The 1976 Rush album that almost cost them a record contract: “A lot of people didn’t get it”
In the world of progressive music, Rush might be the one band that is almost too progressive for progheads. Although the band likes to wear the influence of King Crimson and Genesis on their sleeves, hearing complex songs about space federations and Tolkien-esque landscapes can be a bit much for someone on their first listen.
While the band were already flirting with some progressive ideas with new recruit Neil Peart on Fly By Night, Caress of Steel was too far off the deep end for some people.
Even though Fly By Night had some decent hard rock staples on it, like the title track, for example, Caress of Steel was where Peart started to come into his own, writing songs that spanned over 20 minutes. The song ‘Bastille Day’ is a definite highlight from the first side of the record, but ‘The Necromancer’ and ‘The Fountain of Lamneth’ are the ones responsible for the album’s reputation.
What made Caress of Steel such a shock to listeners was how dramatically Rush abandoned the bluesy hard rock that had defined their early work. Instead of tight, riff-driven songs, the band leaned fully into progressive storytelling, complete with shifting time signatures, theatrical narration and sprawling fantasy imagery. For fans expecting another batch of arena-ready rock songs, the sudden leap into elaborate concept pieces felt bewildering rather than exciting.
Both eclipsing 15 minutes, these epics were not well received on first listen, with ‘The Necromancer’ consisting of the members of Rush getting transported to Middle Earth and taking on Sauron with one of the characters from their last epic piece, ‘By Tor and the Snow Dog’.
Aside from their Hobbit fanfiction, ‘The Fountain of Lamneth’ is a hero’s journey that goes nowhere, consisting of a man growing up in search of this mystical fountain, only to grow old and realise that there are no mystical qualities behind the fountain at all.
When the band played their song to their friends, though, the reception was ice cold, with Alex Lifeson remembering: “We played it once for [Kiss’] Paul Stanley, and he didn’t get it…a lot of people didn’t get it. We wondered if we even got it”. Geddy Lee agreed with his writing partner, saying, “I think we were pretty high when we made that record. It sounds like that to me.”
The album was the last of their worries. Once the band got out on the road, the fans they got on the previous album dried up, and they found themselves playing in half-empty halls in the middle of America. Coining this era as the Down the Tubes tour, everyone in the band was in dire straits on the next album, with the label demanding singles or they would be dropping the band.
Upon reminiscing, Neil Peart mentioned how the band was at odds with the record company and used that as fuel for them to keep going. Peart became annoyed that “they were leaning on us at our weakest. So when we went into the next album, we decided to stick to our principles. We liked what we did, and if it fails, then fine. Back to the farming business for me. It was all a big no. No, we’re not going along with this. No, you can’t tell us what to do. And no, we don’t care.”
What separated 2112 from the excesses of Caress of Steel was focus. While the title track still stretched past the 20-minute mark, the story of an individual rebelling against a dystopian regime gave the music a clearer emotional centre. The album balanced its ambition with tighter songwriting elsewhere on the record, allowing Rush to keep their progressive instincts while making the music far more accessible to audiences who had struggled with their previous experiment.
Their next album, 2112, was practically a middle finger back at their critics, opening with a 20-minute piece about standing up for what you believe in. This is normally the career killer, but 2112 turned into a second wind for the band, creating a cult audience around the album and turning them into the most in-demand prog acts of all time.
After earning their stripes on the road, Lifeson credits 2112 with giving the band their freedom, saying that “after that, no one gave us any more trouble. Now, when we give a new album out to a record company, they accept it as is. They have no choice.”
Rush could have easily fallen into obscurity the minute fans saw the 20-minute timecode of the first song, but that epic became the creative golden ticket for their next four decades together.
