Rivendell/Rush

J.R.R. Tolkien and Ayn Rand make for odd literary bedfellows, but Rush's 1975 album Fly by Night features songs based on the writings of both authors (for the Rand reference, see our previous post about Anthem). The title of the song Rivendell refers to the home of the Elves in Tolkien's fantasy world of Middle Earth. Rivendell features in both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, most notably as the site of the Council of Elrond in The Fellowship of the Ring. The song captures the sense of peace and serenity that visitors to Rivendell always feel, and travelers long to return to: Elven songs and endless nights/Sweet wine and soft relaxing lights/Time will never touch you/Here in this enchanted place. It is also identified as A place you can escape the world/Where the Dark Lord cannot go--a reference to Tolkien's übervillain, Sauron. Tolkien's writings are also said to have influenced another Rush song, The Necromancer, though the references are less direct.

Anthem/Rush

Anthem, from Rush's 1975 album Fly by Night, is based on Ayn Rand's short dystopian novel Anthem. Rand depicts a future society in which all individualism has been banished by the ruling body, the World Council (even use of the pronoun 'I' is punishable by death) and everyone's activities are focused on the good of the collective. Just as Rand intended the book to be an ode or anthem celebrating mankind's ego (the last word in the novel), so the song's lyrics celebrate the individual: Live for yourself, there's no one else/More worth living for/Begging hands and bleeding hearts will only cry out for more. In keeping with Rand's concept of the "virtue of selfishness," the lyrics state: I know they've always told you/Selfishness was wrong/Yet it was for me, not you, that I came to write this song. The same book served as the inspiration for the title track of Rush's 1976 album 2112. This futuristic 20-minute mini-rock opera so closely parallels Rand's novel that the band felt compelled to credit her in the liner notes.