Neil Peart Says There Are No Unreleased Rush Songs
The release of Bob Dylan's 'Basement Tapes' box set earlier this week was enough to get us thinking about which of our favorite bands could get similar treatment. But now we learn that we will never see one from Rush, because according to drummer Neil Peart, they have nothing in their vaults.
In the video above, a teaser for his interview with George Stroumboulopoulos of CBC Radio 2 that will air Sunday (Nov. 9), Peart gives an example of what he calls "the Rush way of doing things. We've never given up on a song. We do not have a single unreleased song in the world."
Explaining further after Stroumboulopoulos expresses surprise, Peart says that "if we went far enough and if we believed in it, we kept working on it. A lot of stuff got thrown away before it got that far or syphoned into other songs. I call my lyrical file the 'scrap pot' and I'll go [through it] when I'm looking for bits and pieces and musically, [hopefully] we're the same. If things [are] not happening, we'll throw it away."
He describes 'Wish Them Well' from 2012's 'Clockwork Angels' as a track that went through several revisions. "[T]hree times we wrote that song and threw it away and it was the third version, finally, that pleased us all," he continues. "The will was only fed by the inspiration, 'Do we believe in this song?" But inevitably, when you get to the recording stage and the mixing stage, it might not be what you'd envisioned."
The second half of the video sheds light on the different approaches favored by Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee in the recording and mixing processes. 'The Strombo Show' airs on CBC Radio 2 Sunday nights at 8PM Eastern, and will be available online Monday.
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