Rush Enter The Canadian Songwriters Hall Of Fame

Rush fans, rejoice. Though they’ve yet to schmooze their way into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, the Toronto-based prog-rockers have made it into perhaps an even more august establishment: The Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame.

The band was inducted on Sunday, March 28, for the songs “Tom Sawyer,” “The Spirit of Radio,” “Limelight,” “Closer to the Heart” and “Subdivisions.” Rush join previous Hall of Fame inductees Paul Anka, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Burton Cummings and Randy Bachman, Gordon Lightfoot, Claude Dubois, Jean-Pierre Ferland, Félix Leclerc, Raymond Lévesque, Gilles Vigneault, Bob Nolan, Claude Léveillée, Shelton Brooks, Serge Deyglun, and Hank Snow.

Drummer and chief lyricist Neil Peart talked to The Toronto Sun about “Subdivisions”: “It’s a very unusual song construction lyrically and musically that we managed to make work. It was written at a time when we weren’t working, so to speak. We were mixing a live album and we just started playing around and wrote a song for fun. Although it’s very serious in it’s musical structure, one of the most complicated actually that we’ve had in terms of arrangement drum part alone, it’s a really intricate drum part to play and consequently I still love playing it almost 30 years later and that’s a good testament.”

According to the Sun, the band are five songs into a new studio album. “Something we haven’t done since the ’80s is write new songs and go out and play them,” says Peart. “It’s interesting to be so deeply involved in songwriting right now with this honour coming up. It kind of puts a fresh observation on it for me.”