Thursday, July 2nd, 2015

Hugh Syme on the Stories Behind Rush’s Iconic Album Covers

Billboard has posted a comprehensive interview with Rush’s longtime Art Director Hugh Syme detailing some of the stories behind the band’s iconic album covers.

“I was lucky enough to find a band that, first of all, paid attention. We’re talking about a band that was emerging at a time when other bands were pretty taken by the idea they had to have a logo. But we were all pretty anti-logo. Even the Starman (from 2112) was an accident; we had no idea it would take on a life of its own like it did. But from the very beginning I could sense that this band wanted to make every album they do different, musically and thematically. I was just lucky enough to find a band that was willing to deviate from the norm every time, and that allowed me a lot of latitude to respond to each album as a unique event and not develop a (Roger) Dean sort of style like Yes did or a Phil Travers style like The Moody Blues did, even though those were really cool covers. We didn’t adhere to any kind of template.”

Read the entire article on Billboard.com

Also, be sure to get yourself a copy of the beautiful Art of Rush book.