‘Rush 50’ Isn’t a Greatest Hits Collection. It’s an Epic Saga

Forty-seven tracks into Rush 50 — a new career-spanning anthology presenting 50 songs across nearly five hours — a cool sonic Easter egg arrives. Near the beginning of “Headlong Flight,” a track from Rush’s final studio album, 2012’s Clockwork Angels, Alex Lifeson plays a slashing solo-guitar break, which Geddy Lee and Neil Peart answer with quick unison bass-and-drum punches. The moment is a deliberate, near-exact replica of a passage from “Bastille Day,” originally released 37 years prior and included as track 10 on the comp. It’s both a fun throwback, and — heard here in a fresh context — an example of how Rush 50 frames the band’s sprawling, four-decade-plus arc as one rich saga.

This narrative quality is Rush 50’s chief strength. It’s not a greatest-hits package like 1990’s Chronicles, though it contains many of the band’s best-known songs. Nor is it a rarities collection, though it features a sprinkling of unreleased tracks. Instead it’s an impressionistic musical memoir that moves chronologically, drawing on every Rush studio album while also bringing in a wealth of satisfying live material, including the very last medley the trio performed at its final show in 2015. Available in various configurations, including four-CD and seven-LP versions, it’s the first Rush comp to emerge since the end of the band, and the death of Peart in 2020. Thoughtfully curated, sequenced and packaged, it’s a fitting career capstone that functions equally well as an introduction for the uninitiated or a companion piece for the superfan. 

For those in the latter category, one of the major draws here is the first-ever reissue of Rush’s debut single, a 45 released in 1973 on the band’s own Moon Records and including a cover of Buddy Holly’s “Not Fade Away” and “You Can’t Fight It,” co-written by Lee and original drummer John Rutsey. On their own, the tracks are nothing special, particularly when you consider that this also was the year of Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy, Genesis’ Selling England by the Pound and other triumphs by bands that pointed the way for Rush. (The band apparently agrees: “My God, we hated it,” Lifeson tells David Fricke of the single in one of two liner-notes essays, housed in a 100-plus-page coffee-table-style hardback included with the set, along with a wealth of photos and new song-specific art from longtime Rush cover artist Hugh Syme.) But the tracks offer valuable context for the stunning evolution to come in the next few years.

Rush 50 does right by Rutsey, especially via “Need Some Love” and “Before and After,” a pair of live tracks recorded at a 1974 Ontario high school gig — memorably excerpted in 2010 Rush doc Beyond the Lighted Stage — which stomp considerably harder than the studio versions on the band’s self-titled debut. Still, the comp’s opening stretch is really just a prelude to arguably the most momentous drummer swap in rock history: the arrival of Peart in August 1974. 

It’s fascinating to contrast a pair of previously unreleased tracks from a Cleveland gig that took place less than two weeks after Peart’s debut — R&B cover “Bad Boy” and the early original “Garden Road” — with a live-in-studio version of Fly by Night opener “Anthem,” recorded only four months later. The former find Peart putting forth his commanding take on Rush 1.0; the latter, already showcasing his trademark blend of fearsome force and mind-boggling precision, is where he lays the foundation for the band’s mature sound. 

Rush 50 handsomely documents the band’s great flowering in the mid-to-late Seventies, both through studio staples (the opening sections of “2112,” “Closer to the Heart”) and ferocious live material. By the time of a 1976 “Something for Nothing” recorded on the band’s home turf at Toronto’s Massey Hall, all the elements that made them the era’s quintessential power trio are fully in place: Lee’s piercing wail, Lifeson’s snarling riffs and Peart’s maximal attack. A staggeringly tight 1979 version of epic instrumental suite “La Villa Strangiato,” from Dutch festival Pinkpop, reveals how their compositional prowess grew to meet their technical ability — and, through the crowd’s enthusiastic chants when it’s over, how they were able to challenge themselves while still thrilling audiences. (A so-called “Vault Edition” of “The Trees,” never before released outside of the Rock Band video game, features an alternate Lifeson guitar solo; like a similar “Working Man” earlier in the comp, out previously as a digital single, it’s a minor selling point.)

The first half of Rush 50 contains most of the band’s best-known songs, leaving room for a generous survey of the underrated chapters that followed the stateside commercial peak of 1981’s Moving Pictures. Selections from the trio’s synth-heavy mid-Eighties years sound sturdier than ever within the grand sweep of Rush 50, defying the tired rock-purist take that the trio strayed too far during this period. “The Big Money,” from 1985’s Power Windows, features some of Lifeson’s most inventive guitar work — including a solo marked by shimmering textural genius — while “Time Stand Still,” from 1987’s Hold Your Fire, finds Peart brilliantly adapting his superhuman dexterity to fit the context of sleek contemporary pop-rock. 

Likewise, the portions devoted to the Nineties and 2000s make a strong case for overlooked albums like 1993’s Counterparts (the grunge-era aggression of “Stick It Out” really shines here) and 2007’s Snakes & Arrows (represented by the dynamic, exotic instrumental “The Main Monkey Business” and a live version of the poignant “Workin’ Them Angels”). And it’s a treat to hear the band enthusiastically revisiting earlier portions of their catalog onstage, as on a brief, fiery dip into the instrumental prog workout from 1977’s “Cygnus X-1,” recorded live in Rio in 2002, and a haunting 2004 rendition of “Between the Wheels,” a deep cut from 1984’s Grace Under Pressure. (The latter song is one of several on Rush 50 whose Peart-penned lyrics now seem eerily prescient: Moving Pictures deep cut “Witch Hunt,” for example, heard in a gripping live version, now almost inescapably evokes Trump-era xenophobia with lines like, “They say there are strangers to threaten us / Our immigrants and infidels.”)

Along with the opening “Not Fade Away” single, the most historically notable track here is the final one — a previously unreleased document of the last 10-ish minutes that Lee, Lifeson and Peart ever spent onstage. Concluding their R40 tour, which featured a reverse-chronological-order set list, they flashed back to the early days, playing a medley of debut-album tracks “What You’re Doing” and “Working Man,” with a snippet of “Garden Road” to end. The renditions are strong, but hitting even harder than the music is what happens after: Midway through thanking the crowd and the crew, Lee says, “Whoa, what a surprise.” As fans well know, he was reacting to the unexpected appearance of Peart at his side — previously, the drummer had always respected what he called the “back-line meridian,” never joining his bandmates up front at the conclusion of a show. In preserving this emotional moment, Rush 50 commemorates a brotherhood as well as a discography, and concludes a suitably epic tour of one of rock’s most fulfilling and rewarding journeys.