Hand Over Fist: Background

“Hand Over Fist” is among the songs in later albums that switches Rush’s traditional reliance on individualism and self-reliance to interdependence with others.

“You must stand or fail by your own merits. This runs through all their work. However, the earlier work would emphasize that failure is either the result of your acceptance of the rule of others or of circumstances that need not be, while their latter work would emphasize that failure comes from a lack of awareness and inability to relate to, change, and adapt to your surroundings. Awareness of my surroundings may spark the wish to . . . ‘feel the strength in the hand’ of another.

“This shift in register [from self-reliance to interdependence] may reflect Peart’s advancing intellectual maturity as well as the band’s confidence following what had been more than a decade as a successful band.”—Chris McDonald, Rush, Rock Music, and the Middle Class

Rather than meaning [to certain songs], “think more of impressions, images, and an internal logic to each line or each verse. What I was after in . . . songs like ‘Hand Over Fist’ is more a sense of resonance, so that the listener might feel something.”—Neil in Backstage Club (1991), reproduced in Telleria, Merely Players

More about “Hand Over Fist”

Back to Rush Vault