Rush: The First Four Albums

 

Rush has been my favorite band for as long as I've been alive. My mom was dragged to a stop on the "Hemispheres" tour while she was pregnant with me, and I was told that I was kicking all night long. As a result of that show (somewhere in Nebraska), the band gained another life-long fan. To me there are no bad Rush albums, or songs for that matter. As a result, there is a wealth of material for me to listen to, and I listen to Rush a lot. So to start this work week, I decided that rather than picking one album, I would just play the first four studio albums.

The debut, simply titled "Rush", is the only album in the band's catalog (unless you count the 1973 single) to feature a drummer other than powerhouse Neil Peart. On the first album, and from the birth of the band, John Rutsey filled out the drum throne, and he did a fantastic job of it. His work on this album is a perfect fit for these songs. The music is very Led Zeppelin Jr., and the entire band play songs that range from very bluesy, to outright metal. The music is raw, and expertly written, and performed. "Here Again" is my favorite tune on this album, and features one of my all time favorite Lifeson guitar solos. This album closes with perhaps one of Rush's most well known songs, and the tune that got the ball rolling for the band, the epic metal song, "Working Man". Without that tune, maybe Rush wouldn't have got very far over the US/Canadian border. Who knows? For me, there's not a bad note on the disc. And to think that it only got better from here!

On Geddy's 21st birthday, the "new guy" joined the band. Neil Peart become the final piece of the puzzle for this legendary band. And while the band had a tour of the US to perform, they also needed to follow up their first album. Much of the writing for "Fly By Night" was done in a car, as they drove all around the United States. The sophomore album was a fantastic step in the right direction for the band. The songs were a little more epic, a little more melodic, and though the writing was a lot faster, the songs are all better (with an exception or two) than the debut. This is the album that held Rush's first multiple sectioned song, as "By-Tor & the Snow Dog" had four sections to it (and one of those sections, "Of the Battle", was broken in to several parts itself!). The album closes with "In the End", which is both melodically beautiful, and a scorching rocker. 

Fueled by the moderate success they were gaining from their first album with Neil, Rush did something a bit daring, and recorded what I might consider one of the very first prog-metal albums of all time (though the previous record definitely dabbled in the prog). "Caress of Steel" is an album of only five songs, the fifth taking up the entire side B. And for some reason, which still completely confuses me, the album was not well received at the time. The style is very much heavy like "Fly By Night", but two of the songs were epic masterpieces, that I guess the typical buying public just couldn't fathom sitting through at the time. The disc starts of with the absolutely blistering track, "Bastille Day", which would remain in the bands setlist for a few years beyond the other tracks from the album. "The Necromancer", at a short twelve and a half minutes, and "The Fountain of Lamneth", clocking in at just under twenty minutes, are both favorites of mine. Sadly, the album did not do well, and it left the band questioning their future. This album still remains one of my very favorite Rush releases. 

The final studio album in the first chapter of Rush is the album that, while it didn't get the band mainstream success, it gained them enough of a following, that the label finally backed off, and let the band do their own thing. Though the label had insisted that the follow up to "Caress of Steel" be a more commercial sounding album, and no more of that side-long epic business, Rush decided to ignore their demands and turn in another side-long epic, and this time it would be on side A. The title track, "2112", is a seven part epic about a dystopian future where music has been eradicated by the so-called "Priests". The story is a fascinating one, and the music is as heavy as anything anyone was doing at the time. Though the band were worried how well the album would go over, as it turns out, there was no need to worry. The fans loved it then, and they still love it now. I've got into an argument or two over whether or not "2112" is a concept album. Let me say that it is not. While the entire side A is just one song, side B has five tracks that are not connected to each other, or the opposite side of the album. All six songs on the album are amazing, but this  is not a concept album. Phew. Glad I cleared that up.

After a live album ("All the World's A Stage"), Rush would change direction into something slightly less metal, and much more prog. This next chapter in the band's catalog would go down as their most popular, but this first chapter needed created first. and for my money, I love every moment of it.