List of Rush instrumentals
Studio Recordings
2112
Main article: 2112 (song)
Overture
From the 2112 album, “Overture” opens up one of Rush’s concept suites. Geddy Lee’s voice is recorded as an instrument in the early parts of the song, as he sings no words. However, there is, despite the Overture’s overall instrumental nature, only one line sung at the end, as the piece transitions to “The Temples of Syrinx”: “And the meek shall inherit the earth.” Like some overtures, music from the 2112 overture is repeated or built upon in other places in the suite such as “The Temples of Syrinx” and “Oracle: The Dream”.
Grand Finale
This section of the suite includes some spoken (not sung) lines at the end, with the following phrase repeated three times: “Attention all planets of the Solar Federation: We have assumed control.”
La Villa Strangiato
Found on the Hemispheres album, this was Rush’s first entirely instrumental piece, clocking in at nearly ten minutes (9:37). The instrumental’s subtitle is “An Exercise in Self-Indulgence”. The multi-part song was inspired by a dream guitarist Alex Lifeson had, and the music in these sections correspond to the occurrences in his dream. The opening segment was played on a nylon-string classical guitar, while the live versions were played on an electric guitar. The next segment introduces the main theme of La Villa, the Strangiato theme. The song progresses to include an increasingly complex guitar solo backed by string synthesizer, followed closely by bass and drum fills. The Strangiato theme is then revisited before the song ends abruptly with phased bass and drums. The song is divided as follows:
I: “Buenos Nochas, Mein Froinds!” – (0:00)
II: “To sleep, perchance to dream…” – (0:27)
III: “Strangiato theme” – (2:00)
IV: “A Lerxst in Wonderland” – (3:16)
V: “Monsters!” – (5:49)
VI: “The Ghost of the Aragon” – (6:10)
VII: “Danforth and Pape” – (6:45)
VIII: “The Waltz of the Shreves” – (7:26)
IX: “Never turn your back on a Monster!” – (7:52)
X: “Monsters! (Reprise)” – (8:03)
XI: “Strangiato theme (Reprise)” – (8:17)
XII: “A Farewell to Things” – (9:20)
Live versions of “La Villa Strangiato” have often featured certain alterations. For instance, on Exit…Stage Left, Lee plays part of “Monsters! (Reprise)” as a bass solo. During more recent tours, as documented on Rush in Rio, a drum/bass vamp is inserted before “Strangiato Theme (Reprise),” over which Lifeson makes a stream-of-consciousness rant. The classical guitar introduction is either played on electric guitar or, more commonly, cut out altogether.
According to Lee, “We spent more time recording ‘Strangiato’ than the entire Fly By Night album. It’s recorded in one take but it took 40 takes to get it right! It was our first piece without any vocals at all. So each section had to stand up with a theme and musical structure of its own.”
“La Villa Strangiato” translates roughly to “Strange Village” or “Weird City”.
YYZ
Main article: YYZ (song)
From the Moving Pictures album. “YYZ” (natively pronounced why-why-zed) is the airport code for the Toronto International Airport, and the instrumental opens with a rhythm in 5/4 that is Morse code for “YYZ” (-.– -.– –..). The piece evolved into a drum/bass solo during the 1980s. “YYZ” was the first of five Rush songs (over three decades) to be nominated for a Grammy in the category of Best Rock Instrumental Performance.
Where’s My Thing?
From the Roll the Bones album. “Gangster of Boats” comes from the persistent threat from Lee and Lifeson to title an album Gangster of Boats and never became an actual “concept” the same way that Rush’s “Fear” trilogy had. “Where’s My Thing?” was their second song nominated for a Grammy, in 1991, losing to Eric Johnson’s “Cliffs of Dover”. The song is much more pop-like than the rest of Rush’s work, featuring an upbeat tempo and a brass-like synthesizer line.
Leave That Thing Alone
From the Counterparts album. During the Counterparts, Test for Echo, and Vapor Trails tours, and featured on the Different Stages and Rush in Rio live albums, “Leave That Thing Alone” preceded Peart’s drum solo and was played with an extended ending to showcase Lee’s bass work. This track was the third song nominated for a Grammy in the category of Best Rock Instrumental Performance in 1994, losing to Pink Floyd’s “Marooned”.
Limbo
From the Test for Echo album. Like the “2112 Overture”, “Limbo” features vocals by Lee, however, his voice is being used as an instrument as he is not singing any words. The song also includes samples from Bobby “Boris” Pickett oldie “The Monster Mash”: ‘Whatever happened to my Transylvania twist’ and ‘Ahh, Mash Good!’.
“The Main Monkey Business”, “Hope” and “Malignant Narcissism”
Rush’s album Snakes & Arrows is the first Rush album to feature multiple instrumental tracks: “The Main Monkey Business”, “Hope”, and “Malignant Narcissism”. The first, “The Main Monkey Business”, is slightly over six minutes long. As with “Limbo” and “2112 Overture”, Lee’s voice is being used as an instrument as no words are being sung. The other two songs, “Hope” and “Malignant Narcissism”, are the two shortest songs ever recorded by Rush at just over two minutes long. This was a distinction previously held (excluding the short sections of the multi-parted songs like “2112” and “La Villa Strangiato”) by the short track “Need Some Love” on the album Rush. “Hope” is a solo guitar piece written by Lifeson. “Malignant Narcissism” features Lee on a fretless bass and Peart on a four-piece drum kit. “Malignant Narcissism” contains dialog of a woman’s voice, “Usually a case of malignant narcissism brought on during childhood.” The last word in the phrase is repeated, each time lower than the last. The phrase itself comes from the Movie Team America: World Police, made by the creators of South Park, Trey Parker and Matt Stone. “Malignant Narcissism” became the fifth instrumental to be nominated for a Grammy under the category of Best Rock Instrumental Performance, in 2008, losing to Bruce Springsteen’s “Once Upon A Time In The West.” Hope became the sixth instrumental to be nominated for a Grammy under the category of Best Rock Instrumental Performance in 2009, only under the Songs For Tibet: The Art of Peace album which Rush contributed to with a live version of the song.
Live Performances & Recordings
Broon’s Bane
Found on the Exit…Stage Left live album, “Broon’s Bane” is a short classical guitar arrangement performed by Lifeson as an extended intro to “The Trees”. The song is named after Terry Brown (Brown is also referred to as “T.C. Broonsie” during the intro to Jacob’s Ladder) who produced Exit…Stage Left and ten other Rush albums.[citation needed] It is not featured on any other live or studio recording by Rush. The song repeats and builds upon the same three-beat line, coming to a climax about one minute into the piece before segueing into “The Trees”.
Cygnus X-1 (Live Recordings)
On the live album Rush in Rio, an abridged version of Cygnus X-1 is performed as an instrumental. The piece contains the themes from 1:26 to 4:59 in the studio recording of the piece, shortened slightly by about twenty seconds. In other words, it includes the Prologue part without the spoken words. Also, the keyboard synthesizer heard in the studio recording is replaced with a more synthesized voice played by Lee with foot pedals. This is the same excerpt of the piece played as part of the R30 Overture.
R30 Overture
The opening song of Rush’s 2004 tour dates featured an instrumental combining sections of one song from each of the band’s first six albums.
The songs featured in the medley were:
“Finding My Way'” (Rush)
“Anthem” (Fly by Night)
“Bastille Day” (Caress of Steel)
“A Passage to Bangkok” (2112)
“Cygnus X-1 Prologue” (A Farewell to Kings)
“Hemispheres Prelude” (Hemispheres)
Neil Peart’s drum solos
A staple and highlight of Rush’s concerts is a drum solo by Neil Peart. These solos have been featured on every live album released by the band. On the early live albums (All the World’s a Stage and Exit…Stage Left), the drum solo was included as part of a song (“Working Man/Finding My Way” and “YYZ”, respectively). On all subsequent live albums, the drum solo has been included on a separate track. On A Show of Hands and Different Stages, the drum solos were titled “The Rhythm Method” (a pun on the form of birth control); on Rush in Rio, it was entitled “O Baterista”; on R30 Live In Frankfurt it was titled “Der Trommler”. On Rush’s most recent live album, Snakes & Arrows Live, it is titled “De Slagwerker”, and is coupled with “Malignant Narcissism” on the track-list. “O Baterista” was the fourth song nominated for a Grammy, in 2004, losing to Brian Wilson’s “Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow”.
The titles “O Baterista”, “Der Trommler” and “De Slagwerker” all translate to “The Drummer” in Portuguese , German and Dutch respectively.
All of Peart’s drum solos include a basic framework of routines connected by sections of improvisation, leaving each performance unique. Each successive tour sees the solo more advanced, with some routines dropped in favor of newer, more complex ones. Since the mid-late 1980s Peart has utilized MIDI trigger pads to trigger sounds sampled from various pieces of acoustic percussion that would otherwise consume far too much stage area, such as a marimba, harp, temple blocks, triangles, glockenspiel, orchestra bells, tubular bells, and vibra-slap as well as other, more esoteric percussion. Some purely electronic, description-defying sounds are also used. All are incorporated into each drum solo.
Every Peart solo since 1987-88 has included marimba excerpts from “Pieces of Eight,” a piece that first appeared as a flexi disc record in the May 1987 issue of Modern Drummer magazine. In addition, all solos since 1991 have contained marimba portions of another Peart composition entitled “Momo’s Dance Party,” and those from 1991 to 2004 featured a complex pattern from the song “Scars” (as heard on the studio album Presto). For the Vapor Trails and R30 tours, each solo concluded with a section of the Count Basie standard “One O’Clock Jump,” which Peart recorded while producing Burning For Buddy, a two-volume tribute album to legendary big band drummer and bandleader, Buddy Rich. For the 2007 and 2008 legs of the Snakes & Arrows Tour, Peart replaced the finale with an excerpt from “Cotton Tail,” which he recorded with the Buddy Rich Band in the mid-1990s. This was the only tour in which the length of his solo decreased when compared to the preceding tour.
References
Rush portal
^ a b Banasiewicz, Bill; Rush: Visions: The Official Biography, Chapter 7, Omnibus Press, 1988
^ Peart, Neil: The Game of Snakes and Arrows
^ GRAMMY.com
^ GRAMMY.com 2009 site
^ “Drummer”. Woxikon.com. http://www.woxikon.com/eng/drummer.php.
^ Drummer translations, Hudson Music, 2005, DVD
v d e
Rush
Geddy Lee Alex Lifeson Neil Peart
John Rutsey Jeff Jones
Studio albums
Rush Fly by Night Caress of Steel 2112 A Farewell to Kings Hemispheres Permanent Waves Moving Pictures Signals Grace Under Pressure Power Windows Hold Your Fire Presto Roll the Bones Counterparts Test for Echo Vapor Trails Feedback Snakes & Arrows
Live albums
All the World’s a Stage Exit…Stage Left Grace Under Pressure Tour A Show of Hands Different Stages Rush in Rio R30: 30th Anniversary World Tour Snakes & Arrows Live
Live videos
Exit…Stage Left Grace Under Pressure Tour A Show of Hands Rush in Rio R30: 30th Anniversary World Tour Rush Replay X 3 Snakes & Arrows Live
Album compilations
Rush Through Time Archives Chronicles Retrospective I Retrospective II The Spirit of Radio: Greatest Hits 1974-1987 Gold Retrospective 3 Working Men
Video compilations
Through the Camera Eye Chronicles
Tours
Roll the Bones Tour Counterparts Tour Test for Echo Tour Vapor Trails Tour R30: 30th Anniversary Tour Snakes & Arrows Tour
Related articles
Discography Awards History Instrumentals Equipment Victor My Favorite Headache A Work in Progress Anatomy of a Drum Solo Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road “Fear” series Cygnus X-1 duology Hugh Syme The Fifth Order of Angels
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