About the Album
Hold Your Fire is the twelfth studio album by the Canadian rock band Rush, released in the fall of 1987 (see 1987 in music). The album was recorded at The Manor Studio in Oxfordshire, Ridge Farm Studio in Surrey, Air Studios in Montserrat and at McClear Place in Toronto. Hold Your Fire was the last Rush studio album released outside Canada by PolyGram/Mercury.
Rush continued to explore new songwriting territory in Hold Your Fire. “Tai Shan”, for example, is influenced by classical Chinese music, and its title is a reference to Mount Tai in China’s Shandong province, which lyricist Neil Peart discovered during his bicycle trip in China. ‘Til Tuesday bassist and vocalist Aimee Mann contributed vocals to “Open Secrets” and “Time Stand Still”, appearing in the Zbigniew Rybczyński-directed video for the latter. In addition, Mann’s laugh is heard at the beginning of “Force Ten”, and a backward sample of her vocals from another track is also used at the end of “Tai Shan”.
The album was not as commercially successful as much of the band’s releases of the 1980s, only peaking at #13 on the Billboard charts, the lowest debut for a Rush album since Hemispheres. However, the album did eventually go gold.
Hold Your Fire marked the first time that Geddy Lee used the Roland D-50 keyboard.
