Rush - By-Tor and The Snow Dog

It is hard to imagine Rush without Neal Peart, yet he was not present on their debut album. It was not until “Fly by Night,” the second studio album, that Neal Peart joined with Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson to form Canada’s greatest rock band ever, but also, the greatest progressive rock band ever, Rush.

My favorite track from “Fly by Night” has to be the eight minute thirty-nine second battle epic “By-Tor and The Snow Dog.” “Fly by Night” is Neal Peart’s first Rush album, and “By-Tor and The Snow Dog” is Peart’s first appearance on a Rush song.

“By-Tor and The Snow Dog” is a song about the endless battle between good and evil.

“By-Tor, knight of darkness,
Centurion of evil, devil’s prince.”

Versus, the Snow Dog.

This is a very whimsical song.

Given By-Tor’s description I always incorrectly assumed that he was the necromancer in the follow up album “Caress of Steel,” but no, if you examine the lyrical content of that album By-Tor is the hero on that album. Maybe the Snow Dog redeemed him.

Despite the playful name of “Snow Dog” this track always still came across like an epic battle to me. But here is something I did not know until very recently, the names “By-Tor” and “Snow Dog” were created by Rush’s road manager Howard Ungerleider. Apparently, one night at a party there were two dogs, a German shepherd who was biting everyone, get it, biter = by-tor, and a nervous white dog, snow dog.

Very whimsical.

Neal Peart would become a major song writer for Rush, and unlike a lot of drummers, he really enjoyed writing lyrics. I do not know if Peart contributed to “By-Tor and the Snow Dog,” lyrically, but maybe it would be fitting if he did. His first song writing with Rush is an epic fantasy battle fought between two warriors named after two random dogs.

The lyrics are fun and all but the heart of “By-Tor and the Snow Dog” is the instrumental, which makes up the strong majority of the song’s run time.

“By-Tor and the Snow Dog
Square for battle, let the fray begin.”

What follows from this line is a nearly six-and-a-half-minute battle where lead and bass guitar fight for centre stage and the drums are a neutral constant that keeps everything together.

There are three movements in this instrumental section of “By-Tor and the Snow Dog.” The first is where Geddy Lee’s bass is most prominent, it growls with heavy electric distortion and functions as a really rough melody for most of this part, with Lifeson’s lead guitar stabbing out into the forefront frequently. This is the best part in my opinion, the two guitars beautifully battling each other for the lead.

Then in the second movement, we are treated to a drum solo by Peart, followed by a guitar solo by Lifeson. I guess you could argue that there are four movements, but these two solos blend together and lead into each other so seamlessly that I consider a single part.

Then we take a breath. Everything slows right now, and scant soft sounds echo out from both guitars and the drums march very slowly to a build up, where Lifeson’s guitar becomes the dominate force of the instrumentals finish.

Now what I am about to say is technically speculation on my part, but I am so confident I am going to write everything out as if it is fact; Alex Lifeson’s guitar represents the Snow Dog, and Geddy Lees’s bass represents By-Tor.

It makes perfect sense that Lifeson and Lee fight for the melody in the bulk of the song, this is the fray between the two opponents. The growling nature of the bass is not unlike a biting dog. Snow Dog is victorious, which is exactly why Lifeson’s guitar becomes the focal sound at the end of instrumental.

I have always assumed this is the case, but weirdly, I never hear anyone else talk about “By-Tor and the Snow Dog” with this perspective, which is very strange to me, because it seems obvious, but also, that is the best part of the song. Everything about Rush “By-Tor and the Snow Dog” is a great listen, the entire album “Fly by Night” is a great listen, but the creative ingenuity of having their guitars represent a mythical battle with just sound is just so fantastic.

On the back cover of “Fly by Night” Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee are identified at “Snow Dog” and “By-Tor” respectively. So yeah, confirmed as far as I am concerned.

Rush have many great long experimental songs, and I believe “By-Tor and the Snow Dog” is among the very best of them, and perhaps the most charming.

- King of Braves