Neil Peart drumming for Rush in 2008. Photo from Wikipedia.
The first time I heard Tom Sawyer was in my childhood bedroom in 1982. My friend Marie, who had moved but was back in town to visit and have a sleepover at my home, had brought a cassette upon which she'd recorded new music which her older, socially sought-after sister was loving. Tom Sawyer was among the best included.
That simple tape was a life changing gift for me. I kept the melodic possession for years; the songs on it were marvelous. Marie had unknowingly provided my very first mix tape and I played it repeatedly it until it snapped in my Walkman on a plane trip to Florida with my parents 3 years later and ended up in the garbage at Miami International Airport.
Win some, lose some.
Here are the songs I remember:
The first song on the tape was AC/DC's Big Balls; we were 12 years old, after all, and why not begin with an Australian song about social gatherings? 😉 Bon Scott's double entendre was an introduction to the music (and psyche) of Marie's sister. The best babysitter on the street, with perfectly feathered black hair and the face of an angel was out on Fridays stealing cars and lighting fires with her drunk friends (I may be exaggerating, but she was brought home in a police car, that I remember...). Social gathering with wigs and gowns or sweaty bouncing male body parts? Babysitter extraordinaire or pyromaniac? All I can say is: We've got the biggest balls of them all.
The second song was Ozzy's Crazy Train. Ay Ay Ay. I knew the stories surrounding the bat biter and his upside down crosses, as he had played a highly publicized concert at our local Civic Center in the summer of 1981, but I had not experienced any of his songs until that bad boy rolled off of the polyester plastic film and chugged into my ears. (un)Holy crap! I made Marie rewind and play and lather/rinse/repeat that song a slew of times before my mother yelled upstairs to "Stop it!" and we moved onward through our euphonic journey.
The third song was Adam and the Ants' Antmusic which remains a favorite song of mine to this day. Unplug the jukebox and do us all a favor. The sounds in this song were so unusual, so catchy. Marie and I immediately stood up and danced, bouncing off the furniture in my small pink and green bedroom; giddy with Goddard's dandy poppish voice and the snappy purcussiveness of the Burundi drums.
The fourth song was Bow Wow Wow's I Want Candy. We had barely caught our collective breaths from leapfrogging around to Antmusic when this plowed through the speakers of my Panasonic boom box. A Bo Diddly beat, some chick with a young but tough voice and lyrics that were easily memorized within one pass of the song...pure perfection for us young girls.
The last song I can remember from the cassette was Tom Sawyer. After rocking out to Bon and Ozzy and twitching about to Adam and Anabella we were rather gob smacked by the futuristic synthesizer, vibrantly clean guitar and tympanic drum sounds. Plus, the lyrics! What? Modern day what? Mean mean what? Catch the drift? And catch it we did...we rode that river for the rest of the weekend, rewinding and playing and writing down the words in an attempt to figure out what the hell, thematically, was going on. Tom Sawyer? Like the Mississippi kid in the book? I don't GET it. Well, we came to terms pretty quickly with the idea that you don't need to GET it to feel this song in every cell of your body once you just relax and float in it like a raft on the water. I became a RUSH fan that weekend.
Later, In my 20s I met a RUSH devotee. I'm honestly not sure he listened to anything else, ever. A brilliant guy who went to 4 years of college, then graduate school, he was in the process of earning his PhD when I made his acquaintance. He worked at a movie theater during all of his years in higher education. I asked him why he wasn't working in his field, gaining experience and improving his resume. He answered me with some sort of RUSH analogy having to do with not losing yourself and free will and a bit of Shakespearean wisdom thrown in to give me cause for pause but as you can imagine he went on to be a hugely successful guy. No "rush" for him to do anything differently than what he deemed necessary and aligned with his purpose. He was a brainy, wizardy type. Then again, I'm not sure I've ever met a RUSH disciple who wasn't!
Ontarian born ridiculously gifted drummer, magnificent writer, lyrical genius, avid outdoorsman and private family man Neil Peart left us this week after a heroic battle with Glioblastoma. He was 67.
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