Rush songs that push the feasibility of a trio being able to pull it off in a live settting

[fraroc]

To me, a prime example of this is Grand Designs. A song thats full of both intricate keyboard parts and bass lines, often done simultaneously. When you have prominent keyboard parts along with a prominent bass guitar, Ged really couldn't "Red Sector A" it by just having no bass and all keys, hence why that song has so much Milli Vanilli'd keyboards when they did it in a live setting. A lot of songs from Presto and Roll The Bones are like that as well, where keyboards and bass guitar are given equal spotlight time in a song. 

As much as some Rush fans might view this new quartet lineup as a sacrilege, I think it's going to be pretty interesting if they pull out some Presto/RTB songs or synth era material where you have a seperate keyboard player that can replicate all those parts while Ged focuses solely on bass. 

[Union 5-3992]

Easy pickings but I'd go with a number of the Clockwork Angels songs since they needed an orchestra to accompany them to perform most of them live. 

[treeduck]

What about Afterimage? Geddy wasn't even playing bass at all when they did that live, he was literally just singing and playing keyboards.

[fraroc]

2 minutes ago, treeduck said:

What about Afterimage? Geddy wasn't even playing bass at all when they did that live, he was literally just singing and playing keyboards.

Thats different. There's no bass guitar at all on the studio track, just keyboards and synth bass. Songs like Grand Designs, High Water, and Red Tide feature both bass and keyboards being played simultaneously. 

[PurpleHayes]

So what about Baba O Riley by The Who? That intro was all on tape, since Pete said no keyboard player could actually play that riff live without his hands falling off. Should they be tossed out of the RRHOF because of it?

[yyz305]

1 hour ago, fraroc said:

Thats different. There's no bass guitar at all on the studio track, just keyboards and synth bass. Songs like Grand Designs, High Water, and Red Tide feature both bass and keyboards being played simultaneously. 

High Water  - yes, bring it on!

[grep]

10 hours ago, PurpleHayes said:

So what about Baba O Riley by The Who? That intro was all on tape, since Pete said no keyboard player could actually play that riff live without his hands falling off. Should they be tossed out of the RRHOF because of it?

Which I gues is an old 4 piece Who kind of thing.  These days, it could be s a sequencer part live. One button or a trigger by the keyboard guy.   I think Rush has some minor parts like that too, Ged would push a button. 

[fraroc]

59 minutes ago, grep said:

Which I gues is an old 4 piece Who kind of thing.  These days, it could be s a sequencer part live. One button or a trigger by the keyboard guy.   I think Rush has some minor parts like that too, Ged would push a button. 

 

Ged started to mess about with sequencers for songs like Digital Man and The Weapon during the Signals tour, then with Red Sector A during the GUP tour. Power Windows is where I've always felt that Ged started to become too dependent on sequencers for certain songs where you'd have times where he's singing and just holding down a single key to trigger pre-recorded keyboard parts. 
 

 

Hell, even Ged himself agrees that once all the sequencers and pre-recorded bits started sneaking their way in, the keyboards were becoming too much of a distraction from the bass. 

[Timbale]

48 minutes ago, fraroc said:

 

Ged started to mess about with sequencers for songs like Digital Man and The Weapon during the Signals tour, then with Red Sector A during the GUP tour. Power Windows is where I've always felt that Ged started to become too dependent on sequencers for certain songs where you'd have times where he's singing and just holding down a single key to trigger pre-recorded keyboard parts. 
 

 

Hell, even Ged himself agrees that once all the sequencers and pre-recorded bits started sneaking their way in, the keyboards were becoming too much of a distraction from the bass. 

I guess you could say it started back on PeW with The Spirit Of Radio - the chorus is a sequencer that he triggered with his foot,  I think...and then there's the sequencer  on Vital Signs, which I think maybe was them playing to tape live?

 

They clearly made a decision after GUP that they would not allow their arrangement choices to be dictated by the binary "bass or keyboards" thing.  We also should not forget that they actually brought a keyboard player in during the PW sessions.  I think this has been downplayed over the years, but it's probably good to remember that a lot of the parts that were being sequenced were parts Geddy never played in the first place, and likely were beyond his skills as a keyboardist. 

 

I think that time is an interesting period in their career...they really challenged themselves to replicate those arrangements live.  One could argue that it was to the detriment of the live energy of the band - Geddy spending so much time locked behind the bank of keyboards, Alex married to his pedals.  It's interesting to imagine what it would have been like if Rush were not so obsessed with recreating the album arrangements - what would some of those songs from PW or Hold Your Fire be like if they were more stripped down live.  We'll never know.   I personally never had an issue with the triggering of keyboard parts back on those 80s tours - but when they started triggering background vocals (I think beginning on the Presto tour?) that somehow seemed less authentic.  It's really just semantics, but it seems like more of a cheat somehow.

[James Bond]

I'd say that by Signals, and certainly by Grace Under Pressure, Geddy was putting so many more layered parts on the keys that there was no way around it. To his credit, he even says in his book that the inability to do it live was a big part of the decision to leave the keyboards behind. I think Geddy just loved programming. He's clearly passionate about finding synth sounds - even freshening up the Mini Moog stuff every tour.

 

In later years, swap the keyboards for layers of vocal harmonies. Equally impossible for Geddy to actually do. I always thought they could have used Alex more vocally. Some of the Snakes and Clockwork stuff was downright distracting with the piped in vocals and fake rhythm guitar behind the solos.

 

One thing I'm actually looking forward to with Loren Gold is possibly getting some actual live vocal harmonies, as well as keyboard parts created in real time as opposed to playback.

[Flame]

3 hours ago, Timbale said:

I think that time is an interesting period in their career...they really challenged themselves to replicate those arrangements live.  One could argue that it was to the detriment of the live energy of the band - Geddy spending so much time locked behind the bank of keyboards, Alex married to his pedals.  It's interesting to imagine what it would have been like if Rush were not so obsessed with recreating the album arrangements - what would some of those songs from PW or Hold Your Fire be like if they were more stripped down live.  We'll never know. 

Back when “Unplugged” performances were becoming all the rage, I remember thinking, “Oh, wow, it would be so cool if Rush were to—”

 

…and then I remembered they were Rush. 
 

If anything, they’d have favored “An Even More Plugged In” treatment…

[yyz305]

39 minutes ago, Flame said:

Back when “Unplugged” performances were becoming all the rage, I remember thinking, “Oh, wow, it would be so cool if Rush were to—”

 

…and then I remembered they were Rush. 
 

If anything, they’d have favored “An Even More Plugged In” treatment…

Possibility of a few unplugged/stripped down songs this tour. I can see it going either way - totally NOT, or a maybe...

[Flame]

That would be so special.
Alex is such a talented acoustic player; it’s a shame his acoustic work is so rarely showcased. 
And Geddy would benefit from the lower/slower vocal registers as well. 

[Bahamas]

I saw this and had to log in to say...

Why the constant nit picking of the triggers and live sounds? Rush has never made excuses for extra stage sounds, have they?

From way back, they always said the band was expected to perform live as much as possible to execute the studio music - and as challenging as that has been, I personally think they have made an excellent representation of the studio songs. It's their.."jam".

Read the stories, the tour books. At some point one guy is at the wrong part of the stage to press a peddle or hit a note, so they adapted to the unbelievable success over the years and kept rehearsing so the songs sounded as much true to the recordings as possible.

They have techs beside them to help keep the music going. It's a group of 7, 8 people. Not just a trio banging out songs every night, hundreds of nights a year for decades.

...rant off.

[TheGhostRider]

5 hours ago, Timbale said:

I guess you could say it started back on PeW with The Spirit Of Radio - the chorus is a sequencer that he triggered with his foot,  I think...and then there's the sequencer  on Vital Signs, which I think maybe was them playing to tape live?

 

They clearly made a decision after GUP that they would not allow their arrangement choices to be dictated by the binary "bass or keyboards" thing.  We also should not forget that they actually brought a keyboard player in during the PW sessions.  I think this has been downplayed over the years, but it's probably good to remember that a lot of the parts that were being sequenced were parts Geddy never played in the first place, and likely were beyond his skills as a keyboardist. 

 

I think that time is an interesting period in their career...they really challenged themselves to replicate those arrangements live.  One could argue that it was to the detriment of the live energy of the band - Geddy spending so much time locked behind the bank of keyboards, Alex married to his pedals.  It's interesting to imagine what it would have been like if Rush were not so obsessed with recreating the album arrangements - what would some of those songs from PW or Hold Your Fire be like if they were more stripped down live.  We'll never know.   I personally never had an issue with the triggering of keyboard parts back on those 80s tours - but when they started triggering background vocals (I think beginning on the Presto tour?) that somehow seemed less authentic.  It's really just semantics, but it seems like more of a cheat somehow.

This is an interesting analysis. I’ve always applauded Rush for going the extra mile and recreating their songs as closely as possible to the studio versions. I agree with Flame.  Personally Rush has never struck me as a “unplugged or stripped down” band. I think that is one of the reasons why their music has appealed so strongly to me. So many bands go that route and I just don’t think there’s very many Rush songs where that would work.  They pushed themselves to be the best possible musicians they could which meant perfecting all those things. But I do give them credit for finally realizing it was too much and stepping away from so many keyboards. Even Rush knew there was such a thing as too many keyboards. 

Edited March 24 by TheGhostRider

[Timbale]

18 minutes ago, TheGhostRider said:

This is an interesting analysis. I’ve always applauded Rush for going the extra mile and recreating their songs as closely as possible to the studio versions. I agree with Flame.  Personally Rush has never struck me as a “unplugged or stripped down” band. I think that is one of the reasons why their music has appealed so strongly to Me. So many bands go that route and I just don’t think there’s very many Rush songs where that would work.  They pushed themselves to be the best possible musicians they could which meant perfecting all those things. But I do give them credit for finally realizing it was too much and stepping away from so many keyboards. Even Rush knew there was such a thing as too many keyboards. 

I hear you, and that commitment is something that made Rush relatively unique. 
 

There was a video posted recently on Drumeo of Nic Collins (Phil’s son) learning 2112 on the spot and then playing it through. He’s a really talented prog drummer, having tackled all the early Genesis stuff on their final tour. Anyway…watching someone play that suite of songs without slavishly recreating every little detail, for me, really made it breathe and brought it to life in an exciting way. It wasn’t a performance measured by its fidelity to something recorded 50 years ago - it was just “in the spirit” of the original but very present. Anyway…it did make me wonder what some Rush could have been like if they didn’t constrain themselves in the way they did. 

[TheGhostRider]

11 hours ago, Timbale said:

I hear you, and that commitment is something that made Rush relatively unique. 
 

There was a video posted recently on Drumeo of Nic Collins (Phil’s son) learning 2112 on the spot and then playing it through. He’s a really talented prog drummer, having tackled all the early Genesis stuff on their final tour. Anyway…watching someone play that suite of songs without slavishly recreating every little detail, for me, really made it breathe and brought it to life in an exciting way. It wasn’t a performance measured by its fidelity to something recorded 50 years ago - it was just “in the spirit” of the original but very present. Anyway…it did make me wonder what some Rush could have been like if they didn’t constrain themselves in the way they did. 

That’s fair. If I had to guess I’m sure it was a personality trait among the three of them. Neil was known to be a perfectionist and he wouldn’t do anything less than 100 percent. I’m sure it was something similar for Geddy and Alex. 

Edited March 25 by TheGhostRider

[Ged Lent's sis]

On 3/23/2026 at 5:44 PM, Timbale said:

I guess you could say it started back on PeW with The Spirit Of Radio - the chorus is a sequencer that he triggered with his foot,  I think...and then there's the sequencer  on Vital Signs, which I think maybe was them playing to tape live?

 

They clearly made a decision after GUP that they would not allow their arrangement choices to be dictated by the binary "bass or keyboards" thing.  We also should not forget that they actually brought a keyboard player in during the PW sessions.  I think this has been downplayed over the years, but it's probably good to remember that a lot of the parts that were being sequenced were parts Geddy never played in the first place, and likely were beyond his skills as a keyboardist. 

 

I think that time is an interesting period in their career...they really challenged themselves to replicate those arrangements live.  One could argue that it was to the detriment of the live energy of the band - Geddy spending so much time locked behind the bank of keyboards, Alex married to his pedals.  It's interesting to imagine what it would have been like if Rush were not so obsessed with recreating the album arrangements - what would some of those songs from PW or Hold Your Fire be like if they were more stripped down live.  We'll never know.   I personally never had an issue with the triggering of keyboard parts back on those 80s tours - but when they started triggering background vocals (I think beginning on the Presto tour?) that somehow seemed less authentic.  It's really just semantics, but it seems like more of a cheat somehow.