How a Hersey High School senior brought the band Rush to class in 1977

Eric Kinkel was just a 17-year-old senior at John Hersey High School in the spring of 1977, when, bored with the Rock ‘n’ Roll literature course he was taking, suggested to the teacher a unique and unlikely show-and-tell item he could bring to class: a real band.

It was only about a year prior when Kinkel — an amateur concert photographer with a side hustle making backstage passes for a local promoter — was backstage after a show at the Randhurst Twin Ice Arena in Mount Prospect.

There he encountered Geddy Lee, the long-haired, bespectacled bassist and lead vocalist of Canadian rock trio Rush.

Lee was friendly and engaging, Kinkel remembers, and their conversation briefly touched on the English lit class Kinkel was taking.

Lee’s interest was piqued.

Months later, Kinkel was outside the band’s hotel ahead of a gig at Schaumburg nightclub B’Ginnings.

Not only did Lee pose for pictures, he invited Kinkel upstairs to talk, listen to bandmate Alex Lifeson strum acoustic guitar and have a smoke.

“Back then that was a novelty, and an opportunity,” said Kinkel, now 67, himself a musician living in Wauconda.

Soon enough, the band’s manager from Toronto would call Kinkel at home in Arlington Heights. Rush agreed to visit his high school class.

The return of Rush — fronted by its two surviving members, Lee and Lifeson — to Chicago for four shows at the United Center starting Thursday stirs memories of that high school day nearly a half-century ago.

Kinkel, an early admirer of the band’s musicianship and creativity, envisioned the encounter as an intimate classroom discussion and “intellectual meeting of minds” among students and members of the band.

But the May 20, 1977, visit turned into something very different.

The band arrived to the Arlington Heights school campus in limousines, accompanied by the show biz press following a junket at Mercury Records downtown. Instead of meeting and talking with a couple dozen students in the English class, Lee and Lifeson and drummer Neil Peart fielded questions on stage in the school auditorium from about 100 students.

Their queries ranged from “Do you smoke dope?” and “How old are you?” to “What are your favorite groups?” and “What kind of cars do you own?” according to an account in the Aug. 4, 1977, edition of Circus magazine.

Kinkel still blames his teacher, school administrators and the record label for hijacking what was to be an intimate dialogue and making it a spectacle.

“My classmates asked an array of questions I felt were off topic and came off sophomoric,” Kinkel wrote in an email to the Daily Herald. “Obviously, the teacher had not prepared them properly. … My schoolmates all had different opinions about bands back then — few knew or liked Rush. They had a perfect opportunity to participate in an intellectual conversation with a band who were on the heels of that fame during the time of the event. A missed opportunity for certain.”

Of the trio, Peart was most disappointed by the experience, Kinkel believes.

In the back of his limo on the way to that evening’s sold-out show at the Aragon Ballroom, the Circus writer asked Peart what he thought of the students.

“Some nice ones, some ignorant ones,” according to the story. “I expected it to be a little more — specialized …”

Kinkel said he relentlessly apologized afterward.

Lee and Lifeson were much more kind — “They knew what I originally planned and how it got twisted,” Kinkel said — and still invited him backstage every time they were in town. He estimates he attended at least a dozen Rush shows until his last one in 1982, having lost touch with the band members ever since.

“My girlfriend at the time hated their music even though I took her backstage to meet them afterward,” Kinkel said. “I was an adoring fan who understood their music, their personal character and their intellect, all of which outpaced many others in the rock 'n' roll world.”

He wishes he could attend any of the band’s four upcoming shows this week, but likely won’t be able to.

Kinkel has experienced a series of health challenges since at least 2019, fully losing his vocal cord functions to brain trauma in 2021. His quest to reclaim his voice — detailed in a 90-minute documentary, “In Search Of His Lost Cords” — was the subject of a March 9 Daily Herald front page story.

He says he’s working on updates to the movie with newly filmed scenes and another celebrity testimonial (Ted Nugent, an old friend from the suburbs, is already in the film).

A performer for decades — with hard rock band Lost Nation, and later as a solo folk and country artist — Kinkel can no longer sing, but he can still play the guitar.

And he can listen.

Among his favorite Rush songs is “Limelight,” Peart’s 1981 missive of the struggles of coping with fame.

Kinkel thinks the day’s events at Hersey could have served as inspiration.

So how did he do in that Rock ‘n’ Roll course?

“I passed the class with As and Bs.”