Every band has to start somewhere, and for Canadian rock legends Rush it was in a church basement – a debut performance that was witnessed by just 20 people.
That first gig was in September 1968 at a Toronto venue named The Coff-Inn.
The band line-up was Alex Lifeson on guitar, John Rutsey on drums and Jeff Jones on bass and vocals.
Geddy Lee would replace Jones for the band's second gig. And the trio of Lifeson, Lee and Rutsey would go on to record the band’s self-titled debut album, released in 1974.
Alex Lifeson shared his memories of that first gig in an interview with PROG magazine in 2012.
He began by explaining how Rush formed from the remnants of his and John Rutsey’s previous band.
“John and I had been playing together for three years in a little basement band called The Projection,” Lifeson recalled. “We were as psychedelic as 15-year-old kids could be – in our paisley shirts! And we played covers: The House Of The Rising Sun, I’m A Man, stuff like that.
“But we also jammed with other people, and when we got the offer to do this gig at The Coff-Inn, I called up a bass player I knew, Jeff Jones. Jeff had his own band, but I said, ‘Do you want to do this gig for ten dollars? You can make three dollars! It’ll be fun.’
“It was actually John’s brother Bill who suggested we use the name Rush for that gig. We thought The Projection was a pretty cool name, but Bill said: ‘You need something shorter and to-the-point, something with energy to it. How about Rush?’ We were like, ‘Okay, that sounds good.’ And it stuck.”
Lifeson continued: “The Coff-Inn was in the basement of St. Theodore of Canterbury Anglican Church. It was two blocks from my house and it was a drop-in centre, a place for kids to hang out safely, drink pop and watch local bands play.
“There was no stage – the bands played on the floor at one end of this fairly large room. You could fit about a hundred people in there when the room was packed. But there were probably 20 people there at that first Rush gig.”
He admitted: “We didn't have a lot of equipment. We didn’t have a mic stand so we used a standing lamp and taped the mic to it. And we had a little crappy PA system with two small columns with four eight-inch speakers in them. It was very basic, the bare bones.”
Their setlist was filled with popular rock songs of the period.
Lifeson recalled: “We played Fire and Foxy Lady by Hendrix, Spoonful by Cream, Snowy Wood by John Mayall. We knew about seven or eight songs, so we played them over and over.
“I don't recall whether those 20 people were impressed or not," Lifeson said. “I'm guessing that they weren't! But we had fun. And after that first gig we got an offer to come back the following week.”
This was when a door opened for Lifeson’s buddy Geddy Lee.
As Lifeson told PROG: “Jeff Jones couldn't make it – he had commitments to his actual band. So that’s when I called Geddy and asked him if he could fill in.
“I’d known Ged for a couple of years. He might not have done the first gig as Rush, but he was there for the second one. And after that we would play at the Coff-Inn once a month.
“The last time we played there was in the spring of 1969, and the place was packed. I can still picture what it looked like. Just before we started, I looked at the lights shining on our equipment and the room full of people. That was so exciting.”
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