Tom Sawyer

Dubois, the lyricist for the band Max Webster, wrote a poem called Louis the Warrior. Peart modified and expanded it during a summer rehearsal at Ronnie Hawkins' farm outside Toronto, and Lee and Lifeson set it to music. Peart wrote in a 1985 fan-club newsletter that Dubois's original was a portrait of a modern-day rebel and that he added the theme of reconciling the boy and the man in himself. Lee used a Fender Jazz Bass bought from a pawn shop for the first time on this track.

The band had more trouble with it than with anything else on the album and at times doubted it would work. Because of problems with the computer that mixed the tracks, each member worked his own faders on the desk by hand. Lifeson said he played five takes of the solo and that the one on the record was assembled from several. The song has a 4/4 backbeat with an instrumental and closing sections in 7/8.

It reached number 24 in Canada and number 44 on the American Hot 100. The studio recording was not issued as a single in Britain, but the live version from Exit...Stage Left reached number 25 there in November 1981. The Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame inducted it in 2010. Both Rolling Stone and Ultimate Classic Rock rank it first among Rush songs, and Pitchfork called it the band's signature song.