The Rush song that was spread across two albums
The entire ethos of progressive rock is meant to slightly mess with the listener’s mind. Even though it might be easy to write a song based around the same blues-infused progressions, acts like King Crimson and Pink Floyd made a living out of creating pieces that could put the listener’s brain in a blender if they weren’t careful. Of all the bands that became legendary in prog’s initial boom in the 1970s, Rush was one of the few groups too intricate for most to digest.
Before the band had acquired a taste for progressive music, though, Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson were already honing their craft in the world of hard rock. On their self-titled debut, Lee and Lifeson played the kind of blues-soaked hard rock that they had idolised as kids, with tracks like ‘Working Man’ and ‘Finding My Way’ being indebted to the work of Led Zeppelin.
Once John Rutsey ended up departing from behind the drum stool, though, the addition of Neil Peart led to the band going in a more complex direction. Across their sophomore album, Fly By Night, each song was meant as a new creative endeavour, from the different tempo changes on ‘Anthem’ to the dreamy sounds of the Tolkien-esque ‘Rivendell’.
Outside of the bite-sized prog rock songs, though, ‘By-Tor and The Snow Dog’ was the first time the band had begun toying with narrative pieces in their music. As opposed to tracks about specific emotions, Peart had written lyrics based around a piece of prose that he had written, telling the story of a vicious fight going on between the titular warrior and the snow dog.
While the label was unhappy with the band’s need for epic pieces, 2112 would eventually earn the group their freedom. After Caress of Steel met a deaf ear, their epic about standing up against those who oppose you became one of their anthems, with thousands of people congregating to the band’s warped take on progressive music.
As the band spread out across their next few albums, though, there would be one song that became far too intricate to be played across just one album. Although the album A Farewell to Kings marked a turning point in the group’s career with the introduction of keyboards, ‘Cygnus-X1’ closes the album without having a proper ending.
Throughout the piece, Lee sings about the wonders of a man searching through the cosmos, trying to find new lands. As he ventures deeper into the cosmic abyss, he gets swallowed up in a black hole, and he feels his body slowly getting pulled apart. By the time the song reaches its climax, the music fades into nothingness, giving way to different dissonant chords from Lifeson.
While many fans were confused by the song’s ending, they would get their answer a few months later. Bleeding into the album Hemispheres, the next album’s titular track would be the second act of the epic, telling of the many cosmic visions that the protagonist sees as he enters the black hole.
Although the tracks remained fractured throughout most of their career, a special limited edition version of the song was later included as a standalone single, with fans finally getting to hear the story in one uninterrupted listening session. Even though prog is meant to test the limits of what rock could do, Rush may be one of the only bands to make an epic closing track, stop halfway through, and turn it into a fantastic opening track.
