Track #43 - “Tom Sawyer” by Rush (1981)

From the album Moving Pictures

Music by Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson; lyrics by Neil Peart and Pye Dubois

Performed by:

Geddy Lee – lead vocals, bass, keyboards

Alex Lifeson – guitar

Neil Peart – drums

The world is, the world is

Love and life are deep

Maybe as his eyes are wide

Exit the warrior

Today’s Tom Sawyer

He gets high on you

And the energy you trade

He gets right on to

The friction of the day

“They were never popular enough that they get commonly name-checked as one of the greatest bands of all time. Zeppelin has been over explained, the Beatles have been over explained…why was this band marginalized? What was it? It doesn’t matter. At some point they’re there and somebody has to explain why they’re there.” - Billy Corgan

“What kind of band is Rush? It’s Rush.” - Gene Simmons

My wife first heard the Dave Matthews Band when she was in high school, when she was about 16 or 17 years old. One of her friends had their first album, Under the Table and Dreaming, and played it a lot, and Christine said she just immediately gravitated towards it. Sidenote: Under the Table and Dreaming is technically DMB’s second album; their first release, Remember Two Things, released in 1993, was a collection of live and studio tracks released independently and was not well-known at the time.  Table was their first major label release, and the one that put the band on the map and contains some of their best-loved tracks. For our purposes, we’ll say that it was their first, although the DMB fans are scoffing right now. Anyway…Christine has told me there was no magic moment for her and her love for the Dave Matthews Band. She just loved the music right from the beginning, and when she went to her first show, she really became hooked. On more than one occasion, she has told me that the Dave Matthews experience is a vibe. It’s the whole package: the music, the shows, the fans, the guys in the band, the history; there is no one thing she can put her finger on. And in a way, I know what she’s talking about. I’ve seen Dave Matthews live several times now in the almost two decades I’ve been with my wife, and there is definitely an aura hanging over that crowd before, during and after those shows. And the music itself…well, let’s just say they are one of the best bands I have ever seen play live. Those guys know what the f*** they’re doing, and they do it well. Now, I’m not going to sit here and put myself in Christine’s category of superfan, and although I will never reach those heights of obsession, I do appreciate the DMB fandom. In my wife’s particular case, I think what I admire is if you ask her what her favorite band is, there is no hesitation…it’s the Dave Matthews Band. I suppose if I met her in a college bar many years ago and asked her that question, that’s the answer I would get, much like the answer I received when we first met at work back in 2005. I don’t know what her favorite band was before the Dave Matthews Band, but it doesn’t matter; DMB is a big part of who she is, and the person I know, and I love that about her. The journey with my favorite band, however, has been much more…winding, shall we say? If you ask me today who my favorite band is, I will say Rush; that’s the answer I’ve given for over 20 years now. And if you know me, that answer makes sense; I’m analytical, bookish, somewhat nerdy, still watch sci-fi films and build Legos, and when it comes to music, I usually gravitate towards stuff that makes me think along with whatever I’m listening to. Sounds like a Rush fan to me. When I tell people I’m also a huge fan of heavy metal music, and that was basically all I listened to in high school, they look at me kind of funny, with my greying goatee, glasses and quarter-zip sweater, and say, “Really? You went to Judas Priest concerts??” But it’s true. In fact, if you asked me in the 80’s, when I was in high school, who my favorite band was, I would have no doubt said Iron Maiden or Van Halen. I had all of both band’s albums, and my room was a shrine to each. There were posters of Eddie, the Iron Maiden band mascot all over my walls, and I had pictures of the band I had ripped out of Circus and Hit Parader magazines on my closet and bedroom doors. I also had a giant poster of another Eddie, Eddie Van Halen and his band, above my bed, and a poster of the 1984 album cover. Did I have any photos or posters of Rush? No. Fast forward to the 90’s, and if you asked me who my favorite band was, I would have said Pearl Jam, no question. And true to form, I had posters of Pearl Jam’s album covers, the band, and pictures of Soundgarden and Nirvana up on the walls, too. I also had a giant poster of the Temple of the Dog album cover above my bed. Did I mention any Rush posters? Once again, no. But that didn’t mean I was not listening to Rush. In fact, beginning with 1981’s Moving Pictures, and right on through the 80’s and 90’s, and until their final studio release in 2012, Clockwork Angels, I bought and listened to every Rush album. In 1990, I bought their double-CD greatest hits collection Chronicles, and I wore out Disc 2, and I had to re-buy the whole thing. I made Rush mixtapes and playlists, and I went to Rush shows, and turned up the songs when they were played on the radio. They were always there but were never my favorite…or I never admitted it, at least. Then in 2004, Rush went on tour to celebrate their 30th anniversary as a band; it became known as the R30 Tour. My brother’s best friend Dan, and Dan’s brother Mike had an extra ticket to Rush’s August 18th show at Radio Music Hall and they offered it to me; it became a transformative experience. It became the moment my brain caught up with my ears. I compare it to being able to appreciate good food or wine as you get older; your palette needs to mature, and I’m quite sure that’s what happened on that evening in NYC in August of 2004. From our amazing orchestra seats, I watched Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson and Neil Peart play a 32-song career retrospective, which included several of their best-known classic songs, three parts from their landmark album 2112, an instrumental (“La Villa Strangiato”) so complex they had to do it in three parts when they first recorded it in1978, a 9-minute drum solo, and a two-song acoustic mini-set just to give drummer Peart a break after that solo. The whole evening blew me away. And it’s not like I hadn’t seen a Rush concert before; I’d been to several. But this particular show changed the way I listened to them and how I perceived them as a band, forever. Their longevity, stamina, and creativity crystallized for me at that show, and something just clicked: this was my favorite band of all-time. I started to go back in their catalog and listen to their older albums, to find the deep cuts they played that night. When they released a live CD/DVD set of the R30 tour, I bought it right away and listened to it so much I had Peart’s drum solo memorized, beat for beat. Rush gained popularity in the 2000s, making appearances on Stephen Colbert’s show, and in the movie, I Love You Man. As social media began to become more ubiquitous, people were posting about Rush; there were Rush fan sites devoted to setlists, and deciphering lyrics, and band history. And when they were finally, deservedly, inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013, Jann Wenner could barely finish his introduction, drowned out by the roar from the army of Rush fans that were present at the ceremony. I wasn’t there that night, but I still felt like part of that army; it took me a while to just admit Rush was, to me, the greatest band ever, but like the band itself, I took the long way. I was eleven years old when I heard my first Rush song; well, technically I saw my first Rush song, on MTV. There were not a lot of videos on MTV back then, so I didn’t have much to compare it to; this video was just three unassuming guys playing onstage, bathed in red and green light. The focus was on the guitar player, and the singer-keyboardist-bassist; you barely saw the drummer’s face, something I would understand about him decades later. Then at the end, this green kaleidoscope effect filled the screen, right as the synthesizer whooshed and trilled; it all looked and sounded like something from outer space. Did other young Rush fans cut their teeth on “Tom Sawyer”? I’m betting yes. And was Moving Pictures the album that started their Rush collection? Maybe. But from where I’m sitting, if there was no Moving Pictures, I might not even be a Rush fan.

Gary Lee Weinrib (Geddy Lee) and Aleksandar Zivojinovic (Alex Lifeson) met in junior high school in the 1960s, in the Willowdale area of Toronto, Ontario. When they met, they didn’t bond over music at first, rather through their statuses as relative outcasts, and their shared quirky sense of humor. Lee, the son of Jewish Holocaust survivors, lost his father in 1965 when he was 12-years old, and spent the next eleven months in mourning and going to synagogue. When the mourning period was over, his mother offered to buy him a guitar; he would eventually gravitate towards the bass. Lifeson’s parents emigrated from Yugoslavia after WWII, and after bringing home continuously good report cards, asked his parents to buy him a guitar as well, which he practiced day and night; those report cards quickly deteriorated, but he became proficient on the guitar by the time he was in his teens. In 1968, Lifeson and local drummer John Rutsey asked Lee to join their fledgling band Rush as frontman and bassist, and the band began to play school dances and local halls. Influenced by early rock legends Black Sabbath, Cream and the Who, Rush played heavy straightforward rock and roll, but the audiences at those early high school dances didn’t know what to make of them. In 1971, the drinking age in Canada went from 21 to 18, allowing Rush to start booking gigs in bars, and suddenly they became a working band, sometimes playing shows five or six nights per week. It was during this time that they met Ray Danniels, who would become their manager for four decades. Danniels saw potential in the band and used his own money to finance Rush’s first album, Rush, in 1974. The album sold well in Canada, but they knew they would need an American record deal to reach a bigger audience. Demos were sent to record companies in the US, but no one would sign them. Finally, the album landed on the desk of a program director at rock radio station WMMS in Cleveland, and after hearing it, added the closing track, “Working Man”, to the station’s playlist. She thought the lyrics were a perfect fit for the blue-collar listeners in Cleveland:

Well, I get up at seven, yeah

And I go to work at nine

I got no time for livin’

Yes, I’m workin’ all the time

The phones lit up, with listeners making multiple requests for the song, and asking when the new Led Zeppelin album was coming out. Danniels sent a copy of the album to Mercury Records, and within 24 hours of hearing it, A&R rep Cliff Burnstein signed the band to a record deal. As Rush was planning their first major US tour, drummer Rutsey decided it would be best to leave Rush, as his diabetes was beginning to hold him back from performing, and Lee and Lifeson were moving towards more complex musical arrangements. Rush held auditions for a new drummer in late July 1974, and if you remember from when we discussed “Subdivisions”, then you know the rest: lanky guy pulls up in a Pinto, drags his drums into the practice space in garbage bags, plays triplets like “machine gun fire”, and plays in 7/4 time. Neil Peart joined Rush on July 29th, 1974, and two weeks later they opened for Uriah Heep and Manfred Mann’s Earth Band in Pittsburgh. Peart immediately began to write all of Rush’s lyrics, beginning with Fly By Night in 1975. Now more influenced by the progressive rock of Genesis, Pink Floyd, and Yes, Lee and Lifeson’s music and Peart’s lyrics became much more complex and concept-driven, thus less radio friendly. When their next album, Caress of Steel, an album of only five songs, one of which is 20 minutes long and takes up all of Side 2, underperformed and underwhelmed fans, their management tried to push them in a more commercial direction. Rush resisted, and responded with 1976’s 2112, another concept album with one song on Side 1, containing seven sections. It was extremely risky, but this time the album sold, the tour was well-received, and now 2112 is considered a masterpiece of progressive rock. Rush was now confident enough to take total creative control over all their music going forward, and by the time they recorded and released Permanent Waves in 1980, their sound had become much more radio-friendly, and their songwriting and arrangements became much tighter. Anchored by the Rush classics “The Spirit of Radio” and “Freewill”, the album opened the door to huge commercial success and paved the way to the album that made me and millions of others Rush fans. The band had originally planned another live album but decided to forgo those plans and record an album of new material instead. In late 1980, they traveled to Stony Lake in Ontario to write and record what would become Moving Pictures, and the song that would define them for the rest of their career.

There might be diehard Rush fans that are looking at the appearance of “Tom Sawyer” on a lifetime-defining playlist and say that I’m mailing it in, and that there should be a deeper cut on here. Choosing a song like “Xanadu”, “Lakeside Park” or “Natural Science” would prove that I’m a devoted Rush fan, listening to more than just the hits, and that picking a song from Moving Pictures is too obvious a choice…and you’d have a point. But I would argue that Moving Pictures is THE Rush album; Neil Peart himself said, “…that’s when we became us….I think Rush was born with Moving Pictures.” So there, The Professor said it himself. And just as the band became defined with that album, I can almost guarantee there are lifelong fans from my generation that discovered Moving Pictures before any other Rush album. Consider Side 1 alone: “Tom Sawyer”, “Red Barchetta”, “YYZ”, “Limelight”. Then Side 2 contains the last song over 10 minutes that Rush would ever record, “The Camera Eye”; “Witch Hunt”, the first of four story-songs spread over four subsequent albums; then “Vital Signs” closes out the album, a song that could easily be a lead track on any Rush album. I actually could have picked any song from Moving Pictures for the 50 At 50, and I think I would have been satisfied. But when “Subdivisions” became the no-brainer Rush song for me, and I knew I had to have another, “Tom Sawyer” was the logical choice. So, what is it about “Tom Sawyer” that Geddy Lee has called “the quintessential Rush song”? Is it the groove, the multiple time signature changes, the non-traditional song structure, the whooshing keyboards, Lee’s vocals or Lifeson’s solo in the middle or Peart’s drum solo that everyone tries to air-drum, or the rebellious lyrics? Well, it’s all those things. To hear what Rush is all about, to really hear what kind of players those guys are, what they’re capable of, you don’t need a 20-minute suite (but those are amazing, too); you just need to listen to “Tom Sawyer”. To think that their signature song almost didn’t happen might make you shudder, but that part is also true. Canadian poet and sometimes Rush collaborator Pye Dubois had scribbled some lyrics for a song originally titled “Louis the Lawyer”, and handed them over to Peart, who re-interpreted the story within the scribbles, and wrote the song we’re all now familiar with. Inspired by Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Peart writes of “a modern-day warrior”, a free-spirited rebel caught between boy and man; Lee and Lifeson composed the accompanying music. Peart remembers the recording taking a day and a-half, and he recalled “collapsing afterwards, with raw, red, aching hands and feet.” Lee switched bass guitars from his Rickenbacker 4001 to a 1972 Fender Jazz bass for the recording of the song, and Lifeson recalls a more free-flowing, jam session-like process for not only “Tom Sawyer”, but for the entire time they were recording the album. The band used a computerized mixing machine for the first time, but for whatever reason, they had difficulty mixing the tracks for “Tom Sawyer”. Lee began to have doubts about whether the track would even make the album; he would later claim some of the early mixes sounded terrible. In the end, each band member became responsible for their own tracks, and they mixed the song manually. When the mix was finally complete, the band knew they had something and were probably grateful they had not given up on the song. It would end up the lead track on Moving Pictures, and cement Rush’s status as rock stars on the radio.

Meanwhile, back on Long Island, it was the summer before I was to enter junior high school. MTV had been on the air for about a year, and it was clearly beginning to influence my musical choices. Because of MTV, I was exposed to more music than what I was just hearing on the radio, and the visuals of the bands either lip-syncing their way through music videos or performing live made me want to go out and buy everything I saw. I can remember buying albums by Journey, Styx, Asia, the J. Geils Band, and The Police, all because I first saw them on MTV. If you remember, this was also the summer I first heard Def Leppard and AC/DC. And it was the summer I first saw Rush. After the success of Moving Pictures, Rush put out Exit…Stage Left, a live album that spawned the first Rush videos I would ever see. “Limelight”, “Red Barchetta” and “Tom Sawyer” all appeared on MTV that summer. And as I mentioned earlier, seeing that “Tom Sawyer” video changed everything. I mean, the first few years of MTV were mind blowing any way you looked at it: a 24-hour TV channel to watch music. There was nothing like it. You couldn’t cue up videos like you can on YouTube now, but it was like the radio. You just waited for your favorite bands to be played. They would preview at the top of each hour a few of the videos you’d see in that hour, so you could sort of plan and anticipate, but still, it was random. The only thing in your favor back then was that there weren’t a lot of videos, so you if you hung out in front of the TV long enough, you’d probably see your favorites. I remember “Tom Sawyer” and the other live Rush videos in moderately heavy rotation on MTV. What I couldn’t get over was that it was three guys making that music; sort of how I felt about Genesis, but all due respect to Genesis, Rush’s sound was much bigger. That wee-owww synthesizer in the beginning and the dramatic opening drum groove grabbed me each time and Geddy Lee’s high-pitched vocals when the verse began was distinctive. It was not like the rock songs I heard on the radio. Everything about it was different. The song wound its way through my head, rather than hitting me all at once. The lyrics were cerebral, and painted striking images, rhyming “discontent” with “government”, and “company” with “society”. The singer was like a Swiss Army knife; he also played bass and the keyboards. And that drum break in the middle; how did he do that? All those cymbal hits, and the precision and speed of the fills…was it a drum machine? Overdubs? I decided to buy Moving Pictures on cassette that summer only because it was cheaper than the vinyl copy and it was all I could afford, but it worked out. I was able to play it on that very first Yorx stereo I got for my birthday right before school started. I listened to Moving Pictures on repeat; when Rush released the follow up, Signals, that fall, I bought that, too. Between Rush, and all the other hard rock I discovered that first year of junior high, I started to feel cool. But for whatever reason, as much as I loved Rush and continued to buy all their albums through high school, college and beyond, I’d never say they were my favorite band back then. I just continued to listen, and I marveled at that huge sound they had, and how they seemed to play better with every album, and how their sound evolved through the 80s, adding more synthesizers and electronic drums, and then how their sound came back around in the 90s and 2000s, and they found their hard rock roots again. But…I’d never say they were my favorite band; not until after that night in New York City in 2004, would my brain catch up with my ears. Rush’s first set that night, before the intermission, could have been a complete concert, but they still had one more set to go. And they opened the second set with “Tom Sawyer”, and for a minute I was back in 7th grade, hearing and seeing Rush for the first time. Besides how transformative, special and amazing Rush’s music has been to me for all these years, the reason I love it so much is because sometimes, not all the time, it still feels like I’m 12 years old and it all sounds new. Sure, it took about 20 years and several albums, but I finally got there in 2004…and now in 2025, I dare you…go ahead and ask me who my favorite band is…

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Next time…Tommy Shaw makes his second appearance on the playlist, this time with Styx, and I’m horrified as my parents start to “borrow” my records. ☹

There is a proper video for “Tom Sawyer”, filmed at the since demolished Le Studio, in Quebec, and you can check that out on YouTube, as well as the video I first saw from Exit…Stage Left. But I would be remiss if I didn’t drop a clip of Rush playing it live with the boys from South Park doing the intro. It really shows you what a wonderful and quirky sense of humor they have…enjoy! 😊

P.S.

Moving Pictures is certified 5X platinum in the US, with sales of 5 million copies. It is on more “best-of” lists to count and remains a mainstay on classic rock radio to this day. It was one of those albums that everyone owned back when I was in junior high and high school; it was almost expected of you to have a copy of Moving Pictures somewhere in your bedroom or your car. I would compare it to Van Halen I, or Def Leppard’s Hysteria, or Ozzy’s Diary of a Madman, or Back in Black by AC/DC; it was just part of who you were if you were a fan of rock and roll in the 1980s. “Tom Sawyer” is still one of the top 20 most played songs on terrestrial radio, and is easily their most streamed song on Spotify, with over 358 million streams, more than double that of “Limelight”, at 156 million. The track is Rush’s defining piece of music, and not only the song that made them radio and rock stars, but the one that highlights each member’s musical prowess, and their talents as songwriters and arrangers. It’s quite an achievement for a song that doesn’t follow the typical verse-chorus-verse-chorus-solo-chorus structure, and that changes time signatures four times. To quote Geddy Lee, it’s become an “anthem” for Rush fans. And to prove that all you’d need to do is watch 20,000 fans air-drum their way through “Tom Sawyer” when they played it live. I was indeed one of those drum-nerds flailing my arms in the air while Neil Peart played those iconic fills. By the way, Playlist.fm lists “Tom Sawyer” being played by the band a little over 1,200 times live, and to me, that number seems low. It might be more than 2,000, but I would guess that Rush never played a show after Moving Pictures that didn’t include “Tom Sawyer”; there might have been a riot. Rush’s catalog includes 19 studio albums, 11 live albums, and several compilations. Their worldwide album sales exceed 40 million units. In 2013, Rush was finally inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame by Dave Grohl and Taylor Hawkins of the Foo Fighters. In the end, it was the fans that helped make it happen, and who made the loudest noise at the induction ceremony. Ever the eloquent speaker, drummer Neil Peart said, “We’ve been saying for a long time, years, that this wasn’t a big deal…turns out, it kind of is.” But he also said something else that has stuck with me. He said that they were there accepting the honor as a “working band, in the middle of tour, in our 39th year…” And that to me said it all about Rush; they were indeed a working band, supporting an album of new material, what would turn out to be their last, and they still sounded amazing. Two years later, when I saw them on what would end up being their “farewell tour”, their R40 Tour celebrating 40 years together, it was one of the best shows I’d ever seen. Those three guys could still play those complex songs and arrangements and still get in your head. They never broke up or switched out members, or took the reunion tour route to make a few bucks, and they never took themselves too seriously. They took the music seriously and worked hard, but they took every opportunity to poke fun at themselves and keep their sense of humor. As much as their music has been part of my life for 40+ years because of how great it is, it’s Rush’s essence that’s made “Tom Sawyer” literally part of my DNA; it makes up who I am, just like how Dave Matthews makes up who my wife is, or whoever your favorite band makes up who you are. It’s more than just owning every record; it’s carrying those melodies and lyrics with you everywhere.

Since Neil Peart died in 2020, Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson have played together and jammed on Rush songs and new material but have no plans to re-form Rush with a new drummer. Aside from a couple of Taylor Hawkins tribute shows in 2022, the two have not played with another drummer, and have said multiple times that Rush is over. I believe the thought is that they went out on top, and even had Peart lived, they might not have ever toured again. Not sure how I’d feel with another drummer behind that kit; believe me, I miss my favorite band, but I’m also at peace with how Rush ended. I have memories of all the shows I went to, and now with YouTube and social media, I can go back and watch old videos and interviews, and I think that might be enough. And, there’s all that music I can listen to anytime. I don’t need “Lee and Lifeson play the hits”, as they have been cheekily quoted as saying. I also need to mention that my two sons have also become huge Rush fans. The R40 Tour was the first concert my older son ever attended, and my younger son taught himself how to play several Rush songs on the drums when he first took up playing. That might be the best reward right there, watching my kids appreciate the band I grew up with. I highly recommend checking out Geddy Lee’s autobiography My Effin’ Life, which takes you through Lee’s childhood, his family’s experience in a Nazi concentration camp, and his life in Rush. It also goes into details of Peart’s illness and death; it’s a fantastic read, whether you’re a fan or not. It was a valuable resource for both Rush posts I put together. I also suggest checking out the documentary Beyond the Lighted Stage, available on YouTube. And YouTube channel Drumeo just put out a video called “The Genius of Rush’s Tom Sawyer” which breaks down the iconic drum grooves and fills, as well as the writing, recording and the individual parts of the song. Obviously, the channel is drum-centric, but there’s great insights on the legacy of “Tom Sawyer” and why it’s an important song to drummers everywhere.

So, I have been thinking about this Rush playlist for a long time and how I would narrow it down to only 25 songs, but I was able to do it after making some tough cuts. In the early 90s, I had a Rush mixtape that I may have played so much that the tape snapped; there are a few songs from that (the ones I could remember!) plus some lesser-known songs, too. And before the Rush fans have a fit, I did not include the 2112 suite; I realize how important it is, and I do love it, but somehow it didn’t fit. I swapped it out for “Natural Science; hope that’s OK, Rush fans!! I tried to resist putting half of Moving Pictures on it, but it was too tough, so there are four songs. I also included “Der Trommler”, Neil Peart’s drum solo from the R30 Tour; it’s just too damn good. Did I miss any of your favorites? Let me know in the comments!

See you next time…

JS

4/11/2025