A stranger in a strange land: the Rush song inspired by Alex Lifeson’s dreams
Rush are famed for making complex arrangements and chaotic musicianship accessible to all audiences. They have never been afraid to experiment with different music-making methods and have an unparalleled approach to songwriting. They like to throw themselves into a track and see where it takes them rather than having strict rules to write to. The result is free-flowing and ever-innovative music.
Their experimentation continues when you look at the themes they write about. They aren’t afraid to dive into the world of fantasy, philosophy and science fiction when putting songs together, which means that their music is written with imagery that would be better suited on the silver screen or between the pages of a book, as opposed to wrapped in the reels of a cassette.
They get their inspiration for these different themes from various places, and one of the best things about the band is that there are no bad ideas. In short, nothing is off-limits. When people bring forward an idea or a concept, no matter how wacky it may sound, it’s something that they are willing to look into. That is strongly evidenced by the track ‘La Villa Strangiato (An Exercise in Self-Indulgence)’, which came from guitarist Alex Lifeson’s dreams.
It’s interesting that when you look at why we dream, or at least why scientists think we dream, the rationale is comparable to why we listen to music. Though there is no set-in-stone explanation, many people believe that we dream because we are trying to process our memories more effectively and better understand our emotions. It also helps to provide a way for us to express what we want better and how we might overcome our challenges.
Music is not dissimilar to this. While we initially listen to music because we enjoy it, songs resonate by tapping into a part of us that previously hadn’t been tapped into. Emotions and feelings are buried within, brought to the surface, and acknowledged beautifully. Equally, they help us clear how we might feel about a particular situation and allow us to overcome difficult periods.
In that sense, extracting musical themes from a dream makes total sense. Of course, our inability to properly decipher our dreams might make it so that we would end up making something already abstract even more so. In a sense, rather than clearing the real world up, we would create an even stranger place, and that’s what we get with ‘La Villa Strangiato’, which translates to “strange city”.
“This is Alex’s brain, and every section of that song is different dreams that Alex would tell us about,” said Neil Peart when discussing the track. “It was these bizarre dreams that he would insist on telling you every detail about, so it became a joke between Geddy and me.”
Looking to our dreams for inspiration when creating isn’t a bad idea, given art tries to make sense of our thoughts in the same way that dreams do. However, because of their absurd nature, making music from dreams can often lead to something nonsensical. That’s precisely what happened with Alex Lifeson in Rush, as his dreams quite literally took the band somewhere strange.
