‘Roll the Bones’: the Rush song that asks “the ultimate question”
Rock and roll hasn’t always been concerned with asking the hard questions in songs. Although there are acts like The Beatles to remind us that all we need is love, there’s nothing wrong with bands strictly sticking to the principles of sex, drugs, and rock and roll whenever they write their material. But even in a subgenre that’s meant to be a little bit cerebral, like prog-rock, Rush has taken their time to make some of the most mind-expanding lyrics of all time.
And this isn’t the same kind of mind expansion that people talked about during the Summer of Love. Oh, the Canadian icons could still write a decent song about getting stoned once in a while, but Neil Peart had a much sharper vision for what he wanted his music to be when he first started writing tunes. Fly By Night already had him talking about the works of controversial author Ayd Rand and a mythical battle between a snow dog and a warrior, so they weren’t exactly going back to ‘Working Man’.
While those insane topical leaps did occasionally make them look silly on tunes like ‘Xanadu’, there were always going to be different ways for Peart to express himself. Many sections of his material would have been better suited to a fantasy novel, but by the time of Permanent Waves, tunes like ‘Entre Nous’ felt like him understanding empathy the same way Roger Waters did when making ‘Echoes’ for Pink Floyd.
He may have been hesitant to put his personal feelings down on paper for tunes like ‘Limelight’, but after going through their synthesiser period, Peart knew there was a lot more to explore. Grace Under Pressure may have provided them with their most emotional set of songs yet, but Roll The Bones was where things really started to get philosophical.
Whereas Peart had tried exploring tunes that broke down human relationships, the title track from the album explored the overall feeling of existence itself. While there’s no spiritual direction in the tune, Peart felt it was only fitting to make a song that sought to answer some of the toughest parts about life, eventually saying that everything happens fairly randomly on this rock that we call home.
Of all the tunes he ever wrote, Peart felt this was the one song that dealt with the toughest subject matter, saying, “[In that song], I address the ultimate question, why are we here, it seems to me to be the wrong question. In every case, it’s not why we’re here. What can we do about it is the important thing. So, to me, the answer, we’re here because of the process of evolution, and et cetera has brought it up to you and me being born. There’s no sense questioning that, as far as I’m concerned.”
That said, for a song that was incredibly complex, the fact that they threw in a rap verse in the breakdown does dampen the impact a bit. Rush were pioneers and masters of many different genres of music, but they also strike most people as the kind of musicians who merely tolerated that so-called “hippity-hop” music, which is probably why Geddy Lee’s performance of Peart’s rap verses sounded so dorky.
Despite that one slight hiccup, though, ‘Roll the Bones’ is an excellent example of how Peart’s philosophy on life works. It’s by no means the greatest Rush song by any stretch, but it’s probably the closest that Peart ever got to explaining what he felt about the nature of existence.
