New World Man: Background

The new world man is enlightened and powerful, but still “human, all too human.”—Rob Freedman, Rush Vault

“‘New World Man’ speaks of the need to start over, building a better society from the ground up, using self-assured individualists as the building blocks.”—Carol Selby Price and Robert Price, Mystic Rhythms

The piece was known as “Project 3:57” during the recording period because the band had that much time to fill on the album before they could call the album done. “What it really boiled down to was that we’d worked so hard getting all these slick sounds that we were all in the mood to put something down that was spontaneous. In the end, the whole song took one day to write and record. It’s good to put together something like that.”—Geddy in Merely Players

It “continues the band’s experiments with exotic rhythms. Even more than on ‘The Spirit of Radio,’ reggae infiltrates the music. Some of the sonic problems of the other tunes [guitar pushed too far back in the mixing] are toned down on the piece; the song is a little sharper than most of the material.”—Bill Banasiewicz, Rush Visions

It “was the first single that we ever had that had a quite wide appeal, especially on radio where it wasn’t only those kind of stations that played harder stuff. As a musical piece it was a departure for us, something a little poppier, I think.” (Up Close, 1994)—Alex in Merely Players

“It was almost compulsory to do solos at that time, but I didn’t want to feel that every song had to have that kind of structure. I wanted to get away from that, and to this day I feel that way. I enjoy playing solos and I feel that my soloing is quite unique to my style, but I’m bored with that structure. . . . I used a Tele for the whole song. I played it through the Hiwatts with a little bit of reverb and chorus.”—Alex in a 1996 Guitar World interview

More about “New World Man”

Three “New World Man” tribute versions.

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