“Let Them All Make Their Own Music”

This chapter discusses the emergence of progressive rock in the half decade following the late 1960s counterculture (1969–74), in part engaging with issues of genre designation and cultural hierarchy. It then explores Rush's “2112,” “Xanadu,” and “Cygnus X-l” (all from 1976 or ’77) as case studies of the band's peculiar, late 1970s brand of individualism. These three extended compositions use not only lyrics but also varied stylistic features, alternating textures, specific musical gestures, and contrasting tonal areas to inscribe a skeptical point of view concerning the possibility of individual agency, both within an existing society and even in the absence of such a structure.