A Farewell To Kings
Dedicated to Nancy, Charlene and Jacqueline.
Released Mercury, September 1977.
- A Farewell To Kings (5:51)
- Xanadu (11:08)
- Closer To The Heart (2:53)
- Cinderella Man (4:21)
- Madrigal (2:35)
- Cygnus X-1 (10:25)
-
- Prologue (5:01)
-
-
- (0:45)
-
-
-
- (1:34)
-
-
-
- (3:05)
-
Geddy Lee - Bass/Accoustic. Guitar/Mini- Moog/Bass Pedals/Vocals. Alex Lifeson - Accoustic and Electric Guitars/Bass Pedals. Neil Peart - Drums/Percussion.
Produced by Rush and Terry Brown. Engineered by Pat Moran and Terry Brown.
Tracks 1, 2, 5 & 6 lyrics by Peart. Track 3 lyrics by Peart and Talbot. Track 4 lyrics by Lee.
If ‘2112’ is a release of angry tension, ‘A Farewell To Kings’ offers a heartfelt soliloquy to Rush’s past. As the steadily maturing band sought newer, more contemporary pastures it turned its attentions from matters fantastic to poetic. Opening with the deceptively dulcet sounds of songbirds and a hand-plucked guitar, the pseudo-medieval title track is a final ode to the past, to the ancient fiefdoms and battles far away that had played such a major part of previous albums.
All the same, as this carefully crafted set of compositions was released, nobody could ever accuse the threesome of giving in to mainstream demands. As if to illustrate this, the band opens its new era with ‘Xanadu’, a virtual transcription of ‘Kubla Khan’ – Coleridge’s finest, opiate-induced hour. Deliberately recorded in a single take, the carefully crafted eleven minutes of ambitious music and virtuoso playing, including a vast array of percussion sounds, showcase a band at the peak of its compositional and musical abilities. In so many ways, and for so many people the song captures every essence of the band, standing out at the time as a direct riposte to the delightedly anarchistic, vulgar and more musically reductive elements of the punk movement that was burgeoning in Britain and abroad.
Again and again, the band was determined to hammer home its disdain for how it had been treated by the mainstream pundits of popular music. The one-man-against-the-system journeyman tale ‘Mr. Deeds Goes to Town’, originally a film with Gary Cooper, was inspiration for the soulful ‘Cinderella Man’. This theme might have been well-trodden by this point but unusually the lyrics were penned by Geddy, demonstrating how closely Neil’s anti-establishment sentiments matched his own.
Contrary to its title, ‘Kings’ concerns voyages of discovery, be they rowing through caves of ice, journeys into the inner sanctum of the human psyche or the weary realisation that home is where the heart is, as pronounced by ‘Madrigal’. While both this song and the title track reflect a desire to move away from the heroic, a better title may have been the original name for the album, ‘Closer To The Heart’, the song itself based on a lyrical one-liner Neil had been given by his friend Peter Talbot. While it worked reasonably on the album, it would be in the live setting that this song really found its feet, with the paced lyrics perfectly suited for audience participation.
The finale of the piece is titled ‘Cygnus X-1, Book One – The Voyage’. Based on a piece about black holes that Neil read in Time magazine, the song charts the journey of space ship the Rocinante, itself named after the horse in Cervantes’ picaresque classic novel ‘Don Quixote’. ‘Kings’ is the stuff of science fiction, blended with literature and backed with music. A modern classic, indeed.