“People focus on the fact that he only played on the first record. But there were six years before that when he was their leader”: Rush movie makers knew they couldn’t leave John Rutsey out

In 2010 directors Sam Dunn and Scot McFadyen of Banger Films – who’d already enjoyed success with Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey and Iron Maiden: Flight 666 – released their Rush documentary Beyond The Lighted Stage. That year they told Prog about the challenges involved in putting it together, and what they’d learned about their fellow Canadians in the process.

“Rush is the longest-running intact rock band ever,” says Sam Dunn. “And with over 40 million records sold over four decades they’re arguably one of the most influential rock bands ever too. So we felt that, with this sort of legacy, it was high time someone made a documentary about their career.”

“They’re in a very enviable position where they can just explore music, be artistic, create new things and still have a huge audience,” says fellow director Scot McFadyen. “So many bands, when they change sound – like when Metallica changed their snare sound – can cause huge rebellion among fans who want a band to sound a certain way.

“There are fans that like Rush through one certain period over another, I’m sure; but they matter as a band because they’re always doing new things. I think the influence for a lot of musicians is their attitude to work – almost more than the music itself.”

Dunn and McFadyen have been producing together since their debut documentary Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey in 2005. They gained acclaim for Iron Maiden’s Flight 666 in 2009; but as Canadians, they were desperate to work with their homeland’s finest.

“They’re very connected to my upbringing, especially Alex and Geddy,” says McFadyen. “I grew up in the suburbs of Toronto and my brother had Rush stencilled on the bedroom door when I was six years old. They’re very familiar to me. And they’re very down-to-earth and not affected by celebrity.”

It was McFadyen who got the ball rolling, Dunn says. “He approached the management. Geddy had appeared in Headbanger’s and liked the way we’d approached rock music. He felt we were respectful and keen on telling a story.

“We met them at a show in Texas on the Snakes & Arrows tour in 07, then met again and talked about the idea. We were aware that Neil would be the most sceptical and hesitant, given he’s a very private person. He asked, ‘What’s your approach going to be?’ and Scot said, ‘We don’t know yet!’

“I think in a pitch setting that would have been disastrous; but with Rush they understand the creative process and that nothing comes quickly when it’s being done right. They appreciated we had no predetermined idea of what the story would be.

“They responded well to that; they made it very clear that they wanted the movie to come from us, and not be a Rush product. That was a vote of confidence, and off we went!”

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Not that it was all plain sailing. “Like a Rush song, it’s a long story!” says Dunn. Iron Maiden had initially rejected the idea of Flight 666; but when they changed their minds and invited the directors to join them on tour, they had to tell Rush that filming for that project needed to be postponed.

“We’d started to film interviews in the fall and winter of 2007, obviously working on the whole writing process and coming back to them with ideas and what we would need,” Dunn recalls. “Then in November of 2007 we got the call about Maiden. When it rains it pours. Thankfully Rush said yes, and we picked up the filming in early 09.”

Beyond The Lighted Stage premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2010, and won the Audience Award. “That was amazing,” says Dunn. “We’d tried to make a film that wasn’t just for Rush fans – a film about this band who have managed to survive for so long and have a massive impact, yet were still kind of under the radar. So the award was special because people at those screenings were there out of curiosity.”

The film is full of great archive material, particularly of the band’s early days. “There’s a mythology about the biggest rock band to have come out of Canada,” McFadyen says, “so capturing their story and using the older stuff was something we really wanted to do – because Rush wouldn’t have worked if they’d come from London or New York.”

Getting hold of it all was Sam’s job: “Speaking as a fan and as a bass player, to be in Geddy’s house, I had to pinch myself! But from a filming perspective the biggest challenge was the lack of video footage up until the late 1970s. I made one visit to Geddy’s house and we went through a lot of his archive material, but much of it had been seen already and wasn’t really all that unique.

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“When I came back the second time he’d got a box out of the attic that he hadn’t seen in years. We were looking at photos of the band with John Rutsey in the early days of them playing high schools and all of this amazing memorabilia. I was thinking, ‘Now we have the material.’”

Rutsey, the band’s original drummer, left after their debut album as a result of poor health. He died in 2008. Like Neil Peart’s family traumas later in the film, the subject is handled with sensitivity.

“We reached out to John’s brother in the early stages to collect photographs,” Dunn says. “It was important to include John in the story of Rush because it tends to be a forgotten chapter. People tend to focus on the fact that he only played on the first record.

“But the fact of the matter is that they started in 1968 and it was six years before the release of that record. In essence, John was the leader of the band. He was effectively the manager and he spearheaded getting the gigs and pushing them forward.”

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He continues: “We were guided by telling a human story. We wanted to cover the music and the musical history, because that’s undeniable – but also focus on the struggles the band went through over the years, to give people the sense of the guys as people, and not just as these mega rock stars.

“The fact is that the guys in Rush are tremendously humble and focused, and have a very working class ethic about what they do.”

“I think the humour in their relationship comes out in the film,” McFadyen reflects. “A lot of bands break up because of egos that pushes on the other members. But the three of them work together in the way they share the space on stage together; the way they support each other as friends.

“That’s why it works.”