| "Tom Sawyer" | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Single by Rush | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| from the album Moving Pictures | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| B-side | "Witch Hunt" (USA) "A Passage to Bangkok" (UK) |
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| Released | February 28, 1981 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Format | 7" | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Recorded | October - November 1980 at Le Studio, Morin Heights, Quebec | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Genre | Progressive rock, hard rock | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Length | 4:33 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Label | Mercury | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Writer(s) | Geddy Lee, Neil Peart, Alex Lifeson, Pye Dubois | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Producer | Rush and Terry Brown | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Rush singles chronology | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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"Tom Sawyer" is a song by Canadian rock band Rush, named after Mark Twain's literary character. The song was released on Mercury Records and PolyGram in 1981 on the Moving Pictures album and numerous compilations thereafter, such as 1990's Chronicles. It has also appeared on several live albums and bootlegs. The song relies heavily on Geddy Lee's synthesizer playing and the techniques of drummer Neil Peart. Geddy Lee has referred to the track as the band's "defining piece of music...from the early '80s".[1] It is one of Rush's best-known songs and is a staple of classic rock radio. It reached 25 in the UK singles chart in October 1981[2] and in the US peaked at #44 on the Billboard Hot 100 and at 8 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart.[3] In 2009 it was named the 19th greatest hard rock song of all time by VH1.[4] "Tom Sawyer" was one of five Rush songs inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame on March 28, 2010.[5]
Contents |
Origin [link]
The song was written by Lee, Peart, and guitarist Alex Lifeson in collaboration with Canadian lyricist Pye Dubois (the lyricist of Max Webster), who also co-wrote other Rush songs such as "Force Ten," "Between Sun and Moon," and "Test For Echo." According to the US radio show In the Studio with Redbeard (which devoted an entire episode to the making of Moving Pictures), "Tom Sawyer" came about during a summer rehearsal holiday that Rush spent at Ronnie Hawkins' farm outside Toronto. Peart was presented with a poem by Dubois named "Louis the Lawyer" (often cited as "Louis the Warrior")[6] that he modified and expanded. Lee and Lifeson then helped set the poem to music. The unique growling sound heard in the song came from Lee's fiddling with his Oberheim OB-X synthesizer.[7][8]
In the December 1985 Rush Backstage Club newsletter, drummer and lyricist Neil Peart said:
| “ | Tom Sawyer was a collaboration between myself and Pye Dubois, an excellent lyricist who wrote the lyrics for Max Webster. His original lyrics were kind of a portrait of a modern day rebel, a free-spirited individualist striding through the world wide-eyed and purposeful. I added the themes of reconciling the boy and man in myself, and the difference between what people are and what others perceive them to be - namely me I guess. | ” |
Alex Lifeson describes his guitar solo in "Tom Sawyer" in a 2007 interview:
| “ | I winged it. Honest! I came in, did five takes, then went off and had a cigarette. I'm at my best for the first two takes; after that, I overthink everything and I lose the spark. Actually, the solo you hear is composed together from various takes.[9] | ” |
"Tom Sawyer" begins in 4/4 before switching to 7/8 in the instrumental section. When the instrumental section ends, it returns to 4/4 before changing again to 7/8 for the outro.
In popular culture [link]
In film [link]
- Fanboys (also featuring, "Limelight")
- Rob Zombie's reimagining of Halloween[10]
- I Love You, Man (also featuring, "Limelight")
- Small Soldiers
- Adam Sandler's The Waterboy[11]
- Ari Gold's Adventures of Power[12]
In television [link]
- Chuck,[13]
- The band performed the song during an airing of The Colbert Report on July 16, 2008, in their first American television appearance in 33 years.[14]
- Everybody Hates Chris
- Family Guy
- Freaks and Geeks
- Fringe episode, "The Man from the Other Side"
- In the Futurama episode Anthology of Interest II, the song plays as Fry fights off an alien invasion using a control system identical to the game Space Invaders.
- The Hard Times of RJ Berger
- This song replaced the original MacGyver theme in its original airing in Brazil.[15]
- Regular Show
- The Sopranos episode, "Walk Like a Man"
- Trailer Park Boys
Covers [link]
(Alphabetized by artist)
- Featured during the breakdown of The Aquabats song 'Pool Party' from their album Myths, Legends, and Other Amazing Adventures, Vol. 2
- The Bad Plus from the 2007 album Prog
- Briefly featured in "Grade 9" by Barenaked Ladies along with a brief cover of the intro riff from The Spirit of Radio.
- Heavy metal, synth rock band Deadsy from the 2002 album Commencement[16]
- Canadian gypsy jazz band The Lost Fingers on their album Gypsy Kameloneon
- punk, electronica band Mindless Self Indulgence from their 2005 album You'll Rebel to Anything[17]
- The band Rage from the 1998 album XIII
- Run for Cover[18]
- Sebastian Bach[19]
- Sampled by the Young Black Teenagers on their 1994 recording "Time To Make The Dough Nutz"
- DJ Z-Trip remix on Small Soldiers[20]
Other uses [link]
- "Pass The Mic, Tom: Beastie Boys vs. Rush" by Melody Lanes - a mashup of the Beastie Boys' "Pass The Mic" and Rush's "Tom Sawyer"
- "All Night" - a song by Mike Shinoda featuring Styles of Beyond from his mixtape We Major features the music of Tom Sawyer
- All-Pro Football 2K8 has the song in its soundtrack,
See also [link]
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, the book that is referenced in the song
References [link]
- ^ Rush Press Conference in Puerto Rico, April 9, 2008
- ^ UK Charts 1981, accessed July 17, 2008
- ^ "Rush > Charts & Awards > Billboard Singles". Allmusic. https://www.allmusic.com/artist/p5323/charts-awards/billboard-singles. Retrieved December 27, 2009.
- ^ "spreadit.org music". https://music.spreadit.org/vh1-top-100-hard-rock-songs/. Retrieved February 7, 2009.
- ^ Infantry, Ashante (2010-01-20). "(News) New home a place to sing praises of our songwriters". The Toronto Star. https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/article/753007--new-home-a-place-to-sing-praises-of-our-songwriters. Retrieved 2010-06-16.
- ^ Popoff, Martin. Contents Under Pressure: 30 Years of Rush at Home and Away. ECW Press. ISBN 1-55022-678-9.
- ^ https://www.vintagesynth.com/oberheim/obx.shtml
- ^ https://www.rainycitynights.com/band/rush_stuff/tomsawyergrowl.htm
- ^ Joe Bosso (July 2007). "Vital Signs". Guitar World.
- ^ Halloween Soundtrack on Amazon, accessed July 18, 2008
- ^ The Waterboy Soundtrack on Amazon, accessed July 18, 2008
- ^ https://andrewolson.com/Neil_Peart/adventures_of_power/interview.htm
- ^ Chuck Soundtrack on IMDb
- ^ Rush to Perform for the First Time on U.S. Television in Over 30 Years on 'The Colbert Report', PR Newswire, July 15, 2008
- ^ Rush in television Power Windows Website Accessed July 18, 2008
- ^ "Deadsy - Tom Sawyer". last.fm. https://www.last.fm/music/Deadsy/_/Tom+Sawyer.
- ^ "Mindless Self Indulgence - Tom Sawyer". last.fm. https://www.last.fm/music/Mindless+Self+Indulgence/_/Tom+Sawyer.
- ^ List of Cover Albums on Power Windows, accessed July 18, 2008 Archived July 16, 2008 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Subdivisions on Amazon, accessed July 18, 2008
- ^ "Small Soldiers soundtrack listing". IMDB. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0122718/soundtrack.
External links [link]
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https://wn.com/Tom_Sawyer_(song)
Tom Sawyer
Thomas "Tom" Sawyer is the title character of the Mark Twain novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876). He appears in three other novels by Twain: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894), and Tom Sawyer, Detective (1896).
Sawyer also appears in at least three unfinished Twain works, Huck and Tom Among the Indians, Schoolhouse Hill and Tom Sawyer's Conspiracy. While all three uncompleted works were posthumously published, only Tom Sawyer's Conspiracy has a complete plot, as Twain abandoned the other two works after finishing only a few chapters.
The fictional character's name may have been derived from a jolly and flamboyant fireman named Tom Sawyer with whom Twain was acquainted in San Francisco, California, while Twain was employed as a reporter at the San Francisco Call. Twain used to listen to Sawyer tell stories of his youth, "Sam, he would listen to these pranks of mine with great interest and he'd occasionally take 'em down in his notebook. One day he says to me: ‘I am going to put you between the covers of a book some of these days, Tom.’ ‘Go ahead, Sam,’ I said, ‘but don’t disgrace my name.’" Twain himself said the character sprang from three people, later identified as: John B. Briggs (who died in 1907), William Bowen (who died in 1893) and Twain; however Twain later changed his story saying Sawyer was fully formed solely from his imagination, but as Robert Graysmith says, "The great appropriator liked to pretend his characters sprang fully grown from his fertile mind."
Tom Sawyer (2000 film)
Tom Sawyer is a 2000 direct-to-video animated film from MGM Animation and was released in the year 2000. It is an adaptation of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, with a cast of anthropomorphic animals instead of humans. The characters' voices are generally performed by country music singers.
Plot
Tom Sawyer and his half-brother Sid are on their way to school when they see Huckleberry Finn fishing. Tom skips school to join Huck, but changes his mind after he sees Becky Thatcher. He tries to sneak into class, but Sid snitches on him to the teacher. Tom's teacher makes him sit with the girls, which Tom actually likes since he's able to sit next to Becky. He is also sat beside Amy Lawrence, a friend to whom he became "engaged". She still has romantic feelings for him but he is too transfixed by Becky to notice. Tom's pet frog Rebel then disrupts the class, meaning they are given early dismissal.
On the way home from school, during the musical number "Hook, Line and Sinker", Tom tries multiple times to steal a kiss from Becky, but is thwarted each time by her father, Judge Thatcher. The next day, as Tom is about to go fishing with his friends, Aunt Polly makes him paint the house as punishment for what happened at school. Tom, however, gets his friends to paint the house for him instead.
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (anime)
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (トム・ソーヤーの冒険 Tomu Sōyā no Bōken) is a Japanese/American anime series, directed by Hiroshi Saitô which was aired in 1980. It is based on the well-known and popular novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain.
The series was broadcast on the World Masterpiece Theater, an animation staple on Fuji TV that showcased each year an animated version of a different classical book or story of Western literature, and was originally titled "Tom Sawyer no Bōken". It was the second installment of the series, after 1977's Rascal the Raccoon, to feature the work of an American author.
This series was also dubbed to English by Saban International and aired on HBO c. 1988 under the title "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer." It aired during the 7:30AM time slot and alternated with the later WMT version of "Little Women." Celebrity Home Entertainment released videos in the United States under the title "All New Adventures of Tom Sawyer".
In 1997, 2008, 2010, and 2014, it was aired on ABS-CBN in the Philippines.
