Libertarianism. Rush works for me.
I'm a RepubLican, I guess...
"Gonna rev up the motor-scooters...when Josie comes home..."
They were up this way at Foxwoods Casino not too long ago, unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to see them. I spent my "concert fund" on Moody Blues tickets.
Now, a FEMALE Rush and Yes fan...that's an even larger rarity!
I'm guessing by your profile page that you like GWB? :-)
Yepper, the initial solo is anyway. The second solo and closing licks are Telecaster. You need to get the remeastered GFTO released last year. The audio quality is noticably improved from the original masters, and there are some bonus tracks.
AND Cary Grant, in case you hadn't noticed. hehehe
lol...yeah, you mentioned it briefly...
I saw that tour. My first concert.
That's odd... I'm a big-L libertarian who occasionally wastes his vote on Republicans.
They are liberals and Neil Peart is a high school dropout.
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