Vapor Trails

Those who know me (and some who do not) are aware of my family’s passion of Rush. This illustrates it well.

On August 10, 1997, soon after the conclusion of Rush's Test for Echo Tour, drummer Neil Peart's first daughter and then-only child, 19-year-old Selena Taylor, was tragically killed in a single-car accident on Highway 401 near the town of Brighton, Ontario.

Only 10 months later, on June 20, 1998, his common-law wife of 22 years, Jacqueline Taylor, succumbed to cancer. Peart attributes her death to the result of a "broken heart" and called it "a slow suicide by apathy. She just didn't care."

In his book Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road, Peart writes that he told his bandmates at Selena's funeral, "consider me retired." Peart took a long sabbatical to mourn and reflect and travelled extensively throughout North and Central America on his motorcycle, covering 88,000 km (55,000 mi).

After several years it looked that RUSH was done as a band.

However, after his journey, Peart decided to return to the band. Peart wrote the book as a chronicle of his geographical and emotional journey.

Peart was introduced to photographer Carrie Nuttall in Los Angeles by long-time Rush photographer Andrew MacNaughtan. They married on September 9, 2000.

In early 2001, Peart announced to his bandmates that he was ready to return to recording and performing.

The product of the band's return was the 2002 album Vapor Trails, RUSH’s 17th studio album. Its release marked the first studio album for the band since Test for Echo in 1996 (the longest gap between Rush albums until their retirement).

The band felt that the entire developmental process for Vapor Trails was extremely taxing and took about 14 months to finish, the longest the band had ever spent writing and recording a studio album.

Despite controversy concerning its production and sound quality, the album debuted to moderate praise and was supported by the band's first tour in six years, including first-ever concerts in Mexico City and Brazil, where they played to some of the largest crowds of their career. Personally, I attended the Toronto show. There's no way I was going to miss the return. It was quite emotional for myself and likely everyone in attendance to have our favourite sons back again.

The album was certified gold in Canada in August 2002. The song "Ghost Rider" appeared on the album and was written by Peart as a tribute to his travels around the US and Canada after his personal tragedies, while "One Little Victory" served as the first single to announce the band's return from hiatus.

The original audio mix of the album received criticism for its heavy use of dynamic range compression. Not pleased with the results, Rush had two of the album's tracks mixed again and re-released in Retrospective III: 1989–2008.

The positive response to that led to a completely revamped version of the album, titled Vapor Trails Remixed, released in 2013. It was released both individually and as a part of the box set The Studio Albums 1989–2007.

After the release of Vapor Trails and his reunion with bandmates, Peart returned to work as a full-time musician.

It is for this reason that many people, including my family, feel that Vapor Trails is the most important and meaningful album in RUSH’s discography.

And this is why both Braydon and I have the album cover as tattoos. Braydon has had his for a few years and I have finally had mine done. Both were done by the incredibly talented Joey Saindon at Sacred Owl Tattoo who has done all of my tattoos for almost 10 years now.

Purists will note that the original Vapor Trails album cover was orange, red, black and yellow and the image used for our tattoos was from the remixed album cover. It is a much nicer image with many other colours added.

I point out however that the remixed version of the album was the one that Geddy, Neil and Alex preferred, as they had not been happy with the original.

Stay well,
Tim