Ask any UK gig-goer from the provinces what mattered in 1977, and so they’ll readily observe that the yr was as a lot about AC/DC, Skinny Lizzy, and Rush because it was about Intercourse Pistols, The Conflict, and The Damned. For Rush, at that time limit poised to launch their fifth album, A Farewell To Kings, the zeitgeist was one thing of an irrelevance: in later years, the band would pay lip service to fashions with skinny ties, pleated peg trousers, and a surfeit of synthesizers, however for the second they have been working in a self-sustaining vacuum that mirrored, and fed, the flowery fantasies of a stunning variety of (predominantly male) youngsters.
The Canadian trio traveled to Britain in June 1977 to undertake a brief UK tour and to report A Farewell To Kings in Monmouthshire’s Rockfield Studios. Within the Past The Lighted Stage documentary, bassist and vocalist Geddy Lee remarks, “To go over there was really gratifying, because all of our heroes were English rock musicians.” Accordingly, inasmuch as Rush’s debt to Led Zeppelin is palpable, it’s additionally clear that Lee, guitarist Alex Lifeson and drummer Neil Peart have been finessing a imaginative and prescient of their very own by the point A Farewell To Kings was underway: particularly, a mixture of daring, complicated riffing and fantastical lyrics (normally written by Peart), typically with historic or sci-fi themes.
In the end, Rush’s lyrics would regularly migrate from the fantastical to the non-public, however A Farewell To Kings resounds with lofty issues, whether or not it’s the Kubla Khan-inspired quest for immortality in “Xanadu” or the deep-space narrative of “Cygnus X-1 Book 1: The Voyage.” Taken in such a context, it’s simple to overlook that the “dragons [who] grow too mighty to slay with pen or sword” from “Madrigal” are figurative ones, or that the radio-rock staple “Closer To The Heart” – Rush’s first UK Prime 40 hit single – is actually, “All You Need Is Love” by another title.
Maybe most significantly, the album is a vivid reminder that Rush in full stream made an extremely cheering, uplifting, and interesting noise. No matter style, you possibly can’t assist however be borne aloft by the ringing, craving, suspended chords of the title observe, and the valiant “Xanadu,” nor certainly by Peart’s remorselessly clever, cathartic drumming: there may be actually no finer fetish for air drummers. They attraction to the a part of you that’s ceaselessly teenage; the a part of you that continues to be eager, excitable, and uncynical; the a part of you that relishes the inclusivity of standing shoulder to shoulder with thousands and thousands of different proud dweebs. If ever there was a folks’s band, Rush are these guys.
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