The Rush song that pays homage to Oscar Wilde
Following the whirlwind that was the Counterparts tour of 1994, Rush took a much-needed break. These periods of hibernation were nothing new, but with the birth of Geddy Lee’s daughter, the band’s usual post-tour holiday turned into an 18-month slump in activity, with the bassist wanting to be present for the first year of his new child’s life.
While Lee watched his daughter grow, the rest of the band occupied themselves in the usual fashion. Alex Lifeson took the opportunity to record his first solo album, while Neil Peart released a Buddy Rich tribute compilation. Then, in 1995, the band reunited to start work on their 16th studio effort, Test For Echo.
Things didn’t get off to a good start. In October 1995, the band travelled to Chalet Studios in Ontario to write and rehearse material for the new LP. The band had been together for 20 years by this point, and there was a sense that things were coming to a close, though it soon transpired that the band had mountains of material left in them. Still, the early sessions weren’t easy, with Lifeson and Lee butting clashing over what they wanted to achieve with the album before they set about writing any music.
Eventually, a collective vision was established, and the band were able to get on with writing. By the following week, they’d finished five new songs. Lee and Lifeson were so excited by their own productivity that they refused to show any material to Neil Peart on the basis that it might interrupt their flow.
One of these songs was ‘Resist’, a jangling number that reflects Rush’s optimism and determination at the time. “I can learn to resist / Anything but temptation,” Lee sings over a glimmering piano arpeggio. “I can learn to coexist / With anything but pain.” The dandies among you will likely have read that first line somewhere before. It is, of course, a paraphrased quotation from Oscar Wilde’s first play Lady Windermere”s Fan. A comedy divided into four acts, Lady Windermere was first performed in St James’s Theatre on 20th February 1892. Following rave reviews, it was published a year later and remains one of Wilde’s most revered works for the stage.
An exploratory critique of gentile morality in the era of “the fallen woman”, Wilde’s play traces Lady Windermere’s discovery of her husband’s infidelity with Mrs Erlynne, her subsequent decision to leave him for her own lover, and Mrs Erylenne’s attempts reunite the couple. Full of the wit that made Wilde so popular in his own day, Lady Windermere’s Fan, like The Importance of Being Earnest, is infinitely quotable, so much so that it’s hard to say if Rush deliberately quoted Wilde or simply absorbed the line and ended up regurgitating it unknowingly.
Either way, ‘Resist’ serves as a fitting tribute to one of the Victorian era’s most decedent wits.
