And when I did, I couldn’t stop! For some ungodly reason, I skipped Natural Science for a while, but when I listened to it, man it was brilliant. I was a huge metal fan, and I still am, but I had to get used to the upbeat sort of nature of a lot of Rush songs. If Tom Sawyer and Closer to the Heart introduced me to Rush, then The Spirit of Radio got me to love Rush. I want to say, I absolutely love The Spirit of Radio.

It’s just Different Strings and Entre Nous that hold me back from putting this album higher. I absolutely love The Spirit of Radio, Freewill, Jacob’s Ladder, and Natural Science. Permanent Waves at 7 seems scandelous, and I still love the album, believe me. The Dream Theater logo remains an ‘M’ and John Petrucci’s signature guitar line is called Majesty. Dream Theater’s original name Majesty came from Mike Portnoy describing the ending as ‘ majestic’. But it has become a cult classic over the years, even Geddy and Alex still aren’t fans of it. In fact, it was Rush’s only commercial flop in their discography. Needless to say, the album was weird, and it didn’t do well commercially. With Bastille Day*, and Lakeside Park (we’ll just ignore I Think I’m Going Bald, it’s not great…), and side 2 features two prog epics: The Necromancer and The Fountain of Lamneth. Side 1 is a sort of standard and fun rock ‘n roll sort of thing. It’s a weird album, it definetely suffers from chronic pretentious syndrome at some times, but it’s still great. I don’t care what Geddy, Alex or Neil have said about it, I really enjoy this album. Now we’re getting into the amazing albums. Rush falls flat compared to their following endeavours, but it’s still a really solid rock and roll album, with a little bit of progg-y-ness in Working Man. Alex and I were becoming more and more influenced by prog bands, while John was listening to simple, direct rock and roll we were into Bill Bruford of King Crimson, while his favourite drummers was Simon Kirke of Free and Bad Company’ (p. ‘It’s long been rumoured that Rutsey left the band partly due to diabetes, but that’s not the whole story,’ Lee writes, ‘Yes, he must have wondered if he could hack a long tour on the road because he had to take insulin every day, but the bigger issue was musical difference. John Rutsey’s departure was partly due to his diabetes, but in Geddy Lee’s memoir My Effin’ Life, he writes about how the circumstances around Rutsey’s departure were much more multi-layered. John Rutsey clearly wasn’t a prog sorta guy, he stayed listening to Zeppelin and stuff like that, while Geddy and Alex were getting into Yes and Genesis. I’m glad Geddy stopped doing lyrics (I still really dig Working Man though). With the sort of Led Zeppelin-esque sound, and with such great lyrics as: The elephant in the room with this album: It’s the album without Neil Peart, and it shows. Yes, Working Man is in my top 10 Rush songs, but I don’t care much for the rest of this album.

Top rush songs of all time