Something for Nothing: Background

“2112 closes with perhaps the clearest and most concise statement of purpose the band ever recorded. ‘Something for Nothing’ sounds like a call to action: ‘You don’t get something for nothing / You don’t get freedom for free / You won’t get wise with the sleep still in your eyes / No matter what your dream might be.'”—Bill Banasiewicz, Rush Visions

“The point of the whole song, though expressed in different ways, is you must be inner-directed if you are ever to follow your dreams to fruition. That doesn’t mean automatic rebellion against self-proclaimed authorities. If you felt you had to do the opposite of whatever they say to you, your action would still be controlled, albeit in a perverse way, by their commands. . . . This point is made strikingly by the clear allusion to the closing doxology of the Lord’s Prayer (‘For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.’) Here the phrases are reapplied: you are to seek your own kingdom, your own glory, your own power, your own story.”—Carol Selby Price and Robert Price, Mystic Rhythms

“An important example of individualsm as a motivational theme. . . . The values of self-reliance and responsibility for the self are urgently expounded and laziness is criticized.—Christopher McDonald, Rush, Rock Music, and the Middle Class

Neil in his book Traveling Music says he adapted the concept of “Something for Nothing” from a line, “Freedom isn’t free,” he found scrawled on a building wall in the 1970s near the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles.

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