I’ve been a fan of Rush since early high school, which was late 70s. I can probably date it to September 1979 when I bought A Farewell to Kings (on cassette) from T&G Allen’s in Whitley Bay after friends and older siblings of friends were raving about the band and had been to see them on the Hemispheres tour. I fell in love with their music and taught myself guitar from that age so I could play along with their records and maybe even form a band myself decades later, hah.
Anyway, 40 years ago we heard the classic Permanent Waves album (my copy features the later redacted headline on the newspaper “Dewey defeats Truman” with its classic hit single, the band’s first if you don’t count Closer to the Heart’s (off AFTK) earlier nudging of the charts. PW took them away from some of the mystical and sci-fi related themes and talked about music, integrity, relationships, and how art and science must co-exist. Peart was well ahead of his time with those lyrics even if they were being sung in 7/8 time.
In celebration of that radio-friendly song (with its Irish jig* twiddly diddly opening guitar refrain) and in tribute to the late Neil Peart (drummer, percussionist and lyricist, with the band) who sadly died earlier this year after a long illness, the band has released at long last an official video for the single. It’s in animated form…
*Lifeson himself said in interview once that that’s what it was meant to be paying homage to in the intro to the song, a traditional Irish jig. The rest of the song nods to rock and roll and Simon & Garfunkel and many other references and is an homage to Donna Halper.
If you’re a fan, you will cry at the end.