Limbo: Background

“This free-form instrumental was born from out-takes that were in ‘limbo.’ ‘Whatever happened to my Transylvania twist?’ is sampled from Bobby ‘Boris’ Pickett and the Crypt Keepers’ ‘Monster Mash.’ These references might have been inspired by the Frankenstein-like arrangement.”—Robert Telleria, Merely Players

“This song is not about a dance or a fat guy.” (T4e Tour intro)—Geddy in Merely Players

“Absolutely nothing to do with Rush Limbaugh. We wouldn’t write a song that had anything to do with him. We just thought it was fun, the play on words of ‘Rush Limbo.’ We had a lot of fun doing that as we always do with instrumentals. It was a last-minute thing, as most of our instrumentals are. Neil was already working on his drum parts for all of the other songs when we dumped it in his lap and said, ‘Here’s another one for you to learn!'” (T4E Premiere)—Alex in Merely Players

“I’d been stuck on ‘Monster Mash’ and we were trying to use the Internet to get the words because I couldn’t remember them. One of the guys on the production team is an Internet preacher. So I said, ‘Here’s your chance: go get these lyrics for me.’ Well, he went onto the Internet and found the lyrics, but they were wrong! In all the jokes of that, our co-producer, Peter Collins, went out and bought a CD that had a compilation of some funny songs like that. We got to listening to it, thinking about how funny it was and decided to put some samples of it in there. That’s Igor going ‘Goo mash goo.’ We had to get special permission and pay money and everything. You think it’s so strange, when you just want to make a joke, and people want you to get permission and pay money.” (Jam! Showbiz, 1996)—Neil in Songfacts

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