Every rock music fan has their favourite artist(s), the band / singer you like more than most others, whose records you collect religiously and for whom you’re willing to shell out the big bucks to see onstage, maybe even travelling many miles at considerable expense to do so. We’ve all been there and done it. Andy Faulkner was no different … except he turned his into a lifelong odyssey. As the author says, ‘Rush changed my life and have been my life.’
Finding My Way is the story of one man’s obsession with a Canadian rock band their considerable worldwide fanbase refers to as ‘The Holy Trinity’ … Rush. The term obsession is apposite – as anyone who’s seen a band 65 times over a period of 35 years, travelling many thousands of miles criss-crossing America and Canada to do so, spending God only knows how much in the process, has clearly crossed the line from being just a fan.
This epic lifetime journey, which saw Andy Faulkner move away from being a fan to becoming a ‘super-fan,’ one prepared to cross continents and travel considerable distances, came about after the tours promoting 1980s albums like Grace Under Pressure and Power Windows, failed to come to the UK for any dates. Faulkner had already seen Rush on several occasions by this time, and the Rush bug had already become deeply embedded so, realising he’d not be getting his fix from seeing the band playing onstage in his home country, the only alternative was to go where they were playing, which was their home country: Canada.
The book then becomes a kind-of travelogue … cities visited, highways travelled along, which venues Rush performed at and – perhaps most interestingly – the people he met along the way … including the ‘mad Jock in the Kilt’, as well as Mick and the other people behind the Spirit of Rush fanzine, who became a source of encouragement as he realised he wasn’t the only fanatic travelling to every show. The constant travelling produced several lessons to be learned … which included planning ahead and know where you’re going, as well as choosing your travelling partners carefully; these lessons and others are the source of some very amusing travel stories.
The level of fanaticism increases from 2002, after no Rush gigs for five years, when Mick dies from a heart attack, aged only 43. From then on, Faulkner’s watchword becomes ‘carpe diem’ … if Rush are playing, go see them and count the cost later.
This is the kind of book you don’t necessarily need to be a Rush fan to appreciate. There are several scenes depicted which devoted fans of whatever band will recognise instantly .. travelling hundreds of miles to go to a gig, seeing the same faces in motels, the foyers and around the merch stalls. This is the same spirit which produced the cult of The Deadheads, dedicated fans of San Francisco legends The Grateful Dead, who turned their gigs into joyous celebrations, with one fan claiming to have seen them 182 times.
However, as interesting and as enjoyable as this book is, what would have made it a better read would be the inclusion of some pictures .. either of some of the iconic venues or the Spirit of Rush fans Faulkner met along the way, some of whom he became lifelong friends with, fan pictures of Rush onstage to give an ‘I was there’ feel, or even of the author himself outside a venue. But this aside, Faulkner’s own ‘Spirit of Rush’ has produced one of the better books about the band, written with genuine love from the perspective of someone for whom, in his life, Rush has been a guiding lodestar.
No comments! Be the first commenter?