Are RUSH actually Prog?

I grew up listening to Rush on my radio stations in the US in the late 70s and early 80s. These radio stations called themselves "AOR" (album oriented rock), and then in the 80s, "classic rock." The music these radio stations played side-by-side with Rush were tunes by Pink Floyd, Yes, Supertramp, Jethro Tull, Kansas, Led Zeppelin, Styx, Queen, Jimi Hendrix, early Sabbath, the Doors, Jefferson Airplane, Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan.

Rush's genre was 'album-oriented rock.' That was the industry term; that's how they were marketed, to radio stations that played music by 'album-oriented rock bands like Pink Floyd, Yes, and Led Zeppelin. Rush's big breakthrough was when the Cleveland radio station WMMS played "Working Man" on their station, and championed the band on air. WMMS also played David Bowie and Bruce Springsteen, helping them attain wider attention in the US. WMMS played Rush tunes side-by-side to tunes by King Crimson, Soft Machine, MC5, the Velvet Underground, and glam band the New York Dolls (whom Rush performed with). From Wikipedia: "WMMS during this period would play a key role in breaking several major acts in the U.S., including: Rush, Roxy Music, Bruce Springsteen, Southside Johnny, Fleetwood Mac, Meat Loaf, The Pretenders, the New York Dolls, Lou Reed, Mott the Hoople, Boston, and The Sensational Alex Harvey Band. Of special note was the early support of Bruce Springsteen by Kid Leo and others, prior to the release of the Born to Run album. For the station's tenth anniversary in 1978, WMMS hosted and broadcast a live Springsteen concert at the Agora Ballroom independent of his concert tour."

Here's an interview with singer/bassist Geddy Lee in 1979 during their Hemispheres tour, a year before Permanent Waves came out. The interviewer asks Geddy who he listens to, who he's influenced by. Geddy Lee answers, "Right now, I'm really in love with Bill Bruford; he used to be with Yes and Genesis." (Bruford was the drummer of Yes, then joined King Crimson, then joined Genesis briefly on tour; then released a fusion album with guitarist Alan Holdsworth (who played in Gong and Soft Machine), which was Geddy's favorite music at this time. [It's at the 8 minute mark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDZUqwlu-7Q]

I remember Rush was on the cover of Circus Magazine a few times in the late 70s and 80s. Other Circus covers included Hall & Oates, Rolling Stones, Jethro Tull, Elton John, Jimi Page, Yoko & John Lennon, Queen, Carly Simon, David Bowie, Kiss, etc.

Rush a "hard rock band"? No. They were certainly marketed to people who enjoyed 'hard rock." But they were mainly marketed to people who listened to AOR rock (much of it what we call prog today). And Rush themselves were influenced by fellow prog acts, particularly Genesis, Yes, and King Crimson.

I never said that genres didn't exist prior to the 70s. Of course they did. I don't know how old you are, but I would suggest that the importance and marketing of compartmentalized genres and the hyper-compartmentalization of music occurred in the late 70s/early 80s due to consolidation of corporate record companies and the emasculation of FM radio to fit very rigid marketing demographics based on ad buys. If you listened to a FM rock station in the early 70s, you heard literally everything. It was radio without borders, so to speak, and often quite radical in airplay (you could hear the MC5, War, P-Funk, Gentle Giant, early Genesis, Iggy, Neil Young, Mott the Hoople, Stevie Wonder, T.Rex, Alice Cooper and Bowie all on one station, interspersed with the Led Zeppelins, Doors, Hendrixes, Stones and Beatles of the world).  Hell, even AM radio would play at least the hits of bands like Deep Purple, Yes, Tull, The Allman Brothers and Uriah Heep.

That really changed later, and drastically. AOR rock made way for corporatization. It came to a point that you could hear a deejay announce they were going to play a certain band next, and with the utmost certainty you could predict that it would be one of two or three songs played in endless rotation. Ah, the endless drone of Boston, Foreigner, Styx, Kansas, REO, Bad Company, Bob Seger and John Cougar Mellonhead in a monotonous loop! We had a radio station in Detroit that started in 1980 with the call letters WLLZ -- and the running joke was that it stood for Whole Lotta Led Zeppelin, and then other stations adopted "classic rock" or "new wave", etc. Every station became a  stratified, stultified niche and MTV became its own niche. And creativity died. 

Nope.....you can't simply go by a rock magazine or a music critic who both usually have an agenda. 

Rush has been described as being hard rock, heavy metal, acid, progressive and prog rock......bands like them are able to cover many rock based genres.

So how do you explain that EMI categorized DSOtM as Popular: Pop Groups?

Since you admit you don't know the whole Rush output you are not qualified to pass on the correct information to future listeners. And BTW, there is a violin on the 1982 Rush album Signals.

At time like these I normally refer to my trusty 1978 NME Encyclopedia of Rock, in which ELP and Yes are labelled "techno-rock" but there is no mention of "progressive rock" in the entries for them or KC or Genesis.

In the entry for Tull it says they gained a devoted following on the "progressive rock" circuit alongside others such as Ten Years After, Fleetwood Mac, Pink Floyd and The Nice, so the term existed in 1978 but not as we know it today.

Growing up in Los Angeles area in the early 70s the FM station KMET 94.7 would play a lot of obscure hard rock and progressive rock and the DJs would use the term "progressive music" or "progressive rock". That is the station where I first heard Genesis, it was the Cinema Show from Seconds Out. Only played at night since it was a 11 minute song.

I only heard/read the term "prog" maybe in the last 25yrs.

LOTS of synth on the '80s albums — LOTS.

Mellotron (M400, owned by Hugh Syme, played by Geddy) on "Tears" from 2112 and four songs on Snakes & Arrows.

Violin (played by Ben Mink) on "Losing It" from Signals.

Acoustic piano (played by Hugh Syme) on "Different Strings" from Permanent Waves.

And you know what? A violin, oboe, cello or flute automatically make something "prog" about as much as a food mixer does. Just ask Rick Wakeman.