{"id":804190,"date":"2020-02-14T08:00:51","date_gmt":"2020-02-14T15:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=950547"},"modified":"2020-02-14T08:00:51","modified_gmt":"2020-02-14T15:00:51","slug":"flashback-rush-tear-through-fly-by-night-in-1976","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/music-news\/flashback-rush-tear-through-fly-by-night-in-1976\/","title":{"rendered":"Flashback: Rush Tear Through \u2018Fly by Night\u2019 in 1976"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In 1976, Rush<\/a> practically lived on the road. Two years prior, the Canadian band had replaced their first drummer, John Rutsey, with Neil Peart<\/a>, and they were hitting their stride as a touring band. \u201cWe were doing over 200 shows a year, probably in excess of that,\u201d bassist-singer Geddy Lee<\/a> told Rolling Stone<\/em><\/a> of the era. \u201cWe didn\u2019t take much time off. We did back-to-back-to-back-to-back shows. At one point, I remember someone counted that we did 17 one-nighters in a row, 17 different cities.\u201d<\/p>\n

On December 10th of that year, the band played at the Capitol Theater in Passaic, New Jersey \u2014 a venue that hosted many of rock\u2019s biggest names: Fleetwood Mac<\/a>, the Grateful Dead<\/a>, Linda Ronstadt<\/a>, Lou Reed<\/a>, and others. They performed the entire first side of their new prog-rock masterpiece, 2112, <\/em>an album that essentially saved their careers<\/a>. Before that, sales had been low, and Mercury Records had considered dropping them. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t getting much airplay, obviously,\u201d Lee said of 2112.<\/em> \u201cBut you could tell there was a buzz amongst fans when we played it. We were feeling very optimistic.\u201d<\/p>\n

After concluding the 20-minute suite that kicks off the album, they charged into the title track to 1975\u2019s Fly By Night<\/em>, an album released 45 years ago this week. In the clip above, Alex Lifeson<\/a> plays the opening guitar riff as Lee claps his hands and joins in on bass. His voice is peak Lee, rising to a piercing shriek as he pours out emotional lines about escaping and improving life for the better: \u201cNo fright or hindsight\/Leaving behind that empty feeling inside.\u201d The video ends with a transition into \u201cIn the Mood\u201d from their self-titled debut.<\/p>\n

With an opening track<\/a> named after Ayn Rand\u2019s 1938 novella Anthem,<\/em> Fly by Night<\/em> was the first Rush album to feature lyrics from Peart. \u201cWe worked on songs as we traveled,\u201d Peart recalled in the 2010 documentary Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage.<\/em> \u201cMy little hand-written lyric sheets for the time, I think I wrote the cities that all of those songs were written, and they varied widely \u2014 all over the map. In a rental car, in a hotel room after a show, that\u2019s how pretty much Fly by Night<\/em> was written.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBy-Tor & the Snow Dog,\u201d a track with eight distinct sections, marked the first time Rush took on a lengthy, intricate piece with fantastical lyrics. Other songs on the record, like \u201cBest I Can,\u201d stuck to a more standard rock formula \u2014 pairing Alex Lifeson\u2019s incisive riffs with anthemic choruses.<\/p>\n

Rush performed \u201cFly by Night\u201d for the final time in 1978, but it\u2019s videos like this that exhibit how powerful the track was onstage. \u201cOh, wow. I remember that gig,\u201d Lee told RS <\/em>of the December 1976 show. \u201cCapitol Theater. I used to love the theater gigs. I remember they had a very good caterer at that particular venue. You remember gigs sometimes by what you ate before you went on.\u201d<\/p>\n

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In 1976, Rush practically lived on the road. Two years prior, the Canadian band had replaced their first drummer, John Rutsey, with Neil Peart, and they were hitting their stride as a touring band. \u201cWe were doing over 200 shows a year, probably in excess of that,\u201d bassist-singer Geddy Lee told Rolling Stone of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-804190","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-22 17:50:24","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=804190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804190\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=804190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=804190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=804190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}