The 1991 Rush song Geddy Lee always regretted: “It was a strange tune”
Throughout Rush’s career, Geddy Lee practically dominated every song he touched.
Even though they had the Canadian answer to Jimmy Page in Alex Lifeson on the fretboard, Lee’s mixture of Chris Squire’s prog precision with John Entwistle’s intensity made for some of the greatest rock and roll basslines of the modern age, practically sounding like a lead guitar that happened to have a lot of low end. Although Lee could throw down behind the bass guitar, ‘Neurotica’ from the band’s keyboard era was a misfire.
For Lee, the track stands as a reminder that not every experiment lands the way it is intended. Rush had built their reputation on pushing boundaries and refusing to stay in one lane, but ‘Neurotica’ felt like a moment where those instincts tipped too far, resulting in something that never quite settled into a cohesive identity.
Still, its existence reflects the band’s willingness to take risks, even at the cost of occasional missteps. Rather than playing it safe, Rush consistently chose evolution over comfort, and while ‘Neurotica’ may not rank among their strongest efforts, it remains part of the broader journey that defined their ever-shifting sound.
For any casual Rush fan, the keyboard era is generally thought of as the moment it all went wrong. After the band became a legendary prog rock band on 2112, hearing them suddenly sound like A Flock of Seagulls on albums like Grace Under Pressure did nothing to endear them to rock fans who preferred their signature Led Zeppelin-influenced intensity.
If fans got past the squelchiness of the keyboards, though, every one of Rush’s 1980s records featured some of the most underrated tunes of their career, from the harrowing tales on ‘Afterimage’ to the slice of life songs like ‘Subdivisions’. While drummer Neil Peart may have helped spearhead the new direction, even he admitted that things started to go astray during the sessions for Hold Your Fire.
For any fan who jumped on during albums like Hemispheres or 2112, the band sounds unrecognisable, especially on the lead single ‘Time Stand Still’ with its elaborate use of arpeggiated guitars. Although the band consciously decided to wrestle themselves out of the keyboard chokehold, not everything was out of their system on the Roll the Bones LP.
Although the album marked a turning point for Rush’s heavy side coming back, the lead single was far from perfect, featuring Lee rapping for the first and hopefully final time on record for the title track. While ‘Roll the Bones’ was still regarded as a fan favourite and occasionally got thrown into the band’s setlist, Lee knew they went too far with ‘Neurotica’.
Compared to the other radio-friendly songs on the rest of the LP, ‘Neurotica’ feels like the band trying to push both sides of their sound together and coming together with a pretty audible thud. Although Lee has remained proud of most of the band’s material, he had difficulty remembering whether they recorded the tune properly.
When discussing the track with Classic Rock, Lee said that he thought it was a little too wacky for them to have made, saying, “Just recently, I listened to the song ‘Neurotica’. I thought, what the f*ck was that? It’s just a strange tune. I feel we’ve had a very up-and-down career as songwriters, but one thing that’s always held true is our honesty about what we’re doing”.
While the tune might not be worthy of being held up among the upper echelon of the band’s catalogue, it shows that the band were willing to experiment occasionally. Up until the band’s retirement from the road and final LP, Clockwork Angels, they would continue to push themselves in different directions, culminating in their first proper concept album. ‘Neurotica’ may hold a strange place in Lee’s heart, but Rush has never been afraid to turn down a challenge…even if it is a terrible mistake.
