Lee and Lifeson co-wrote all eight songs on the debut Rush album, apart from “In The Mood,” which Lee had written back in 1971. Lee, who was inspired by Robert Plant and Small Faces’ Steve Marriott, had been singing since his days as a soprano in a Toronto church choir. Other highlights included the pacy, two-minute “Need Some Love,” which showcased Lee’s energetic singing. Though Rush released only a couple of thousand copies of the original album, on their own Moon Records label, the single “Working Man” impressed Cleveland DJ Donna Halper and her constant airplay in Ohio helped bring Rush to the attention of both an American audience and the bosses at Mercury Records. It was influenced by Cream and has the feel of a bluesy jam, and continued to be a show-closing track at Rush concerts for many years afterward. The song “Working Man,” with its superb guitar solo, is perhaps the key song on the debut Rush album.

They also shared the bond of both coming from families who had emigrated to Canada (Lifeson’s parents were born in Serbia and Lee’s parents had survived Auschwitz). They were both 20 and had been friends since they were teenage students together at junior high school. Part of what rescued the situation was the close personal and musical bond between Lee and Lifeson. The mood of uncertainty is reflected in the album opener “Finding My Way.” “I had to sit down and write the lyrics basically for the next two days and sing them as soon as one was written,” Lee said. They had only enough money left for a few days of studio time and decided that desperate measures were needed. Rutsey (who left the band after the album’s completion, to be replaced by long-standing drummer and songwriter Neil Peart) was the band’s principal lyricist at the time but kept telling Lee and Lifeson that he was not satisfied with what he had written and eventually tore up the songs he had penned for the debut Rush album. Back and forth – that’s kind of how we recorded our first album.” As Lee recalled: “We would be doing four sets a night, and then we would be finished by 1am and load out of the bar and load into the recording studio and record all night, and then go home to crash for a few hours before loading back into the bar to do another show. Lifeson remembers the place as “a very small 16-track studio, which was very smoky.”

Deciding not to include “You Can’t Fight It” on the album, they began again at Toronto Sound Studios. They began recording at Eastern Sound in Toronto, in March of that year, but were unhappy with the early results. By 1973, the group were an established part of the Toronto music scene and, confident in their abilities, decided to make the debut Rush album a self-produced affair.

Rush band albums list