The song that captured the story of Rush: “The history of my band”
There’s no greater example of a band doing whatever the hell they wanted, regardless of the trends around them, than Canadian hard-rock trio Rush.
Burnished in the world of progressive and hard rock by the 1960s’ close, the recruitment of Neil Peart’s percussive heft and lyrical pen for 1975’s Fly by Night cemented from then on a wholly distinct and uncategorisable brew of both styles, marrying complexity and heavy attack that would find a home in the burgeoning metal world while also keeping the prog fans happy with their conceptual narratives anchoring each album.
As many of their peers were snuffed out by punk’s upending bulldoze, Rush sailed through into their commercial stride, forging a dedicated cult following eager for an antidote to the new wave dominating the charts. Rush soaked up the pop climate around them, however, adding thick synthesizers and tightening their arrangements for the mammoth-selling Moving Pictures in 1981. For the new decade, Rush found themselves an unlikely star of the MTV era.
Alongside selling out arenas and eventually being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014, the Rush juggernaut powered through the years with an unerring sense that every album pursued was cut as if it would be their very best, a quality not lost on their devoted fan base. As elder statesmen of the hard rock world, and doggedly soldiering through sniffy critics, a tapestry of success by sticking to their creative guns found a resolution as such on their final album before Peart’s death in 2020.
Dropped in 2012, Clockwork Angels took a steampunk stab at William Manchester’s A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance: Portrait of an Age, as well as throwing in some Voltaire, Joseph Conrad, and Cormac McCarthy for extra philosophical and literary fodder. While boasting a narrative arc encompassing novels and a comic book series, for bassist and frontman Geddy Lee, Rush’s 19th LP served as a more reflective overlay of the band’s story, especially crystallised in the record’s second single.
“There’s something about ’Headlong Flight’ that’s almost about the history of my band to me,” Lee revealed to The Guardian in 2018. “It’s autobiographical in a way. Forty years into this career, and it goes by like that. The sentiment in that song is ‘I wish I could do it all again,’ and it’s true”.
‘Headlong Flight’ sits in the overarching story by depicting an elderly steam-powered inventor looking back at the adventures and escapades across his storied life, and wishing to relive those cherished memories. “All the journeys of this great adventure / It didn’t always feel that way / I wouldn’t trade them because I made them / The best I could, and that’s enough to say”. It’s hard not to lyrically read a dual subtext of Peart’s misty-eyed appraisal of the Rush machine’s tumultuous tale, casting his mind back from the vantage of rock royalty and taking stock of the road well-travelled from young, hungry musicians with a dream to chase.
Extra eulogical edge is afforded to Clockwork Angels due to Peart’s death eight years later, but Rush could count on possessing a creative engine still whirring away with undimmed energy like one of the steampunk inventor’s ticking, Victorian-futuristic machinery, winning the affections of fans while also scoring an album top ten in both the States and Canada. Gearing up for a world tour next year with Anika Nilles stepping behind the drum kit, ‘Headlong Flight’ surely would serve a fitting place in their celebratory setlist.
