10 Weirdest Rock Songs By Legendary Artists
3. The Fountain of Lamneth - Rush
No one is going to go into a prog rock album and expect to hear a three minute single. This was the genre designed to push the boundaries of what rock and roll could do, and that meant having songs that stretched out for a long time. Even for prog heads though, Rush's The Fountain of Lamneth is where the band started to get too weird for their own good.
Written in a haze of pot smoke, Caress of Steel all builds to this one song that takes up the entire back half of the record, as Neil Peart dreams up a concept of a man's life long journey to find a fountain. That's not what makes the song weird though. Other bands have done more with less than that, but this track makes you really feel that journey, as the man's plan breaks down trying to find this fountain only to leave his pursuit behind and than finally find it in his old age.
And the kicker to everything? By the end of the song, the man is practically indifferent to what the fountain means to him, making him realize that he wasted most of his life chasing after something that's not all that special. Considering this song goes on for 20 minutes, this is the kind of climax that feels like a ripoff given all of the build up that happened for the first half of the song. After slogging through 20 minutes of exposition, those last few seconds sounds like Rush tried to troll you.