Chain Lightning
by Rush

Album: Presto (1989)
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Songfacts®:

  • Neil Peart (from the Rush Profiled! CD): "I'm a weather fanatic - I really love weather, and I watch the weather and look for a good weatherman. And, one night I was watching it, and there are two incidents in that song that are Synchronicity to one weather report, where the weatherman showed a picture of sun dogs, and described them, and they are just two little points of light that appear at sunset, often in the winter when the sky is clear and crystalline, and they are like little prisms, and they sit about ten degrees north and south of the setting sun, and they are just beautiful little diamonds of light, and often times there's a circle of light - one line, that connects them. So they are a really beautiful natural phenomenon, and I love the name too. 'Sun dogs' just has a great sound to it. And in that same weather forecast, the weatherman announced a meteor shower that night, and so my daughter and I went out on the lake in the middle of the night and watched this meteor shower. So the whole idea of the song was response and how people respond to things, and it's a thing I've found a lot in traveling around the world, too. It's not enough just to travel and see things. You have to respond to them - you have to feel them, and a lot of the thrust of that song is how things are transferred, like chain lightning or enthusiasm or energy or love are things that are contagious, and if someone feels them, they are easily transferable to another person, or in the case of watching a meteor shower, it's made more special if there is someone else there. 'Reflected in another pair of eyes' is the idea that it's a wonderful thing already, just you and the meteor shower, but if there's someone else there with you to share it, then it multiplies, you know, it becomes exponentially a bigger experience, so response is a theme that recurs in several of the songs and was one of my probably dominant sub-themes in the writing." >>
    Suggestion credit:
    Mike - Mountlake Terrace, Washington

Comments: 8

  • Mark Napoleoni from Rhode Island The drumming on this entire album is genius - the triplets on the ride cymbal during the chorus is one of those grooves that give me a semi
  • Patrick from Bedford, TxThis band could have been great if they had a better lyricist.
  • Rufus from Wheeling, WvI like this album, overall, and my favorite off of it is Presto; I love the acoustic guitar on it.
  • Gabriel from Minneapolis, MnThis was was the song that made me fall in love with Rush. What a beautiful deed it is to share a passion with someone you love. It's like chain lightning, indeed.

    Presto was my first Rush tape. It's got a very special place in my heart.
  • Bret from Coos Bay, OrI think that this is my least favorite Rush song. Whenever someone asks me to play a Rush song I don't like, I always play this one.
  • John from Asheville, NcBit of an underlooked song on the album...but I guess that's not much different from most of the songs on Presto. :)
  • Peter from Newark, NyI am pretty sure that this is the only song title that two of my favorite bands Rush, and Steely Dan have in common.
  • Jason from Old Bridge, NjThe song is called Chain Lightning
see more comments

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