Ah, to be young, fresh-faced, squeaky-voiced, and inspired
by Led Zeppelin and Ayn Rand again.
Fly By Night is the sophomore album by the
Canadian rock trio Rush, released February 15, 1975. As the
first album with lyricist and drummer Neil Peart, Fly
By Night was the first step in the direction the band
would take later in the 1970's. It featured a few long-time
classics of the band, including the Rand-inspired
song "Anthem", and their fantasy epic "By-Tor & the
Snow
Dog". It also featured the agonizingly bad tribute to
J.R.R. Tolkien, "Rivendell", along with the title track
which still gets occasional airplay on rock radio stations
that have real, live DJs.
Rush was considered a hot new band in 1974, earning opening
slots on tours with bands like KISS and Uriah Heep, and
winning the 1974 Juno award for Most Promising
new act. Neil Peart joined the band in late July of that
year, and during the subsequent tour, the band
began writing songs for the followup to their eponymous
debut. Several of these songs were in rotation on their
short setlist by
November. Their second album, Fly By Night, was
recorded in short order, and was released within a few days
of the band heading back out on tour in early 1975.
While the album features several songs in the same vein as
their debut record ("Best I Can", "In The End", "Making
Memories"), it also has the earliest progressive rock
anthems of the band. The earliest hints of where they were
headed in the later 1970's can first be heard in
"By-Tor & the Snow Dog". The song has all the hallmarks of prog rock
excess, including movements with silly names and instrumental
"battle scenes". A long-time fan favorite, they still play snippets of it on tour
thirty years on.
Fly By Night also features
the astonishingly wretched "Rivendell", a quiet, classical acoustic
number about elves and hobbits and fluffy
kittens and robot laser blasters, inspired
by some book by some
guy. A low point in Rush's songwriting history, only
"Lakeside Park" from Caress of Steel would cause as
many eyes to roll as "Rivendell", and at least "Lakeside
Park" had a guitar solo and a beat to it.
Fly By Night was the first Rush record where Terry
Brown would receive full credit as producer. Brown was an
engineer on the first Rush record, and he would continue
working with the band through 1982's Signals.
Fly By Night was the first of two records the band
would release in 1975, with the second being the much-panned
Caress of Steel, released in September. While Fly By
Night was well-received, Caress of Steel was not,
and Rush would later call the promotional tour for the
latter record the "Down-the-tubes Tour". Of course, that
turned out not to be the case.
The song list is as follows:
- Anthem
- Best I Can
- Beneath, Between & Behind
- By-Tor & The Snow Dog
- At The Tobes of Hades
- Across The Styx
- Of The Battle
- Epilogue
- Fly By Night
- Making Memories
- Rivendell
- In The End
Personally, my favorite is the classic
"By-Tor & The Snow Dog". Dungeons & Dragons imagery aside,
it's a great mix of Rush's youthful intensity and the prog-rock complexity
that I enjoy in other music of that era. Though most of the album is
entertaining in one way or another, the three hadn't quite found their legs yet.
It's easy to tell Fly By Night is a record by a young band, all barely
out of their teens. The guitars are loud, and while the playing is energetic
and fluid, you can tell they're still learning the craft of songwriting. And Geddy
Lee's voice is, of course,
dog-whistle high.
"By-Tor" has been played off and on during the band's tours
over the past ten years, as has "Anthem" on the current
tour. The band made a short cartoon played during concerts
on the Vapor Trails tour showing two disco dancing robots (?)
decapitating each other (?1!) during By-Tor. The cartoon
is one of two annoyingly-hard-to-reach easter eggs on disc 2
of the Rush In Rio DVD. The other is a video for "Anthem" recorded
in 1975 -- there's nothing cooler than paisley polyester shirts and platform
shoes.
Fly By Night was released on Mercury Records in the US. The album
was included in the rather strange Archives 3-LP set
released in the late 1970's, which featured Rush,
Fly By Night, and Caress of Steel in one
superfluously convenient package -- superfluous since all
three records were still in print at the time. I don't think it was ever
released that way as a CD. And the CD has, of course, been
"Remastered", so that you can have the pleasure of buying it
twice, or not. Live versions of songs from
Fly By Night appear on 1976's All The World's A
Stage, 1981's Exit...Stage Left (LP and film),
1998's Different Stages (bonus disc), and 2003's
Rush In Rio.
The album cover (artist not listed) features a snowy owl flying toward the
viewer with talons extended over a
barren, snow-covered landscape.
Fly by night away from here,
Change my life again,
Fly by night, goodbye my dear,
My ship isn't coming and I just can't pretend
Release dates and other tidbits from www.2112.net/powerwindows