Between the Wheels: Background

There are three ways people interact with the wheels of time: they get picked up by them and, like the digital man, are carried along; they get crushed; or they roll through the middle of the wheels, neither hurt nor helped.

“The idea of ‘Between the Wheels’ was really kind of the opposite of ‘Digital Man,’ where life goes faster than a person does. They’re in the back water, watching the action go by, and watching the time go by. [Another way to look at its is] the wheels of time pick up some people and carry them forward; other people, without being too melodramatic about it, are crushed by these wheels. But in the middle, there are people who are untouched by the wheels, and that was what I was getting at: the fact that these people are neither hurt nor helped by them. They are in a very sedentary position.” (Jim Ladd Innerview)—Neil in Merely Players

“‘Between the Wheels’ is about pressure, and returns to the gloom of much of the rest of Grace Under Pressure. Alex’s guitar really jumps out. A lyric from the song puts across what they all must have felt at the time. ‘We can go from boom to bust . . . from dreams to a bowl of dust.'”—Bill Banasiewicz, Rush Visions

“Gertrude Stein used the term ‘lost generation.’ ‘Brother, can you spare a dime?’ was a catch phrase during the Depression. The lines that segue to the next album [Power Windows]: ‘soaking up the cathode rays.'”—Robert Telleria, Merely Players

“I did some listening to ‘Between the Wheels’ and [other pieces on Grace Under Pressure a couple of months ago [in 2004], and I just love them. They’re really dense. Peter Henderson [who worked on the album] was a very good engineer. I do think he did a great job recording the album.”—Geddy in Contents Under Pressure

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