10 Songs The Artists HATED Recording
2. La Villa Strangiato - Rush
As Rush made their way into the late '70s, they had hit their stride in terms of prog masterpieces. After earning their creative freedom on 2112, the band used the next few albums to get really weird, culminating in one of their most complicated releases on Hemispheres. There may be only 4 tracks on the album, but the final instrumental passage was too much for even the sharpest prog minds to bear.
Standing at a colossal 9 minutes, "La Villa Strangiato" is the peak of the band's performance ability, but translating that to the tape was much more complicated than just setting up and playing. Due to the different mood changes that go on throughout the song, the band almost had to chart out every one of their parts in order to keep track of where they were during the song.
With sessions running longer and the band losing sleep, everyone had to finally cave in and record the song in three parts, making "La Villa Strangiato" the one song that was so complicated that even Rush couldn't pull it off.
Once the project was done, the band ended up running away from the more complex material and into more pop-friendly territory on albums like Moving Pictures. Since the song is a challenge to its composers, "La Villa Strangiato" is the one rock song that you need to have your musical third eye open to actually play.