I feel like I understand Peart here. As a casual Rush fan, I don't listen to much of their older stuff. A few months ago I played Chronicles straight through, and was struck more than ever by the Led Zeppelin resemblance. (More accurately, it resembled a particular subset of LZ, and you can tell that later on they started listening to Yes.) Then "La Villa Strangiato" started up and my immediate reaction was, "Holy shit, a Rush song!" There's such a discontinuous change in style -- as if the entire band abruptly emerged in its adult form.
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