Tom Sawyer

Rocktober 21st! 

For the month of October, we celebrate Rock Music!

Today our song is: Tom Sawyer – Rush

Wikipedia tells us this about the song:

The song was written by Geddy Lee, drummer Neil Peart, and guitarist Alex Lifeson in collaboration with lyricist Pye Dubois of the band Max Webster, who also co-wrote the Rush songs "Force Ten", "Between Sun and Moon", and "Test for Echo". According to the US radio show In the Studio with Redbeard (which devoted an episode to the making of Moving Pictures), "Tom Sawyer" came about during a summer rehearsal vacation that Rush spent at Ronnie Hawkins' farm outside Toronto. Peart was presented with a poem by Dubois named "Louis the Lawyer" (often incorrectly cited as "Louis the Warrior") that he modified and expanded. Lee and Lifeson then helped set the poem to music. For "Tom Sawyer", Lee switched from his Rickenbacker 4001 to a Fender Jazz Bass he purchased from a pawn shop.

In the December 1985 Rush Backstage Club newsletter, drummer and lyricist Neil Peart said:

Tom Sawyer was a collaboration between myself and Pye Dubois, an excellent lyricist who wrote the lyrics for Max Webster. His original lyrics were kind of a portrait of a modern day rebel, a free-spirited individualist striding through the world wide-eyed and purposeful. I added the themes of reconciling the boy and man in myself, and the difference between what people are and what others perceive them to be—namely me, I guess.

Alex Lifeson describes his guitar solo in "Tom Sawyer" in a 2007 interview:

I winged it. Honest! I came in, did five takes, then went off and had a cigarette. I'm at my best for the first two takes; after that, I overthink everything and I lose the spark. Actually, the solo you hear is composed together from various takes.

Record World described the song as a "Zeppelinesque power ballad" which "breaks into a dynamic, demonic jam."

Thank you for supporting me during this month-long music fest. If  you choose to join me in this RockFest, feel free to snag my graphic at the top or you can create your own. You don’t even have to use my same theme - just as long as it’s Rock Music.