Deep Cut Friday: “By-Tor and the Snow Dog” by Rush

Each week, SPIN digs into the catalogs of great artists and highlights songs you might not know for our Deep Cut Friday series.

Bassist Geddy Lee and guitarist Alex Lifeson formed Rush in 1968 with drummer John Rutsey completing the original lineup. After releasing the band’s heavy, blues-based 1974 self-titled debut, though, Rutsey left the band. And the replacement that Lee and Lifeson drafted, Neil Peart, quickly became an essential part of the band’s sound. Peart helped Rush begin to channel the influences of progressive rock bands like Yes and write more complex, intricate songs on their second album, 1975’s Fly by Night, produced by Terry Woods.

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Peart’s lyrics for Rush would often take on intellectual concepts and futuristic sci-fi narratives, but the first really ambitious song he wrote with the band, “By-Tor and the Snow Dog,” was a little more playful. The title was an inside joke based on the band’s nicknames for two dogs owned by Ray Danniels, co-founder of SRO Management and the label that released Rush’s albums, Anthem Records. An eight-minute song divided into several distinct sections with subtitles like “At the Tobes of Hades” and “7/4 War Furor,” “By-Tor” ended the first side of Fly by Night with the grandeur of a fantasy novel and the bombast of a rock opera.

“Listen to what the rhythm section is doing, especially in the middle section, and consider that Neil had been in the band for only six months, and you will hear what a dramatically different band we’d become,” Lee wrote in his 2023 memoir My Effin’ Life. “With Terry encouraging us to imagine the stereo spectrum as a blank canvas on which we could project a story, ‘By-Tor’ became a prototype for all our future epics.”

In June, Rush will return to the stage for the first time since Peart’s 2020 death, and nobody knows yet what songs Lee and Lifeson will perform with new drummer Anika Nilles. But the last time Rush played “By-Tor and the Snow Dog” with Peart was on the band’s 30th anniversary tour in 2004 and 2005. The R30: 30th Anniversary World Tour Blu-Ray featured a medley of “By-Tor” and “La Villa Strangiato” from 1978’s Hemispheres from a 2004 concert in Frankfurt, Germany.

Three more essential Rush deep cuts:

“What You’re Doing”

“What You’re Doing” is, alongside the hit “Working Man,” one of the best examples of Rutsey-era Rush as Canada’s answer to Led Zeppelin.

“A Farewell to Kings”

Rush recorded their ’70s albums in Rockfield Studios, a pair of converted farmhouses in rural Wales. Parts of 1977’s A Farewell to Kings were even recorded outdoors, and you can hear birds tweeting in the background during Lifeson’s classical guitar intro for the album’s title track.

“YYZ”

Rush never won a Grammy, but they were the Diane Warren of the Best Rock Instrumental Performance category. “YYZ” from 1981’s Moving Pictures was the first of six Rush instrumentals to be nominated for that award.

To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.

Each week, SPIN digs into the catalogs of great artists and highlights songs you might not know for our Deep Cut Friday series. Bassist Geddy Lee and guitarist Alex Lifeson formed Rush in 1968 with drummer John Rutsey completing the original lineup. After releasing the band’s heavy, blues-based 1974 self-titled debut, though, Rutsey left the […]Al Shipley{authorlink}https://www.spinmagazine.com/feed/SPINMusic News, Album Reviews, Concert Photos, Videos and Morehttps://static.spinmagazine.com/files/2023/08/cropped-logo-spin-s-340×340.png