Album: 2112 (1976)

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Songfacts®:

• Rush drummer and lyricist Neil Peart is a big fan of The Twilight Zone TV series, and he based this song on 2 separate episodes of the show. The first is "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?" (episode 28 from Season 2, first aired: May 26, 1961) which is set in a diner and Barney Phillips is the easygoing counterman with the three eyes. The second is episode 30 from Season 5, "Stopover In a Quiet Town" (first aired: April 24, 1964) about a couple who get drunk at a party and wake up in an empty house in an empty town with no other residents and everything is fake or like a stage prop and at the end they look up and see a giant child. It turns out they are now a play-toy. Serling's closing narration is among the series funniest: "The moral of what you've just seen is clear. If you drink, don't drive. And if your wife has had a couple, she shouldn't drive either. You both might just wind up with a whale of a headache in a deserted village in The Twilight Zone." Peart changed the giant girl to a boy in the lyrics. >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Mike - Mountlake Terrace, Washington

Comments: 6

• Joey Freer from Kingston, NyI Watch The Twilight Zone Every Fourth Of July and New Years on the Scifi Channel
• Dale from Santa Fe, NmJust another fantastic Rush song.
• Dominick from New York, NyThere was another song called "Twilight Zone (When The Bullet Hits The Bone)" by Golden Earring in 1982.
• Dominick from New York, NyMike,
  
  I don't think the last episode (#156) was made in France. It was a different episode from the last season that was made in France and shown at the Cannes Film festival. It was the only one of the 156 episodes that was not made as a Twilight Zone episode and that's why it's not shown on reruns.
  
  The episode was called "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge." It's about a Confederate soldier who is about to be hanged by the Union soldiers, but the rope breaks and he escapes into the Creek and swims away. For the whole episode the Union soldiers pursue him, but he manages to escape. When he arrives at his plantation he sees his wife and they run towards each other to embrace.
  
  As his wife puts her arms around his neck, the scene shifts back to the Creek, he's pushed off the bridge, and hanged. He had imagined the whole escape scene in the few seconds before he was hanged.
  
  I think that is the episode you mean that qualified for an Oscar. I did an entire database and program of the Twilight Zone series, so I know a little about it.
  
  Great stuff. As a child, The Hitchhiker episode used to scare me.
  
  
• Mike from Mountlake Terrace, Washington~The Twilight Zone series ran from 1959-1964~
  
  "Where is Everybody?", the series' pilot, original air date October 2, 1959, about a man apparently with amnesia who wakes up lost in an empty town, wondering why no one else is around.
  
  The series final episode "The Bewitching pool"
  -about two neglected children who escape their constantly bickering parents by diving into their swimming pool and emerging in a mysterious, but loving, world, which aired June 18, 1964 was a short film made in France, which qualified it for an Oscar. It was also shown on another series Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
  
  
• Mike from Mountlake Terrace, WashingtonOn the back of the album sleeve of Caress of Steel (1975) was printed the statement "Dedicated to the memory of Mr. Rod Serling" Serling wrote most Twilight Zone episodes and narrated the show. Rod Serling died just 3 months before Caress of Steel was released in Sept. 1975

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