This Day in Music History (09/24): Rush/Caress of Steel

Caress Of Steel is the third studio album by Canadian rock band Rush, released on this day in 1975. The album shows more of Rush's adherence to hard progressive rock, as opposed to the blues based hard rock style of the band's first album.

Although Rush's previous album, Fly by Night, dabbled in longer conceptual pieces such as "By-Tor & the Snow Dog," such works were the central focus of Caress of Steel. Long pieces broken up into various sections and long solo passages are two prominent elements of the album. It includes the band's first two epic pieces, "The Necromancer", and "The Fountain of Lamneth", which were also blamed for the commercial failure of the album itself; the latter runs 20 minutes total and comprises the entire second side of the original vinyl release.

The album cover for Caress of Steel was intended to be printed in a silver colour to give it a "steel" appearance. A printing error resulted in giving the album cover a copper colour. The error was not corrected on subsequent printings of the album.