A long time ago [1968 to be more precise] in a land known to some as The Great White North, a Canadian son of Serbian immigrants named Alexandar Zivojinovich founded a band called Rush. The original band also had a bass player who sang named Jeff Jones and a drummer named John Rutsey. Jones lasted all of one gig and was replaced a month later by a guy named Gary Lee Weinrib, the son of Polish Jews who survived the Holocaust. Gary’s mother couldn’t pronounce Gary’s first name – it always came out as Geddy, and the name stuck. He took the name Geddy Lee as his stage name. Zivojinovich Anglicized his name to “Lifeson” since the literal meaning of his name is “son of life”, and he took the stage name of Alex Lifeson. Lifeson [nicknamed “Lerxst”] met John Rutsey in school. Both were interested in music, and they formed Rush. The lineup of Lee/Lifeson/Rutsey made one album together. After that first album, Rutsey left and was replaced by Neil Peart. This was Rush’s last personnel change. The lineup of Lee/Lifeson/Peart made eighteen studio albums together, the first being Fly By Night (1975) and the last being Clockwork Angels (2012). They recorded an extended play of covers in 2004 [Feedback] and eleven live albums. Thirty-one albums is quite a discography. The following is my attempt to rank order [from worst to first] the nineteen Rush studio albums. As always, this reflects one pinhead’s point of view – mine. Without further ado…
19. Hold Your Fire (1987)
This album is the nadir of Rush’s recorded output. I absolutely loathe this album. I remember this came out while I was in officer training. One of my flight mates told me “this is really good – Rush is progressive now”. At the time, I thought “progressive” was a euphemism for “no guitars”, and true to my instincts, there aren’t many guitars on this clunker. In their bid to be more accessible to a wider audience, the band completely missed the plot. There is one redeeming feature of Hold Your Fire – the opening track Force Ten. Forget the rest – I did.
18. Presto (1989)
This one isn’t as bad as Hold Your Fire, but it’s close. It opened with Show Don’t Tell, a very cool song. Hearing it in a live setting [Different Stages Live, 1998] reveals even more of its magnificence. The rest of the album after the first song is quite forgettable. One can detect a hint of Geddy Lee’s bass. I want Rush to bring the thunder. That’s hard to do if you can’t hear the bass.
17. Caress of Steel (1975)
The road to 2112 starts here. The Necromancer was an “okay” start, but The Fountain of Lamneth was Rush sinking in the deep end. Kudos to them for trying, but they weren’t quite ready for this kind of indulgence yet. I could have done without the spoken bits on The Necromancer. Any band that comes up with a song like I Think I’m Going Bald needs to be shot, but they weren’t. Bastille Day makes up for it. Who but Rush would sing about the French Revolution? Lakeside Park was a bit mellow. Perhaps they smoked too much weed when they recorded it. This was their second album of 1975. Perhaps they used all their good songs on Fly By Night.
Recommended song: Bastille Day
16. Power Windows (1985)
This album began Rush’s downward spiral into [temporary] mediocrity. The band jumped into the synthesizer deep end on this album. Did Alex Lifeson participate in the recording sessions for this? The good songs are the first one and the last one. The rest is a shit sandwich. New Wave Rush doesn’t do it for me.
Recommended songs: The Big Money, Mystic Rhythms
15. Test For Echo (1996)
Coming after Counterparts, I had hoped this album would follow in a similar vein. I was sorely disappointed. Test For Echo committed the cardinal sin [at least in my view] – it bored me. Twenty-three years later, the album hasn’t aged well, and it still bores me. This album had promise, but it didn’t deliver.
Recommended songs: Test For Echo, Driven, Limbo [Instrumental]
14. Roll The Bones (1991)
The bass is more present in the mix than in that of Presto, but barely. The guitars sound like they’re stuck in the 1980s. But in its favor, there are some better songs.
Recommended songs: Ghost of a Chance, Roll the Bones, Neurotica
13. Rush (1974)
Kudos to WMMS in Cleveland for getting this on the air. At the time, listeners kept asking about the “new Zeppelin album” when it turns out it was this one. The songs here are your straight forward early 70's rock numbers. They aren't anything earth shattering, but there are some cool riffs and solos. The dark heavy riffing of Working Man makes it easy to see why it's the most popular from the album. Here Again is a slow Zep blues in the vein of Since I’ve Been Loving You and Tea For One. Alex Lifeson is definitely “worthy”. The rest of the album is best forgotten.
Recommended songs: Finding My Way, What You're Doing, Here Again, Working Man
12. Fly By Night (1975)
Exit original drummer John Rutsey [RIP], who had to drop out of the band [diabetes]. Enter Neil Peart, future drum god. This one is a pretty good follow-up to their first album. Here they moved beyond their worship of Led Zeppelin and Cream, but they were searching for their “sound”. They tried to do several things at once. Anthem could have fit on their debut album, but it’s got something extra. It’s probably the best track on the album. By-Tor And The Snow Dog sounds like their first stab at being progressive. Beneath, Between & Behind is a good hard rock track. Rivendell sounds like they want to be Yes, with weird Jon Anderson-like lyrics to match. In the End sounds like more Rivendell at first, but then the band finds another gear, turns up the volume and the tempo. The title track is what it is – iconic and overplayed on the radio.
Recommended songs: By-Tor And The Snow Dog, Fly By Night, Anthem, Beneath, Between & Behind
11. Vapor Trails (2002)
Little did Rush know that when they finished touring in 1997 in support of their album Test For Echo, tragedy would strike Neil Peart – twice. Peart's daughter Selena was killed in a car accident on her way back to school on July 4, 1997. At her funeral, Peart told his bandmates to consider him “retired”. Unable to cope with the death of her daughter, Peart’s wife Jackie died of cancer just ten months later. After Jackie’s death, Peart set out on a cross-country, 55,000-mile odyssey by motorcycle, which he chronicled in his heart-wrenching memoir Ghost Rider: Travels On The Healing Road. To their credit, Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson didn’t bother Neil Peart about when [or whether] he would return. In 2001, Peart let them know he was ready to make music again.
Unfortunately, the album that hailed Rush’s return after a six-year absence was Vapor Trails. Unfortunate not for the songs but the sound. It sounded like shit. It was too loud, and it was too distorted. Luckily, ten years later they decided to remix the entire thing [Vapor Trails Remixed – 2013]. The remix unveiled there were some good tunes [about half the album] under all that distortion. Like a stroke victim trying to learn to walk, Vapor Trails was a little wobbly in places, but there’s a good album to be heard. One Little Victory indeed. Buy the remix and leave the original album alone. Having bought the first release in 2002, I still want my money back since I bought the same album twice. Had this album not been remixed it would have been near the bottom of this list.
Recommended songs: One Little Victory, Earthshine, Nocturne, Vapor Trail, Sweet Miracle
10. Grace Under Pressure – [1984]
This was the first album since the beginning of the band that Rush used a producer not named Terry Brown. Rush throttled back on the synths a little bit. Lerxst could be heard more here than on Signals, but his guitar sound was a bit different. The sound wasn’t the Les Paul-like crunch you heard on earlier albums. I think he was playing heavily-modified Stratocasters at this time rather than Gibsons. But there was a peaceful co-existence between the guitars and the synths. It was a good balance. Neil Peart’s lyrical themes touched on death, the Cold War, the Holocaust, pressure and fear. Grace Under Pressure is pretty grim. The Enemy Within is Fear, Part 1. Red Sector A was inspired by Geddy Lee’s mother and her tales of the Holocaust and surviving it. To wit:
All that we can do is just survive
All that we can do to help ourselves is stay alive
Ragged lines of ragged grey
Skeletons, they shuffle away
Shouting guards and smoking guns
Will cut down the unlucky ones
I clutch the wire fence until my fingers bleed
A wound that will not heal, a heart that cannot feel
Hoping that the horror will recede
Hoping that tomorrow, we'll all be freed
Sickness to insanity
Prayer to profanity
Days and weeks and months go by
Don't feel the hunger, too weak to cry
I hear the sound of gunfire at the prison gate
Are the liberators here, do I hope or do I fear?
For my father and my brother, it's too late
But I must help my mother stand up straight
Recommended songs: Distant Early Warning, Red Sector A, Afterimage, The Enemy Within, Red Lenses, Between The Wheels
9. Signals [1982]
The synthesizer era for Rush begins here. It also sounds like Rush listened to The Police a lot, with all the hints of reggae and ska in the music [you can hear those elements on Digital Man and New World Man]. What had been hinted at on Permanent Waves and Moving Pictures assumed center stage with Signals. I love Subdivisions, a depiction of alienation in high school when you’re not one of the “cool kids”. The line “be cool or be cast out” summarizes the high school experience very neatly. While it is mostly synth-driven, Lerxst and his guitar break free with one of the more iconic solos of his career. I don’t know what to say about The Analog Kid other than it’s a good song that I’ve always liked. The Weapon is Part 2 of the Fear series begun on Moving Pictures. Losing It is different in that it has an electric violin from Canadian musician Ben Mink that gives it somewhat of an otherworldly character. Countdown is more like the soundtrack of the first Space Shuttle launch rather than an actual song, but that’s ok. New World Man is ok, but it got played to death on the radio.
Recommended tracks: Subdivisions, The Analog Kid, Chemistry, Digital Man, The Weapon, Losing It
8. Counterparts (1993)
Rush started out as a guitar band, but after Moving Pictures [1981] they moved further and further away from that ethos to the point that Alex Lifeson became a musical afterthought. There were just too many damn synthesizers for my liking, and the songwriting was pretty weak after Grace Under Pressure [1984]. Counterparts is the album for which I waited nine years. Keyboards were relegated to the background, and Lerxst’s guitar was finally front and center again. Of the eleven songs on the album [one is an instrumental: Leave That Thing Alone], nine are strong, while the remaining songs are merely “ok”. Once again, Rush was a fire-breathing beast, and I couldn’t be happier as a fan.
The guy responsible for capturing Rush’s sound “in the raw” was recording engineer Kevin Shirley. He produces Iron Maiden now. I think this album is the reason why.
Recommended songs: Animate, Stick It Out, Nobody's Hero, Between Sun & Moon, Alien Shore, The Speed of Love, Double Agent, Leave That Thing Alone [Instrumental], Cold Fire
7. Snakes & Arrows (2007)
In 2004, Rush celebrated their 30th anniversary as a band. They didn’t have a new album to promote, so they quickly recorded an extended play record of covers called Feedback. Feedback is the sound of three sixty-something guys revisiting some songs that inspired them when they were young. Judging by the results, they had a blast recording it. Given all of the music technology the band has embraced over the years, who knew that they could step into a time machine and become a three-piece garage band? Lasting barely 27 minutes, the band dips into the catalogs of Buffalo Springfield, The Who, The Yardbirds, Cream, and the biggest surprise of them all, Arthur Lee’s Love. What does Feedback have to do with their next album, Snakes & Arrows? Not much, but one hears Lerxst using more acoustic guitars than he had in a long time. In that regard, Feedback foreshadows Snakes & Arrows. Feedback wasn’t all about having a bash.
After the sonic disaster that was the original release of Vapor Trails, Rush hired a new producer. Nick Raskulinecz made a name for himself after working on best-selling albums by Foo Fighters and Velvet Revolver. Raskulinecz brought the perspective as a fan of the band, and encouraged the band to go back to their strengths instead of trying something new [again]. Alex Lifeson met David Gilmour when the latter came through Toronto on a tour stop [the album was On an Island]. The result of the meeting was that Lerxst would begin to write more songs on acoustic guitar. Such was the impact of the meeting between the two guitarists that acoustic guitars permeate [in a good way] the final arrangements of the songs on Snakes & Arrows. For that, David Gilmour received a “thank you” credit in the album’s liner notes. Where Vapor Trails had sucked all the dynamics out of Rush’s music, this album breathes. The songs have depth. Lerxst shines throughout Snakes & Arrows as if to make up for time lost during the synth-heavy 1980s. The band said they had a great time making this record, and the music contained therein bears out that sentiment – it shows.
Spindrift finds Lerxst finding the right balance between heaviness and melody. The arrangement is majestic and it soars. The playout of the final minute is breathtaking. It’s a definite “wow” moment. On The Way the Wind Blows [my favorite from Snakes & Arrows], Lerxst discovers his inner Gilmour. Instead of the massive chord riffage we’ve come to expect from him, we get the powerful, blues-influenced single-line string bending one usually associates with Gilmour. If you’re going to emulate another guitarist, why not David Gilmour? Snakes & Arrows includes three instrumentals. I see nothing wrong with three guys showing off their musical chops, especially when it’s both melodic and intense. If Neil Peart has nothing to say lyrically, Rush gets to flex the musical muscles which I thought were dead and buried long ago. By far my favorite of the three instrumentals is Lerxst’s solo acoustic piece, Hope. At just 2:02, it doesn’t overstay its welcome. It’s simply gorgeous. I wish I could play like that.
Recommended songs: Far Cry, The Larger Bowl (A Pantoum), Spindrift, The Main Monkey Business (instrumental), The Way the Wind Blows, Hope (instrumental), Malignant Narcissism (instrumental)
6. Clockwork Angels (2012)
Leave it to Rush to make their last album a “concept album”. For the hard-core Rush fans, even the cover is something of an inside joke. One notices the clock on the cover displays twelve minutes after nine [if it’s evening, it’s “2112” in military time]. According to their own website, Clockwork Angels is:
“Lyrically, Clockwork Angels chronicles a young man’s quest across a lavish and colorful world of steampunk and alchemy as he attempts to follow his dreams. The story features lost cities, pirates, anarchists, exotic carnival, and a rigid Watchmaker who imposes precision on every aspect of daily life.”
That covers the lyrical theme. Given the dual tragedies Neil Peart suffered a decade before this album was made, I can’t help but think that the kid’s journey through a world of carnivals, watchmakers, and such might mirror the cross-country journey Peart himself took by motorcycle. What about the music? Rush brought back Nick Raskulinecz, who produced Snakes & Arrows. He worked the same magic on Clockwork Angels that he did on Snakes & Arrows. This album contains some of the most aggressive and progressive music Rush ever made. The instrumental virtuosity and the ability to change time signatures on a dime are still there. Guys in their sixties aren’t supposed to be this muscular, aren’t supposed to be this nimble. Clockwork Angels is the “yin” to Snakes & Arrows’ “yang” – it is far heavier and less melodic than Snakes & Arrows. But if you shuffle the songs between the two albums as you would a deck of playing cards, they fit together quite nicely. This is how I listen to both of them.
There are a lot of adjectives I can use to describe the music. Words like progressive, aggressive, intense, complex, conceptual, heavy, overwhelming, visceral, poignant, hard-driving, skull-crushing, mystical, emotional and atmospheric – take your pick, they all apply. All three of Rush’s virtuoso musicians can still play with the kind of precision and athleticism that originally put the band on the map. Despite recording and touring for over forty years, Geddy Lee’s voice has aged well. It no longer shrieks. The keyboards are kept to a minimum. Clockwork Angels is a guitar record. There’s a bonus for Rush fans – strings! I can remember strings appearing on one Rush song – Nobody’s Hero [from Counterparts].
The opener, Caravan, serves notice from the get go that it’s “game on”. Both Caravan and Seven Cities of Gold bear all of the hallmarks of great Rush songs; from Lifeson and Lee’s riffing in unison, to Peart’s driven and unflinchingly physical drumming, the tracks exemplify the best parts of the entire album. Headlong Flight is simply a beast. The Anarchist is not far behind. “I wish that I could live it all again” indeed. The Wreckers is probably the most melodic of the album’s twelve tracks, but it has a caution:
All I know is that sometimes you have to be wary
Of a miracle too good to be true
All I know is that sometimes the truth is contrary
Everything in life you thought you knew
All I know is that sometimes you have to be wary
'Cause sometimes the target is you
The album closes with The Garden, a symphonic ballad that soars from hushed acoustic balladry to lush, graceful piano-led majesty. After all the heavy music that preceded The Garden, perhaps the band did go gently into the good night. Clockwork Angels shows that Rush can age with grace and simultaneously remain relevant. This album is a significant achievement that I don’t think they can top – and why would they, or better yet, why should they? Where do you go from here, except to say “goodbye”? This band has experienced the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. They have nothing left to prove, even to themselves. Clockwork Angels is the perfect album to call it a career. To use a sports analogy, Rush left all of their efforts “on the field.” It was almost as if they knew this was going to be the last go around.
Recommended songs: all of them. Clockwork Angels is that good.
5. Permanent Waves (1980)
Shorter songs than the side-long epics, and they’re all good. Though not as intense as the three albums that came before it, the virtuosity is still there, and the arrangements are tighter. While synthesizers had been a part of Rush’s sound [think Xanadu], here they come forward on songs like Jacob’s Ladder and Entre Nous. There isn’t a note wasted on Permanent Waves. The icing on the cake was Geddy Lee toning down the vocals. All of these elements contributed to Rush becoming more “radio-friendly”. The only “epic” is Natural Science. I remember Geddy Lee telling Rolling Stone about making Permanent Waves that it was “time to come out of the fog and put down something concrete”. Mission accomplished!
Recommended songs – all of them. Tony’s favorite – Different Strings.
4-2. 2112 (1976) / A Farewell To Kings (1977) / Hemispheres (1978)
For me, this is the “holy trinity” of Rush albums. I first heard Rush while on a trip to Texas in 1977. A friend from the old neighborhood in Ohio had A Farewell to Kings. Other than thinking “who is the girl that’s singing”, I thought “I have to hear more of this”. 2112 and Hemispheres were the first Rush albums I bought. Before I owned The Who’s Tommy and Pink Floyd’s The Wall, these were the first albums I knew of that had any kind of “concept” to them, although they weren’t “concept albums” per se. They restricted themselves to a single album side of epic storytelling. This is “progressive metal”. The side-long title track of 2112 is Neil Peart in his Ayn Rand phase, writing about an individual who stands up to an oppressive government, only to have the government win when “the priests” assume control of the Solar Federation. Peart’s story works, and the band veer between melodic/quiet and ferocious/thunderous. The good news is there aren’t any throwaways among the shorter songs on the album’s flip side. It’s all good.
A Farewell to Kings finds Rush recording not one, but two songs that exceed ten minutes - Cygnus X-1 (Book One - The Voyage) and Xanadu. There’s only one throwaway song on A Farewell to Kings – Madrigal. It’s not a bad song, but it’s not essential either. At 2:33, it’s over almost as soon as it gets going. Cygnus X-1 (Book One - The Voyage) is the story of someone sucked into a black hole during a space journey. The progressive elements - frequent time signature changes and technical virtuosity – all here in all their glory. The same goes for Xanadu, only better. It begins with five minutes of music before Geddy Lee opens his mouth, when they transition to a narrative that evokes Coleridge’s Kubla Khan. A Farewell to Kings is the album with the ballad Closer to the Heart. After all the long songs, Rush’s record company must have been very pleased with a popular, sub-3-minute single.
Hemispheres continues the Cygnus X-1 story with Book II: Hemispheres. Having gone through the black hole in Book One, the explorer enters a place called Olympus. Neil Peart uses Greek mythology to describe the discovery of a new place of two conflicting ways of life. The two ways of life, logic and emotion, are each contained in a specific hemisphere of the brain [hence the album’s title]. The explorer finds the balance between the two where one can think with logic and emotion simultaneously. Book II: Hemispheres takes up all of the first side, with three songs comprising the flip side. Circumstances foreshadows the future direction of the band with shorter songs. The Trees is a story of conflict between maple trees [which want more sunlight], and the oak trees [which are too tall]. In the end, all the trees are equal when men cut down the forest. Only Rush… The final song is also their first instrumental – La Villa Strangiato. It’s a twelve-part piece, each part corresponding to a dream Alex Lifeson had. At this point, Rush’s music became very complicated and hard to play live, but if you listen to it on the live document Rush in Rio, the band makes it sound easy. Of course, they had 30 years to get it right…
Recommended songs: 2112 – all of them / A Farewell to Kings - A Farewell To Kings, Xanadu, Closer to the Heart, Cinderella Man, Cygnus X-1 (Book One - The Voyage) / Hemispheres – all of them
1. Moving Pictures (1981)
If there’s such a thing as a “perfect Rush album”, this one is it. Moving Pictures is the ‘big brother’ of Permanent Waves. Synthesizers begin to come to the fore - the single Tom Sawyer and all of the album’s second side. We get an unforgettable song about the price of fame [Limelight], fast cars in a world where they are banned [Red Barchetta], and an instrumental [YYZ]. Witch Hunt begins a three-album arc of songs about what scares people [it’s subtitled Fear, Part 3]. For me, the centerpiece is The Camera Eye. This song is a very good balance between the old [Lerxst’s guitars] and the new [Geddy’s synths].
Notes on Fear
Through the magic of Audacity, I stitched the first three parts of Fear together [The Enemy Within, The Weapon, Witch Hunt] into a fifteen-minute medley. I haven’t forgotten about Freeze [Fear, Part 4] from Vapor Trails – I ignored it. I just don’t like it. Of all the songs on Vapor Trails that I like, Freeze isn’t one of them. Since it was recorded so long after the first three parts, it doesn’t sound like it fits.
Neil Peart wrote in 1994:
“The idea for the trilogy was suggested by an older man telling that he didn't think life was ruled by love, or reason, or money, or the pursuit of happiness -- but by fear. This smart-but-cynical guy's position was that most people's actions are motivated by fear of being hungry, fear of being hurt, fear of being alone, fear of being robbed, etc., and that people don't make choices based on hope that something good will happen, but in fear that something bad will happen.
I reacted to this the way all of us tend to react to generalities: 'Well, I'm not like that!' But then I started thinking about it more, watching the way people around me behaved, and I soon realized that there was something to this viewpoint, So I sketched out the three 'theaters of fear,' as I saw them: how fear works inside us ("The Enemy Within"), how fear is used against us ("The Weapon"), and how fear feeds the mob mentality ("Witch Hunt").
As it happened, the last theme was easiest to deal with, so it was written first, and consequently appeared first on record, and the other two followed in reverse order for the same reason.”
Rush indeed has called it a career. Neil Peart is 67, while the other two are 66. For the past several years, Peart has been feeling the years of intense drumming catching up to him. He has tendonitis in his shoulders [also in his other arm joints as well, I believe], and three-hour shows take their toll on him. He has since retired not only from touring but from drumming as well. His “fear” was that he could no longer play up to his own standards, and that he could not live up to fan expectations. He has remarried and has a young daughter. He now lives in California, while the other two remain in Toronto. Lerxst has arthritis in his hands which makes it harder for him to play. Geddy Lee is the relatively healthy one in the group. Lerxst has been quoted as saying “41 years is enough”. I can’t argue with that.
Instead of announcing a “farewell tour” and capitalizing on any hype that would surround such an endeavor, they did have a 40th anniversary tour. Their sets were organized such that they would play their most recent songs first, and then work chronologically backwards until the first album. When the tour was over, they just quietly walked away. There was no big announcement that they broke up. They’re still friends. Geddy and Lerxst often have dinner together. Geddy told Eddie Trunk that Lerxst likes to sample Geddy’s wine collection [apparently, he has a massive wine cellar]. Peart rarely grants interviews, and the other two have said “Rush is pretty much done”.
