The Main Monkey Business

"The Main Monkey Business" is an instrumental from Rush's 2007 album Snakes & Arrows. It clocks in at 6 minutes and 1 second, making it Rush's second longest instrumental. Their longest instrumental, La Villa Strangiato from Hemispheres, is 9 minutes and 34 seconds long. It is also the first instrumental Rush has done in 11 years; "Limbo" from 1996's Test For Echo was their last instrumental.

Neil Peart has stated that it took him 3 days to learn the song on drums.^[1]

In a recent interview on HDNET , Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee stated that the song found on the CD is a toned-down version of the original one. They referred to the original version as "crazy". The actual version on the CD is 1/3 of the original song.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Background

The title of the song comes from a phrase Geddy's mom used to describe someone up to no good:

...Long story short is, uh, this person was up to hijinx and my mother was telling me “Well I think there was some monkey business involved”, and I said, "What do you mean, monkey business? What kind of monkey business? And she said, “The MAIN monkey business”. So I love that phrase and every time I think of her saying “The MAIN monkey business” it makes me laugh.^[2]

—Geddy Lee, Legends of Classic Rock interview