Tom Sawyer

Neil Peart died in 2020, and the song he left behind still does not apologize for being exactly what it is.

It starts with one second of synthesizer. You know the song before the drums come in, before Geddy Lee’s voice cuts through, before the guitar riff that every fourteen-year-old with a Les Paul has tried and failed to nail.

Peart wrote the lyrics with Pye Dubois, an external collaborator, which was rare for Rush. They were sketching a portrait of the modern individual. Someone who doesn’t bend. Someone who keeps his own counsel. Someone the world tries to categorize and fails.

No, his mind is not for rent to any god or government.

It was 1981. Reagan had just taken office. The Moral Majority was telling everyone how to live. Punk was spitting on prog rock, calling it bloated and irrelevant. And three guys from Canada released a song about refusing to be defined by anyone else’s rules.

Listen to the drum fill at 2:48. If you have ever sat in a car drumming on the steering wheel, you have tried it, and you have failed. Peart made it sound inevitable, like that is just how drums work, like anyone could do it. No one else could do it.

Geddy Lee’s bass isn’t playing root notes. It’s having its own conversation with the guitar and the synths, weaving through the arrangement like it has somewhere else to be. Alex Lifeson’s guitar crunch on the verse is controlled violence, held back just enough to explode when it needs to.

What you say about his company is what you say about society.

Rush fans are a specific breed. Obsessive. Technical. Often dismissed. The band never cared about being cool. They cared about being good. About pushing themselves further than made commercial sense. About three men making more sound than should be possible.

Neil is gone now. The synth still hits. The fill still lands. The song still does not bend.

A modern-day warrior. Mean, mean stride.

Today’s Tom Sawyer. Mean, mean pride.