Malignant Narcissism: Background

The instrumental, the third on Snakes & Arrows, came about as a fluke. “Toward the end of the sessions, Geddy was playing with a fretless bass between vocal takes, just riffing aimlessly, and Booujze [coproducer Nick Raskulinecz] was getting excited. He started recording some of those figures over the vocal mic, and fired us up with the idea of putting them together to create a short, quirky instrumental. This inspired the thirteenth track, for luck, ‘Malignant Narcissism’ (an apt title for an instrumental with bass and drum solos. For everyday use, that mouthful was soon abbreviated to ‘MalNar’ (cue robot voice, ‘We are from the planet Malnar”’). I had left a little four-piece drumset in the studio for Booujze to play around on, and I ended up recording ‘Malignant Narcissism’ on that. Just for fun.”—Neil in the Game of Snakes & Arrows essay

The fretless bass was a Jaco Pastorius signature on loan to him from Fender.

The piece was one of the last written for the album and was nominated for a 2008 Grammy for rock instrumental. The inspiration for the title came from a dialogue in Team America: World Police. In that film, the psychological termmalignant narcissism is used in reference to Islamic terrorists. The only voice heard in the piece is from an audio sample taken from the film, appearing at 1:08 in the song, featuring a female voice saying, “Usually a case of malignant narcissism is brought on during childhood.”—Wikipedia

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