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The Spirit of Radio (4:57)
Begin the day
Wth a friendly voice,
A companion, unobtrusive
Plays the song that's so elusive
And the magic music makes your morning mood.
Off on your way
Hit the open road,
There is magic at your fingers
For the Spirit ever lingers,
Undemanding contact In your happy solitude.
Invisible airwaves
Crackle with life
Bright antennae bristle
With the energy
Emotional feedback
On timeless wavelength
Bearing a gift beyond price-
Almost free...
All this machinery
Making modern music
Can still be open-hearted
Not so coldly charted
It's really just a question
Of your honesty
One likes to believe
In the freedom of music,
But glittering prizes
And endless compromises
Shatter the illusion
Of integrity.
"For the words of the profits,
Are written on the studio wall,
Concert hall -
Echoes with the sounds...
Of salesmen."
Freewill (5:23)
There are those who think that life
Has nothing left to chance,
A host of holy horrors
To direct our aimless dance
A planet of playthings
We dance on the strings
Of powers we cannot perceive
"The stars aren't aligned -
Or the gods are malign"
Blame is better to give than receive.
You can choose a ready guide
In some celestial voice.
If you choose not to decide
You still have made a choice
You can choose from phantom fears
And kindness that can kill;
I will choose a path that's clear-
I will choose free will
There are those who think that
They were dealt a losing hand,
The cards were stacked against them-
They weren't born in Lotus-Land
All pre-ordained
A prisoner in chains
A victim of venomous fate
Kicked in the face
You can pray for a place
In heaven's unearthly estate
Each of us
A cell of awareness
Imperfect and incomplete
Genetic blends
With uncertain ends
On a fortune hunt
That's far too fleet...
Jacob's Ladder (7:28)
The clouds prepare for battle
In the dark and brooding silence
Bruised and sullen stormclouds
Have the light of day obscured
Looming low and ominous
In twilight premature
Thunderheads are rumbling
In a distant overture
All at once,
The clouds are parted
Light streams down
In bright unbroken beams
Follow men's eyes
As they look to the skies
The shifting shafts of shining
Weave the fabric of their dreams...
Entre Nous (4:37)
We are secrets to each other
Each one's life a novel
No-one else has read
Even joined in bonds of love
We're linked to one another
By such slender threads
We are planets to each other
Drifting in our orbits
To a brief eclipse
Each of us a world apart
Alone and yet together
Like two passing ships
Just between us
I think it's time for us to recognize
The differences we sometimes feared to show
Just between us
I think it's time for us to realize
The spaces in between
Leave room
For you and I to grow
We are strangers to each other
Full of sliding panels
An illusion show
Acting well-rehearsed routines
Or playing from the heart?
It's hard for one to know
We are islands to each other
Building hopeful bridges
On a troubled sea
Some are burned or swept away
Some we would not choose
But we're not always free
Different Strings (3:49)
Who's come to slay the dragon-
Come to watch him fall?
Making arrows out of pointed words
Giant killers at the call
Too much fuss and bother
Too much contradiction and confusion
Peel away the mystery
Here's a clue to some real motivation
All there really is
The two of us
And we both know why we've come along
Nothing to explain
It's a part of us
To be found within a song
What happened to our innocence-
Did it go out of style?
Along with our naivete'-
No longer a child
Different eyes see different things
Different hearts beat on different strings
But there are times
For you and me
When all such things agree.
Natural Science (9:16)
I. Tide Pools (2:21)
When the ebbing tide retreats
Along the rocky shoreline
It leaves a trail of tidal pools
In a short-lived galaxy
Each microcosmic planet
A complete society
A simple kind of mirror
To reflect upon our own
All the busy little creatures
Chasing out their destinies
Living in their pools
They soon forget about the sea...
Wheels within wheels
In a spiral array
A pattern so grand
And complex
Time after time
We lose sight of the way
Our causes can't see
Their effects.
II. Hyperspace (2:47)
A quantum leap forward
In time and in space
The universe learned to expand
The mess and the magic
Triumphant and tragic
A mechanized world out of hand
Computerized clinic
For superior cynics
Who dance to a synthetic band
In their own image
Their world is fashioned-
No wonder they don't understand
Wheels within wheels
In a spiral array
A pattern so grand
And complex
Time after time
We lose sight of the way
Our causes can't see
Their effects.
III. Permanent Waves (4:08)
Science, like nature
Must also be tamed
With a view towards its preservation
Given the same
State of integrity
It will surely serve us well
Art as expression
Not as market campaigns
Will still capture our imaginations
Given the same
State of integrity
It will surely help us along
The most endangered species
The honest man
Will still survive annihilation
Forming a world-
State of integrity
Sensitive, open and strong
Wave after wave
Will flow with the tide
And bury the world as it does
Tide after tide
Will flow and recede
Leaving life to go on
As it was...
Notes:
- Certified Gold by RIAA: March 17, 1980 - Certified Platinum: November 9, 1987 - Highest Billboard Chart Position: 4
- The Remaster release gives credit for "Different Strings" to Peart, a misprint as confirmed by Anthem.
- Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs Ultradisc II™ 24 KT Gold CD, released January 8, 2008: this CD comes in heavy stock cardboard gatefold which replicates the original vinyl album packaging, and is gold stamped with a number making it a true limited edition. The CD itself is in a soft cloth sleeve which slips into the gatefold along with the CD booklet and a MOFI technical data informational card. The artwork is faithful to the original album, and even includes the incorrect lyrics of "Freewill" which were eventually corrected in the original Mercury remaster.
- This is the only studio album with a member of Rush pictured on the cover.
- The cover caused a great deal of controversy for the band as it contains the infamous "Dewey defeats Truman" headline which is still making "waves" to this day. When Harry Truman ran against Thomas Dewey for president of the United States, Truman lost in most of the states in the early returns; it looked like Dewey was going to win and the Chicago Tribune published a newspaper containing the erroneous headline early the next morning, Nov. 4, 1948.
"We shot the newspaper with the headline 'Dewey Defeats Truman,' which now looks like '(Arabic)-Daily-(Arabic),' because we got a threat from the legal people at the Chicago Tribune, who are still embarrassed about their over-anxious printing of that headline...anything that pertains to that headline, according to the Chicago Tribune, is an embarrassment, and is subject to litigation if we were to print up any facet of it. To boot, Coca-Cola asked that we strip out their billboard way off in the background because it was too close to a cotton-clad mons pubis." - Hugh Syme, Creem, 1983
The name "Dewey" has been changed to "Dewei" and "Chicago Tribute" is blurred on the Canadian and British releases, and both are blanked out completely on the U.S. release; in addition, on no current editions does the masthead actually read "Chicago Daily Tribune" as demonstrated by the German release. Besides differences in the newspaper, there are differeces on all three releases in how the names Lee and Lifeson are written on the billboards found at the far right of the cover, they even appear to be handwritten on the German release.
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Geddy Lee - Bass/Mini Moog/Oberheim Polyphonic/Tarus Pedals/Vocals
Alex Lifeson - Accoustic and Electric Guitars/Tarus Pedals
Neil Peart - Drums/Percussion
Additional Musicians:
Hugh Syme - Piano (Track 5)
Music by Lee and Lifeson
Lyrics by Peart, except
"Different Strings" by Lee
Produced by Rush and Terry Brown
Engineered by Paul Northfield
Mercury, January 1, 1980
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