Rush’s ‘Vapor Trails’: The Emotional Journey to a Remastered Classic
Rush’s album Vapor Trails was very special to the band. After losing his daughter and wife, drummer Neil Peart took a long break. When he came back, the band made Vapor Trails in 2002.
Guitarist Alex Lifeson said, “It was very raw, very visceral, you know?” They recorded much of the album in one go because the songs felt too important to change.
Not fully happy
Lifeson was not fully happy with the album’s sound. He said, “The way it sounds… It could have been better recorded.” But they all cared about the music very much. Later, they decided to improve the sound. They had talked about it for a long time.
“A lot of that stuff on there is first takes and demos, but because of what had happened and how we felt, we didn’t want to re-record. They felt too precious in a way. We were very protective of those songs at that time; we were all feeling very tender about it.”
“Rich Chycki, my engineer, re-remixed One Little Victory and Earthshine for Retrospective III (2009) and they sounded just great. I’m not a big fan of those compilations, to be honest. They come and go; they’re contractual obligation things.”
Revising the sound
“But we’d all been feeling the same way about the sound of Vapor Trails. We’ve talked about revising the sound – we’ve talked about it a lot. I guess enough time’s passed now. I think we’re more curious than anything to see how it would sound. Now, having heard what Rich has done with some of those songs, too, it’s really made us think about it a lot more.”
In 2013, the band released a new version of Vapor Trails, which was remixed and remastered by David Bottrill.
An article by Prog tells the story of Vapor Trails and its transformation, sharing how the album became what fans and the band had always hoped it would be.
