I thought, 'What if trees acted like people?' So I saw it as a cartoon really, and wrote it that way. I was working on an entirely different thing when I saw a cartoon picture of these trees carrying on like fools.
It's an interpretation lyricist Peart has denied about this song which appears on their 1978 album ‘Hemispheres’, telling 'Modern Drummer' in 1980: " It was just a flash.
Something of a controversial song certainly amongst some of the more hot-headed critics who have used the lyrics to indicated a right-wing bias in the group with the song being seen as an analogy of the struggle between the maples and the oaks in the forest as a metaphor for class struggle and the sarcastic tone of the ending where the "noble law" was passed and "the trees are all kept equal by hatchet, axe and saw". For them, writing a succinct three-minute song was rather radical.
#TOP TEN RUSH SONGS PLUS#
'Closer to the Heart' mixed up a tender love song with the call for "the men who hold high places" to "mould a new reality." While the band certainly had written short songs before they were mostly known for indulgent 10-minute plus songs. 'Xanadu' and 'Cygnus X-1' - the heavy duty rock posturing was (largely) out with the band taking a new turn. While the literary and fantasy motifs and lyrical concerns remained. All summed up in the album title of 'A Farewell to Kings' which saw the trio take on a softer edge. before the band launch in the second section 'The Temples of Syrinx' which is almost as good.Īfter the rather indulgent '2112' the band then relocated to Rockfield Studios in Wales, the south Wales location perhaps having a rather telling impact on the band. Then it all comes crashing down with the sound of a bomb going off (presumably a nuclear one) and the ominous phrase: "And the meek shall inherit the earth". The virtually wordless intro hurtles along at a cracking pace, complete with guitar solo naturally, and the listener cannot help but be propelled along with its sense of urgency and vitality. The song cycle itself is some fantasy hokum about a futuristic world that has outlawed music whereupon the intrepid hero discovers a guitar. The opening section to the 20-minute title track '2112', however, proves the exception to the rule. Pretty much most of the band's early output can really be discarded - pretentious and bombastic prog rock, along with shrill vocals singing about 'Necromancers', 'By-Tor and The Snow Dog' and the stuff of fantasy and legend. The trio of Alex Lifeson, Geddy Lee and Neil Peart may be something of the band snobbish critics love to hate, but they are still going strong and have amassed something in the region of 40 million album sales. By the early 1980s they were hardly recognisable from their earlier pomp rock era. A more mature band slowly started to develop with 'A Farewell to Kings' in 1977 and the incorporation of a softer touch and the use of synthesizers. Quickly they built up a loyal following attracted to their songs based on fantasy and adventure in a Dungeons and Dragons-style, often with a literary or philosophical bent that raised the band out of the ordinary prog rock. Whilst most famously known as a rock act the Canadian trio' Rush’s music has certainly evolved over the years.Īt their start in 1968 they were certainly cast in the blues-based heavy rock mould, an image cemented by their eponymous debut album in 1974.
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