![]() The impact of this album on me is such that, when holidaying in Wales one year, I had to go to see Rockfield Studios just to say I’d been where Farewell, and a good many other great albums, in fairness, were recorded. However I don’t like that they’ve messed with the quite wonderful original cover art and, from what I understand, the vinyl is unchanged from the Abbey Road remastered 2015 version in any case. Seen here as a 2015 Direct Metal Master reissue on Mercury, on 200gram vinyl, the sonics are quite incredible and proof, once again that, when properly handled, today’s reissues often top the original when taken as a whole.įarewell To Kings was subsequently issued again as a 40th anniversary package. Rush Rush was a Canadian rock band that primarily comprised Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, and Neil Peart. Each song is of such high quality, with Xanadu and Cygnus X-1 being really dramatic epics and most definitely high up in any Rush devotee’s top track list. I’m not a particular fan of what Rush became after Moving Pictures, and if pushed to name a favorite LP, I think I’d pick this one.Īlthough it’s not a concept album, it has that kind of gravitas. Very 1970s in its overall mood, motifs and fantasy themes, Farewell was very much of its time, yet to these ears it’s as fresh as that first listen. Multi, multi-layered and featuring the then fast maturing master musicianship of Messrs Lee, Lifeson and Peart. ![]() The follow up to the incredible 2112, and recorded in Wales at the legendary Rockfield Studios, AFTK was, for me, the moment when the band’s awesome potential was fully realised. The first viewing of that video was something I’ll never forget. Utterly blown away, I bought Farewell at the very first opportunity. The incredible 11 minute Xanadu was featured on an Old Grey Whistle Test show fairly soon after the album’s 1977 release. This is one of those albums that I couldn’t imagine being without. Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC.A Farewell To Kings. ![]() Who Are the Best Drum Soloists in Rock? See Legendary Performances by Neil Peart (RIP), John Bonham, Keith Moon, Terry Bozzio & Moreįree Audio: Ayn Rand’s 1938 Dystopian Novella Anthem Witness Rush Drummer Neil Peart’s (RIP) Finest Moments On Stage and Screen “The ominous ‘Subdivisions’ railed against the conformist suburbs that ‘have no charms to soothe the restless dreams of youth.’” Whether or not Rush fans themselves have had an early Ayn Rand phase, all of them identify with Peart’s lifelong desire to seize his own destiny and escape the mundane. Sometimes Rush spoke even more directly to their aging fans. “Like the best songwriting, Peart’s body of work was also malleable enough to grow with its listeners-his songs often mused about aging and the importance of dreaming.” His songs are full of huge themes, as well as the “thorny questions” of everyday life, writes Annie Zaleski at NPR. But it should not be mistaken for Peart’s sole obsession. Rush’s libertarian streak-both the early Objectivist and later “bleeding heart” varieties-can broadly be called their guiding political philosophy. And denials aside, the Randian influence lingered, especially in songs like “Freewill” from 1980’s Permanent Waves: The change came about, he says, after he saw how libertarian ideals get “twisted by the flaws of humanity.” Peart, and Rush, however never wavered from their anti-authoritarian championing of individual rights. Now I call myself a bleeding heart libertarian. On that 2112 album, again, I was in my early twenties. But it was important to me at the time in a transition of finding myself and having faith that what I believed was worthwhile…. Asked about it in Rolling Stone almost four decades after 2112’s release, he disavowed a lasting influence. But it has meant that a great deal of talk about Rush has forever linked Peart with this phase in his life. These references don’t seem to make Rush fans love their career-defining mid-seventies concept albums any less. The 20-minute opening title track tells the story of a futuristic, fictional city of Megadon, a place, writes Rob Bowman in the 40th anniversary edition liner notes, “where individualism and creativity are outlawed with the population controlled by a cabal of malevolent Priests who reside in the Temples of Syrinx.” Based on a short story by Peart, he himself credited its inspiration in the original liner notes to “the genius of Ayn Rand.” Rush’s breakout masterwork, 2112, released the following year, expanded dramatically on the theme, as you’ll see in the Polyphonic breakdown of its lyrics. Peart drew heavily on her work in the first three albums he recorded with the band, including 1975’s Fly by Night, which included the song “Anthem,” an ode to towering creative geniuses that cribs from Rand’s dystopian novel of the same name.
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