The Rush Fish-Eye Lens: The Virtue of Selfishness
There's a time for feeling as good as we can
The time is now, and there's no stopping us
There's a time for living as high as we can
Behind us you will only see our dust
So we'll just keep smiling, move onward ev'ry day
Try to keep our thoughts away from home
We're travelling all around, no time to settle down
Satisfy our wanderlust to roam…
from Making Memories (1974)
When Neil Peart penned these lyrics as a young man in his early 20s, he was roaming around the United States in a new music ensemble from Toronto. He was hastily hired into this group who had only two weeks to replace their original drummer before embarking on their first American tour. His drum audition for this group, RUSH, sufficiently impressed original members Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson musically, although they were concerned that his appearance did not entirely suit the “Rock” image. What longtime friends Lee and Lifeson would soon learn about “the new guy” as they all became close was that his predilection for reading and word craftsmanship would provide meaningful direction for their songwriting.
Only ten years prior to this union of Canadian artists, the Russian-American writer Ayn Rand published a set of essays called The Virtue of Selfishness codifying foundations for her philosophical system, Objectivism. Her validation of egoism and assertions exposing altruism as a destructive practice also reflected the modus operandi of that era’s youth, the postwar Boomer generation. In the year of Rand’s publication immediately following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the first wave of Boomers began entering higher education armed with numerous loud voices demanding the freedom to express their individuality. This cohort who were the recipients of Dr. Spock permissiveness collectively escaped their suburban conformism and established the era of self-fulfillment that journalist Tom Wolfe in 1976 coined as the “ME Decade.”
Prior to joining RUSH, Peart discovered Rand’s novels while pursuing a music career in England. Unable to establish networking momentum, he began filling the unproductive time avidly reading. While working at The Great Frog on Carnaby Street selling trinkets and jewelry, he immersed himself in the world of Rand’s Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged, and Anthem, and developed a perspective that would inform the lyrics set to music by Lee and Lifeson. He worked only a short distance away from Charing Cross Road where was located Better Books, the London bookstore that fostered the counterculture scene by future RUSH critic Barry Miles. Peart’s failed English springboard disillusioned him and he returned back to his native St. Catherines, Ontario to work for his father’s tractor parts business.
RUSH with Peart as drummer, lyricist, album cover supervisor, tour book director (among other tasks), forged a longevity formula remaining together through the turbulence of the ever-changing industry and their personal lives. With the benefit of hindsight, their initial collaboration can be understood as establishing a process oriented towards achieving the highest possible standards. At the time though in 1974, their first serious tour together supporting groups such as Uriah Heep and Manfred Mann’s Earth Band provided them with their first opportunity to collaborate on material for their first album together.
From the very first composed syllable, RUSH established their Randian cred. Just as Rand defected from the communism of Soviet Russia in 1926, Fly By Night voiced thematically a desire to escape “begging hands and bleeding hearts” and to “write songs for themselves.” A paean to the ME decade, their ideas epitomized the zeitgeist of self-absorption. The 1970s witnessed a culture preoccupied with health food, hot tubs, physical exercise, Kung Fu, therapy, Helter Skelter cults, and fervent Environmental activism akin to religiosity. Simultaneously, the Religious Right was ascendant and the Southern Strategy was underway. RUSH’s following was built atop this foundation, and remains faithfully committed to the ideals that their artistic collaboration expressed.
Recorded in ten days in Toronto, their first album together, Fly By Night, was released 45 years ago. The themes they explored expressing the desire to embark on the “Hero’s Journey” updated Aristotelian thought: that each man’s life has a purpose and that the function of one’s life is to attain that purpose. This purpose can be achieved via reason and the acquisition of virtue. Each human being should use his abilities to their fullest potential and should obtain happiness and enjoyment through the exercise of his realized capacities (individualism). For this, they were awarded Juno Award for Most Promising New Group. Nearly 40 years later, their rich body of work was validated by induction into the Rock Hall of Fame. Their anthems will continue to resonate for they have created together a profound body of work inviting deep exploration and giving us a better understanding of this next period of Awakening.
