9/8: Fly By Night (LIVE)
9/8: Fly By Night (LIVE)
No sugar-coating: This performance sucks. And that's why I like it.
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.
I’ve waxed poetic over the past several months about how marvelous the experience of a Rush live show was. But truth was, they didn’t always hit it out of the park.
Today’s rendition of “Fly By Night” is a good reminder that even our heroes are human. The performance, recorded in 1978 during the A Farewell to Kings tour, is… well… bizarre.
For starters, the guys blaze through the song, speeding up the tempo, cutting the pauses, and generally squeezing the track down from 3:22 to just 2:04.
Second, Geddy does that William Shatner-esque read of the lyrics that he briefly flirted with in the late 70’s—where he speaks his way through the lyrics rather than singing him. I don’t know if he was grappling with throat trouble for this tour or if he just tired of being known as the guy who could hit high notes, but the speak-not-sing style is awkward even for Nu Metal singers—it sure as heck doesn’t work on him.
The end result sounds awful. Like the guys are embarrassed to be playing and want the experience to be over as quickly as possible. Thankfully, with only two minutes in this track, they get their wish.
Rather than skip this performance, however, I like to listen to it once in a while, and have even developed some fondness for it. It reminds me that even geniuses can make mistakes and missteps, and that one bad performance doesn’t change the brilliance of the underlying art.
For years and years and years I would usually skip over Revolution #9 when listening to The Beatles (an easy thing to do in the 💿 and digital age). Somewhere along the way, for better or worse, I decided to let it play … always. It’s part of the White Album experience. I can’t say it’s ever been *good*, but it’s part of the story … and I realized it made Good Night’s stuck landing stick that much better. Is this version of Fly By Night *good*? In the immortal words of Moe Szyslak after tasting Homer’s pre-flaming concoction, “it’s not without its charms.”