Rush didn’t really do collaborations, but Geddy Lee thought the lead single from their 1987 album Hold Your Fire needed something extra: guest female vocals. But who should they ask to sing on Time Stand Still?
"We thought about asking Cyndi Lauper at first,” Alex Lifeson told Kerrang! in 1987. If it seems weird now, it made more sense then: The Girls Just Want To Have Fun star was still in vogue, thanks to her 1986 hit, True Colors, while Rush were taking advantage of 1980s technology and embracing a more new wave sound.
Unfortunately, Cyndi couldn't do it, so Rush approached another 80s megastar with a distinctive voice: The Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde. She too had scheduling conflicts. In the meantime, Rush and their management had been listening to Welcome Home, the 1986 album by Boston-based new wave act ’Til Tuesday, and were particularly taken with frontwoman Aimee Mann’s performance on opening song, What About Love.
“I don’t know if she’d heard of us,” drummer Neil Peart told The Boston Globe, “but we were impressed by her great range – between the angelic quality and that emotional contralto she has.”
The Richmond, Virginia-born Mann had heard of Rush and she joined the band and producer Peter Collins at McClear Place in Toronto, one of the four recording studios in which Hold Your Fire was made.
“I thought. Sure – why not?’” Mann told Guitar World in 2017. “I liked the song and thought the part was really pretty. I remember saying to Geddy, ‘Dude, your falsetto is so great – you shouldn’t have me on this.’ I’m very proud that I had that opportunity.”
Adding fine, ethereal vocals to Time Stand Still’s choruses that day, Mann was paid a session fee of $2,000. Earlier sessions for the particularly techie, keyboard-heavy Hold Your Fire had been a little dull at times, so Mann’s presence proved a welcome respite from the tedium of choosing oriental flute samples for Tai Shan.
“We were all mesmerised by her,” Rush’s Geddy Lee told me in 2023, “complete goofballs in her presence. She sang beautifully and she completely trusted us with her voice.”
“Her voice blends with Geddy's perfectly,” said Lifeson, “and I think it creates the right atmosphere for the song. It's just something new for Rush…”
Mann was game enough to hang around for the filming of Time Stand Still’s promo-video. It was directed by Polish Academy Award winner Zbigniew Rybczynski, who also made videos for Mick Jagger and Supertramp, among others. Rybczynski’s very 1980s assemblage of Rush whizzing through the air against various green-screen backdrops was not his or Rush’s finest moment, however. Indeed, the whole thing was a bit of a mutt’s meal.
“My hair at its worst,” said Lee, when he re-watched the video with Rolling Stone in 2013. “It’s a bad ‘do.” Only the platinum-blonde, perfectly tailored Mann – who is seen filming Rush from the safety/dignity of terra firma – emerges from the Time Stand Still video with her cool intact.
“Aimee Mann was hanging out with us all day and all night. She was such a good sport about the whole thing,” said Geddy. “You can tell these parts towards the end were shot later at night because my beard has grown out. We were there so long!”
What has aged well, and has gained poignancy with each passing year, in fact, is Neil Peart’s lyric for Time Stand Still, the chief sentiments of which he unpacked for The Boston Globe in the year of the song’s release.
“All through the 70s, our lives were flying by,” Peart recalled. “We spent so much time on the road that it became like a dark tunnel. You start to think about the people you’re neglecting, friends and family.”
No wonder, then, that Lee sang lines such as “Children growing up, old friends growing older/Freeze this moment a little bit longer,” with utter conviction.
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