10 songs that Rush should have never released
There’s a certain aura that seems to surround Rush these days more than their music. Even if Geddy Lee’s voice manages to sound like nails on a chalkboard for many, it’s hard not to pay respects to the band that critics hated and the public reviled that still managed to give us some of the greatest progressive rock ever made. Then again, those haters could be justified some of the time, and the back pages of the Canadian icons prove that not all they touched was gold.
Granted, some of the problems that Rush has throughout their discography have more to do with them trying too much at once. As much as some might adore them for their complex arrangements and multiple scalar riffs, there comes a point among their classics where they go too far and start creating something that will either be profound genius or bend someone’s brain in the wrong way.
On the other hand, there are also songs that wash over everyone and hardly leave any sort of impact. The whole point behind prog rock is to reshape someone’s mind, and in a genre that defines itself on innovation, words like “same-y” or “boring” can be the kiss of death for someone looking to change the world.
While there’s no denying that Rush has had an indelible impact on Canadian music, rock and roll, and nerd rockers the world over, these are the few instances where they started to push themselves farther than they were able to go. And especially for a discography with so many hits, the fact that some songs are painfully average isn’t doing them any favours.
10 songs Rush should have never released
10. ‘Available Light’ – Presto
Far too many have spilled ink over Rush’s much-maligned period. While some of the band’s best work turns up on those albums, it’s completely fair that going from prog-rock kimonos to the fashion sense of A Flock of Seagulls wasn’t exactly going to be everyone’s cup of tea. Despite some fantastic songs coming out of that era of the group, ‘Available Light’ is the best way that someone could sum up Presto as a whole: painfully boring.
Compared to the start of the decade, when the synths sounded new and inventive, this was the moment everyone realised that this era needed to die. Even if they had more tasteful uses on other records, the fact that this song was released in the same timeframe when Guns N’ Roses were storming the charts tells you all you need to know about how out of touch they had become by that point.
While Rush has never been the most popular band in the world, even some of the diehards might have a hard time standing up for ‘Available Light’, especially given the amount of decent guitar licks that are buried in the mix. Alex Lifeson had often said about how he shouldn’t be looking for a different place in the band, and considering how much of this sounds cheesy, Vapor Trails really needed to come along to put those keyboards to rest.
9. The Cygnus split – A Farewell to Kings/Hemispheres
Stop! Wait! Before you kill me, I need to explain this one. The entire concept of Rush was based on episodic songs that told a story and didn’t always fit into a neat package. That’s what made their music so interesting, but that’s not always the best medium to work with when you only have two slabs of vinyl to work on. So when they had something truly groundbreaking on their hands, the physical medium screwed them over when it came to their twin ‘Cygnus’ songs.
Since the band earned their right to be weird on 2112, A Farewell to Kings let them wiggle a bit more. Although ‘Xanadu’ has been clowned on by certain members of the Rush community, ‘Cygnus X1’ feels like a song that doesn’t really have an ending. Right as we start hearing about a man getting sucked into a black hole, everything goes black and the record ends.
While this is a clever ploy to get people to buy the next record and hear the next chapter on Hemispheres, the fact that the band eventually released a standalone CD with both parts interacted does a better job at illustrating the problem here. These are two songs that are worthy of being considered the group’s true magnum opus, and yet we all get shortchanged the minute that the record ends, and we have to start everything over again without so much as a ‘TO BE CONTINUED’.
8. ‘Roll the Bones’ – Roll the Bones
In the grand scheme of Rush’s 1980s albums, Roll the Bones tends to get a bad rap. Although they still are committed to using the synths on a lot of the material, hearing them put together tunes like ‘Dreamline’ and ‘Bravado’ are fine additions to the growing number of trippy Rush bangers. If we can throw them one bone there, though, the title track is one of the most unintentionally hilarious things that the band has ever done.
That being said, the song has a good message about someone knowing the basic principles of life and acknowledging that random occurrences define our existence. All of that makes for a great song two-thirds of the time, but the minute that they figured out that they could put a rap on one of their tunes was the day that fans saw their favourite group jump one of several sharks.
Despite having a wealth of people to choose from, their decision to have Lee perform the rap in a lowered pitch sounds like an AI version of the band making dad puns, including such classic lines as ‘Gonna kick some gluteus max’. If there’s one major sin of the tune, though, it’s that the original idea was to have the rap be a joke and have John Cleese write it. Truly a great tragedy that we never had a true Monty Python crossover.
7. ‘Countdown’ – Signals
Right as the 1980s began, Rush was still fairly green when it came to synth-driven music. Moving Pictures may have featured its fair share of synths, but since that was aces from cover to cover, it was hardly a major problem. While Signals was a firm warning that things were going to be different, ‘Countdown’ was the one time when they started to reel things back a little bit.
While there’s a lot to like about a song centred around the first trips into space, the tune feels almost too clinical for its own good. The whole point behind having synths like this is to make them sound futuristic and modern, but it feels like the group tried to please both sides of their fanbase by having them do the bare minimum and let the lyrics cover the rest.
Neil Peart’s lyrics are great at simulating that flight into the stars, but there’s a certain level of hesitancy here, almost like none of them are fully committed to the synthesisers as they should be. Grace Under Pressure would correct that problem with a vengeance, but as the final chapter of this record, it feels like the band were trying to extend an olive branch to those who wanted Lifeson’s guitars instead of the keyboards.
6. ‘Making Memories’ – Fly By Night
The Rush that we know today usually had to go through their fair share of hangups before settling on the sound they were known for. Although Neil Peart got them heading in the right direction, how the hell was someone supposed to turn into the greatest prog rock band ever formed overnight? A lot of bumps were bound to happen along the way, and the stench of the band’s early years got a little bit too pungent on ‘Making Memories’.
That’s not to say that their original period wasn’t any good. ‘Working Man’ is still a jam, and ‘Finding My Way’ showed them firing on all cylinders, but it’s hard to take them seriously when all the lyrics are insanely dumb. So when there’s a lyricist who’s incredibly well-read and knows what the hell he’s doing, it makes ‘Making Memories’ look worse, especially when the music boils down to them talking about how much they love being on the road.
It’s a well-worn topic that works for rock and roll, but it feels better suited coming out of Bob Seger’s mouth than Lee’s. They may have still been figuring themselves out, but it’s strange to think that none of them picked up on the drastic tonal shifts that were bound to come from this song after they sang an eight-minute piece about how a Viking and a snow dog go to battle with each other.
5. ‘Virtuality’ – Test for Echo
One of the biggest advantages of being a prog-rock act was being at the forefront of technology. Most of the forebearers of the genre had synthesisers well before they became popular in the 1980s, so when everyone unpacked their Casios, it wasn’t long before acts like Yes and Genesis started looking cool for how much they embraced the sounds of the MTV era. Those technical advancements can work against someone, too, and at the end of Test For Echo, Peart served up some truly hilarious one-liners when talking about the dangers of technology.
Since the computer age had begun to dawn, this was Peart’s way of getting in tune with the zeitgeist with a song all about the cyber wonderland. Although it’s not quite as hilarious as Jethro Tull’s attempts to go digital, hearing Lee sing lines about throwing all his problems into the “cyber sea” sounds closer to a technical wizard who has at least three shirts equipped with pocket protectors.
While it’s hard to get too angry at the tune, it does look a little worse when you realise that this came out a year shy of Radiohead singing about the dangers of technology on OK Computer. Thom Yorke certainly had a handle on what a computerised future could look like, but what Rush served up feels like someone who had been shown what email was for the first time and was convinced that they had seen the future.
4. ‘In the Mood’ – Rush
Considering what they would become known for, Rush is one of the most fascinating debuts to look back on in prog history. The band were still some of the greatest players in Canada, but listening to them do some sort of bluesy Cream-style record is the exact opposite of what most people think of when it comes to their classic sound. And while most of it is still a fun-loving good time, ‘In the Mood’ is one of their more egregious examples of using rock and roll cliches.
While most of the lyrics had to be thought up on the spot after drummer John Rutsey ripped up the first drafts, having Lee write lyrics about getting it on with a lady isn’t what most people came to them for later. Led Zeppelin had already been known as one of their biggest influences, but hearing Lee screech in his best Robert Plant voice would be blown out of the water by ‘Percy’ any day of the week.
Because given what we know about Rush, writing meat-headed songs about girls was never exactly their forte. Considering everything else that they had worked on, ‘In the Mood’ comes off as a lesser-tier Grand Funk Railroad song, and the last thing we needed in our lives in 1976 was more casual sleaze rock songs.
3. ‘Tai Shan’ – Hold Your Fire
I will never try to get in the way of any band’s willingness to experiment. Even if they are going down a road that everyone is advising them against, it’s important to give any artist the benefit of the doubt and see what they have to say apart from what their previous records sounded like. That being said, there is a point where experiments go horribly wrong, and ‘Tai Shan’ is the clearest example of Rush fumbling an idea.
First of all, the band had no business trying to make a song that practically appropriates Eastern culture. There is a decent idea for a song that takes the elements of different cultures and put them under one roof, but this isn’t the kind of meshing that George Harrison did with Indian music or Paul Simon did with African music. If anything, it’s a cluster of different ideas smacked on top of each other.
Although Hold Your Fire is grossly underrated by fans who vomit every time they hear something too glossy, ‘Tai Shan’ is the moment where most could turn the record off and not notice much difference. The band could still deliver, but even Lifeson and Lee have held their hands up to say that this was a crazy mistake in their discography.
2. Everything about the first Vapor Trails release
No band can claim perfect production every time they go into the studio. Making a classic record is a miracle under any circumstances, and even bands like The Beatles have had fantastic records hampered by shoddy production work. In the case of Vapor Trails, this is less of a few rough edges and more like an endurance test for fans who bought the first pressing of the record.
Although the album itself contains some of the best songs Rush ever made and reflections on their time off, the loudness of wars can’t really be ignored on the record. The whole point behind the band’s best material was about them trying to push everything to the limit, but it doesn’t bode well when most people can hear clipping in the mix and would get ear fatigue if they chose to listen to the album for more than two songs at a time.
Thankfully, the band has corrected its mistake recently, and the versions available on streaming services don’t even include the cacophonous edition. So while the dark days of Vapor Trails are over, this is the kind of harsh reality that most are going to have to inflict upon themselves if they truly want to experience it.
1. ‘The Fountain of Lamneth’ – Caress of Steel
In the grand pantheon of flameout records, few had the potential to become a crater as much as Caress of Steel. Although Rush would recover nicely on 2112, the lack of sales for this record and the lavish concepts were enough for them to play to no one on the road, and their label threatened to drop them if they didn’t come out with commercial material. If all they had to go on was ‘The Fountain of Lamneth’, though, then the label was 100% justified.
Rush had only begun to dip their toes into epic material, but this was the moment when they started to make music that was completely out of their depth. Taking up nearly the entire second side of the record, hearing them sing about the fantastical story of a man’s desperate search for a mystical fountain is the definition of pretentious, especially towards the end of the saga where the man finally finds what he’s looking for and realises that it’s an ordinary fountain and he’s wasted his life.
The one other epic on the record isn’t much better, either, with ‘The Necromancer’ being a strange tune about how the three members of the band voyage into Middle Earth and get chased by Sauron. While you can chalk that one up to more Zeppelin worship in some respects, rarely has one song ever spelt disaster for a band quite like ‘The Fountain of Lamneth’ did.
