Rush; Fly By Night; Caress Of Steel

Michael J. West <[email protected]> (08.02.2001)

God, how I hate Rush. How's that for short?

Rating: * * * ^1/2

How does one improve on the heavy metal punch created and firmly established in the early Seventies by Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and Deep Purple? Why, by combining the main virtues of the three together, of course! You take the riffage methodology from Led Zeppelin, the grumbly, wall-rattling guitar tones from Black Sabbath, and the adrenaline-drenched unstoppable raunchy energy from Deep Purple - and you get the debut Rush album.
Which is its main and only merit, of course, because the songs themselves suck. Nah. Kidding. In fact, I rather enjoy Rush's debut. Initially, their power trio (with drummer John Rutsey - Neil Peart wasn't in the band yet) was obviously structured a la Cream/Mountain pattern, although, like I already said, their chief inspiration came from early Seventies heavy metal. And let's say it from the very beginning: these guys took their job and their responsibilities seriously. Yes, I don't hear too many original riffs on the record, since at least half of them are stolen and the other half creatively recycled, but goshdarnit, man, these are riffs, and they're good riffs; and if you think that's not enough, let me just remind you that messy hard-rock bands like Aerosmith didn't really bother about good riffs (these came in their lap almost by accident, and very rarely), while other messy hard-rock bands like Uriah Heep didn't bother about riffs at all.
On Rush, though, the riffs qualify. Frankly speaking, there ain't a single bad song on the album - it's just that most of the songs tremendously lack in originality or freshness of approach. Where 'freshness' equals 'inventiveness', mind you, not 'energy': there's loads of energy on here, in Geddy Lee's frenetic bass pumping and blissful youthful screeching (of course, way too often he descends into typical Plant-style 'oh yeah oh yeah' screaming, but that's not the main thing), and in Alex Lifeson's crunchy tones and searing solos. Without a doubt, this was the best hard rock album of 1974 - of course, the guys didn't have much competition, seeing as Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath were on a halt that year and Deep Purple were up to their neck in Coverdale shit, but that's still saying something.
I don't even know which one of those songs is my favourite, they're all so darn similar! All depends on the mood. One moment, it's the 100-ton 'Heartbreaker' ripoff 'What You're Doing' (typical illustration of 'influences': Jimmy Page's riffage + Tony Iommi's guitar tone + Ian Gillan's frenzied screaming = a classic Rush hard rocker). The next moment, it's the lead-in number 'Finding My Way', with a chaotic, yet existent and funny riff... but that's the one where Geddy tends to imitate Mr Plant a bit too much, so maybe not. Maybe it's 'Take A Friend'? Its chorus gotta be the catchiest moment on here: 'take yourself a friend, keep 'em until the end...' Good use of echo effects. Oh, and did I mention that the lyrics are typical early Seventies hard rock type of lyrics? Good lyrics, too. Not cock rock by any means, just nice unpretentious lyrics about life and love and rock'n'roll and stuff like that from Lee and Lifeson. Neil Peart, you're fired. Oh wait, you haven't even been hired yet... What a waste.
Now there's also the barroom rocker 'In The Mood'... Rush doing barroom rock? I LOVE THAT! And then there's their working man anthem, aptly titled 'Working Man'. But why does the riff sound like they took together all the heavy rockin', slow groovin' tracks from Master Of Reality, superimposed the riffs over each other and glued them into one dinosaur riff to end all riffs? Well, my guess is because they did do that!
If anything is able to spoil the picture, it's the two power ballads, 'Here And Again' and 'Before And After' (or was that one song? 'Here And Again And Before And After'?). Not that they're particularly bad: I tip my hat to the energy and passion displayed therein, but both are dreadfully overlong. Yeah, I know it's Rush I'm talking about, but overlong is overlong, and if you call yourself Rush, it doesn't yet mean that I'm willing to forgive you anything.
The vocal melodies are catchy, anyway. Anyway. Whatever. I like defending obscure 'debut' albums which everybody despises. It's a good heavy metal album, what else do you want? There's no 'Xanadu' on here, but, on the other hand, I could easily recommend this record to anybody who likes good heavy metal but hates the guts of Neil Peart. It's well-created and fun, and really sums up the merits of early heavy metal in a good way. Who knows where these guys could have headed had John Rutsey not decided to evacuate his post?
On second thought, what with all the Rush unpredictability, they could have become another Cinderella, so better don't ask.

Any short comments?

John McFerrin <[email protected]> (08.02.2001)

Damn you George! Here I go to all the trouble to distinguish my site from yours, I force myself to sit through the entire the Rush catalogue, and less than a month after finishing that page you just haaaaave to start Rush reviews. Man, if I want any type of individuality, next thing I know I'll have to listen to Torotoise or Portishead!
As for the album, well, I'm actually not that surprised that you'd enjoy this album this much, given your tendency to like pre-pretentiousness albums of art-rockers. And it is ... decent. Enjoyable even. But the lack of originality, man, it just kills me.
But 'Working Man' rules, so that makes up for it (I like the description of the riff you give, btw).

Nick Karn <[email protected]> (08.02.2001)

Yeah, this is probably one of the most derivative Rush albums in that most of it is just standard 70's hard rock done in the style of earlier acts, especially Led Zeppelin. Objectively it's a 6 from me, but on the overall scale of this site I'd give it a 5 (9) (yes, I'd rate these guys as a 4 star band - you gotta problem with that??) Some great riffs and certainly energetic playing, though, especially on the opening and closing duo "Finding My Way" and "Working Man". And "In The Mood" is just so to the point and entertaining. Nothing here is amazing, but most of it is enjoyable if a couple songs are almost totally unmemorable or tossoff-ish ("Need Some Love", "What You're Doing", "Before And After"). A nice hard rock record somewhat different (and mostly inferior) to the releases that would come later. It's weird how practically everyone rates this album in the same area but afterwards almost nobody's 'top 5 albums' list is much alike.

Rating: * * *

Enter Neil Peart. Enter sci-fi lyrics and cheap pocketbook fantasies. Enter complexity and pretentiousness. Exit good melodies? No, of course not, but still, I'm one of the few who thinks of Fly By Night as a relative drop-off of the level of Rush. Let me explain: Fly By Night is, by all means, a transitional album, and frankly speaking, I don't hear a huge change in sound as of yet. At least half of these tracks could have easily fit on the band's debut, with two major differences: a) the guitars sound a bit more subdued, what with Lifeson dropping the Tony Iommi tone and sticking to a more generic guitar intonation a la Page on the Physical Graffiti level; and b) the song structures and melodies become relatively more complex, with the band slowly shedding off blues influences and drawing more on jazz-rock and occasionally even on avantgarde elements. Where the songs on Rush were fluent and smooth, these ones sound broken and jagged. Is this a good thing? Not necessarily.
Besides that, the few lengthy compositions on here are stupid. Not too many people would be willing to stand for 'By-Tor And The Snow Dog', which has the pretentiousness of Yes (the usual comparisons with 'Gates Of Delirium' are apparently justified) and the melody essence of Uriah Heep - too many simplistic power chords, not enough memorability or even atmosphere. I do get amused at the apocalyptic mid-section, though. What are these ridiculous 'grunts' throughout? Is it Geddy processing fart noises through his bass amplifier? 'In The End' also goes kinda... kinda nowhere, and there was no need to reproduce the descending riff off the Beatles' 'Carry That Weight' all the time. And as if that wasn't enough, the only ballad on the album, 'Rivendell', is pitifully cheap. It's the kind of thing that presents itself as beautiful at first, but then you realize that it's the kind of artificial beauty that arises when you play something simple and forgettable and put all kinds of 'beautiful ornaments' - soft, lush acoustic guitar tone, 'heartfelt' vocal intonations and yes, a subdued moody minimalistic electric ping ping in the background. If you want to hear great Tolkien balladeering, please revert to Marc Bolan on Unicorn.
So that's three suckjobs already, when there wasn't a single one on Rush. So much for a 'change of sound'. Fortunately, the rest of the songs are fully acceptable. The introductory three rockers, while not as powerful as the best ones on the preceding album, all rock your boat whenever it is and however much water it contains, with 'Anthem' unquestionably the best of these. Classy riffs and a funny screaming Geddy Lee. (Sometimes I wonder if he actually had a competition with Dennis DeYoung!). My favourite, though, is the title track - it's not a heavy rocker at all, rather an excellently written power pop number a la Badfinger, or, better still, a la Slade, optimistic and relatively unpretentious and oh so cool. The chorus is classy and sticky - and I find myself humming to myself 'fly by night, goodbye my dear, my ship isn't coming and I can't pretend' nearly all the time. Could Styx have written a song like that? Well, yes, Styx could, let's be honest. But Kansas couldn't! Oh no Kansas sure couldn't! These suckers couldn't have written 'Mary Had A Little Lamb'! These bastards! THE SCUM! Eh... sorry. I think I just heard 'Dust In The Wind' on the radio.
Anyway, not to get off topic: 'Fly By Night' is easily the best song written by Rush so far (I mean, they could have had better songs before that, but since most of those have to be credited to Page/Iommi, the statement still stands), and together with the nice acoustic shuffle 'Making Memories' shows that hard lumberin' rock is not the only genre these guys can understand. Which already promises artistic growth and creative happiness. Or does it? 'Rivendell' and 'By-Tor' are awaiting us from the opposite side, grinning fake Tolkien teeth and flashing phoney Ayn Rand medallions. Ah well whatever, by far the best thing about the record is the excellent album cover - gotta love that animal even if I don't quite understand how to call it. A polar bear-footed owl? Go figure. The important thing is - it's blue and snowy and oh so Canadian.
P.S. Why is it that every time Geddy sings 'Lying in the warm grass/Feel the sun upon your face' in 'Rivendell' I get the uncomfortable feeling that they should have made these two lines rhyme? I think I know the answer.

Any short comments?

Rating: * * * ^1/2

Artsiness enters in a BIG WAY here. Big and bad way - if ye wanted for a close link from Rush to Uriah Heep, look no further. Badass pocketbook fantasy fiction and childish pretentions diluted over the course of 20-minute suites? You wanted the best, we've got it!
But wait, this is actually not that bad. First of all, the album opens in a purely traditional, I'd even say' conservative' way, with three solid rockers (okay, two solid rockers and one solid pop-rocker) that actually manage to improve on the lackluster production of Fly By Night. 'Bastille Day' is always glorified as a pinnacle in Rush's 'plain rock' style, while 'I Think I'm Going Bald' is often ridiculized for being laughable, if not the worst song in the Rush canon, but to tell you the truth, I couldn't objectively formulate the musical difference between the two at gunpoint. Good riffs here and there, stupid Geddy screaming that's tremendous fun, and lyrics that are... well, decent. No need to tell you what they are, of course: the titles speak for themselves. I like both, but I'm not head over heels in love with them - but boy, Alex Lifeson is really one hell of a guitar player. As for 'Lakeside Park', am I the only one who sees it as being ripped-off from Led Zep's 'The Wanton Song'? It's a nice rip-off, though, and thoroughly inoffensive. Anyway, you won't find me bashing a decent riff-rocker unless it's really horribly produced or has a riff that I've already encountered in a million other places. Good stuff.
However, next comes trouble. Or does it? First, a twelve-minute multi-part suite, second, a twenty-minute multi-part suite. I suppose Rush's fanbase was simply unprepared for this onslaught of bombast, which is why the album dropped off the charts so quickly (unless it never made them at all) - simply put, they made a rather hasty move with both 'The Necromancer' and 'Fountain Of Lamneth' on the same record. But let's be honest. Seriously now, I like 'The Necromancer' a lot. To me, it seems like everything that Uriah Heep tried to do with 'The Magician's Birthday' but failed - a similar tell-tale epic with a 'dark' and a 'bright' climax (this one combines By-Tor and Tolkien motives with creepy pictures of somebody's enslavement by the Necromancer and subsequent defeat of the Necromancer by, well, by Prince By-Tor. Ring a bell?). Everything is an improvement: the sections are well thought out and atmospheric, Lifeson's guitar wizardry is more inventive and enthralling than the distorted cacophony of Mick Box, and good riffs abound. And the lyrics? Well, first of all, there ain't too many of them - Neil Peart's spoken 'introductions' to the song are by far the most offensive stuff, and Geddy's sung parts sound more like a second introduction of sorts than something to have to really concentrate upon. But I gotta say you this - 'Into The Darkness' is pleasant to the ear and moody, 'Under The Shadow' totally kicks ass (excellent 'double solo' from Lifeson, with a nice 'n' cool 'slower' part and a thunderous 'faster' part linked by another Zeppelinish riff), and 'Return Of The Prince', abstracting from the lyrics again, is actually just a pleasant countryish shuffle with 'heavenly' solos.
Count me happy, then! Dump the lyrics - taken together, they don't occupy more than one minute out of twelve - and concentrate on the cool melodic side. No, it's far from the complexities Rush would be reaching later, but perhaps so much for the better? Who knows.
What I do have my serious doubts about, though, is 'Fountain Of Lamneth', which occupies the entire second side of the album. If 'The Necromancer' had its weak spots but overall was a good composition, then I'd say that 'Lamneth' is the opposite: several parts are extremely pleasant, but overall, there's too much unnecessary wanking around. See here: the acoustic introduction is pretty and moody, 'Didacts And Narpets' has a hilarious drum solo, and that riff that appears in the first part and comes back from time to time is well-established, but... but... but otherwise, the main purpose of the song, unlike 'Necromancer', is to provide Geddy and Neil with a polygon for Geddy chanting Peart's silly blurbs about searching the source of eternal whatever (youth? knowledge? meaning of life? I'm not even going to bother with decyphering the lyrics). Basically, what I do with twenty-minute compositions is judge them on the basis of the number of different musical ideas therein. Well, 'Lamneth' doesn't have any more musical ideas than 'Necromancer', even if it's twice as long - the length is due to endless, repetitive sections that don't really develop, but are too un-hypnotic to be considered 'ambient'. Overall, it's a failure, and one major obstacle for the album to get four stars or higher.
That said, I'm still surprised that 'Necromancer' came out as good as it came out: Rush didn't have much of a 'training period' in their recording career, and their almost immediate immersion into the world of "hard prog" (so far, mainly represented by disastrous crooks Uriah Heep) certainly could have been a nightmare - and yet, it isn't. Of course, most Rush fans underrate this record in a big way, claiming that the real Rush didn't arrive until 2112, but remember, I'm not a Rush fan! Ha! Ha! I can say anything I like! I can say Roll The Bones is the best Rush album and I won't be banned from any Rush mailing list because I don't subscribe to 'em! Ha! Ha, I say!

Any short comments?

Nick Karn <[email protected]> (08.02.2001)

Actually, knowing hardcore Rush fans if you stated that Roll The Bones was their best, that wouldn't exactly be a very dissenting opinion (though it is to me, since I personally feel RTB is their 2nd worst), since almost every album they ever did has been called the best by at least a few people, except this one, the most underrated in entire Rush catalog, and maybe by any band. I was convinced you were gonna give this a 2 or 2-1/2, since it seems to be just one of those types of art rock albums you would bash. Finally, someone else besides me who actually stands up for "The Necromancer"! I love that song to death, and I don't get why more people don't. I don't know, maybe it's the fact that before hearing this album I set my expectations pretty low due to what I'd read (i.e. epics really unfocused compared to later), but in my opinion this album rules. There isn't a single weak song on here (I even dig "I Think I'm Going Bald"), though I'd like to think of "The Fountain Of Lamneth" as more like six separate songs than a coherent 20 minute epic, because it flows so poorly (even if the separate parts are wonderful). A 12/15 in all. The production may be weak, and the pretentiousness may be high, but I hardly listen to this period of the band for the lyrics, which are very much good for a laugh - I dig the absolute chops (the riffs especially) and epic effect more.