RUSH Manager To Receive Award
March 10, 2009, 15 years ago
Last week the Music Managers Forum Canada (MMF Canada) announced that longtime RUSH manager Ray Danniels would be the recipient of the third annual MMF Canada Honour Roll Award. The award is presented each year during Canadian Music Week and celebrates an individual's outstanding excellence and achievements within the music and artist management community. The award reception will take place tomorrow (March 11th) at Bymark Restaurant. Jam! Music recently interviewed Danniels about the award and he had this to say:
"I never called my company after myself, I never wanted to be a public figure, so it's hard for me to talk about myself. But I look at the recognition on this, and I say this is the recognition for what Rush has done in the last 20 years."That's only half the time that Danniels, 56, has spent with the band. He began managing Rush when he was just 16 and was growing up alongside them in Toronto.
"It just happened," he recalled. "If you're going to quit school to manage a rock and roll band, you better have the right one."Danniels aggressively shopped Rush's music to record labels but they weren't interested. So he released the music himself.
"No one wanted to sign them at that level, so I became a record company," he recalled. "Same on the publishing side, no one had any interest in them, and I was just determined. "Listen to that first album (1974's Rush), these were songs written by kids. To this day, it gets a ton of airplay. It still stands up. And these guys were barely able to get into bars. If they hadn't lowered the drinking age in Ontario, they wouldn't have been able to play a club."Rush has been defying expectations of late. Their most recent album, 2007's Snakes & Arrows, debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard charts, selling about 93,000 copies in its first week. The band followed that with extremely successful tours in consecutive summers.
Danniels says he's astounded by Rush's longevity. "I didn't ever think that I'd still be doing this with the same partners, same band, for so long," he said. "That's the best part of the story."
(Thanks Rushisaband.com)
