It was one of the first tracks finished for the “Test For Echo” album, featuring three separate bass tracks; the main part, the harmony part and the sub bass bottom end, which sound as one massive bass track. If you need any more evidence about the abilities of Geddy Lee, look no further.

Neil Peart also plays a little bit behind the beat which gives the riffs a heavier character.

Driven up and down in circles
Skidding down a road of black ice

You know the saying of “going round in circles” well in this case, the feeling is that we are not achieving anything because someone else is controlling the wheel and we keep coming back to the same point or problem.

But it’s my turn to drive

We need to take the wheel and be in control of our choices and decisions. We need to learn from them, grown with them and take ownership of our choices and actions. There is no one to blame when it’s our turn to drive.

And how the change from distortion to acoustic in this section is soothing before the fuzz kicks in again. Plus the simple chord progression of F, G and Am makes it so accessible.

Driven to the margin of error
Driven to the edge of control
Driven to the margin of terror
Driven to the edge of a deep, dark hole

How driven or ambitious can we be, that we find ourselves driven to the edge of control, or a deep dark hole?

Driven on
By the road to somewhere I’ve never been

A simple meaning of what it means to drive. It offers us the freedom to leave our city limits and go to another city and another.

And these days, technology companies scan between 150 million and 200 million photos of license plates captured by cameras in malls, parking lots, and residential neighborhoods every month, to amass huge information on the data point locations of cars, which they then use to sell to the police.

If the police want to know the whereabouts of a number plate and where that plate had been in the past, this company can tell them.

That’s why we drive on to roads we’ve never been and cameras have never been.

The road unwinds before me
And I go riding on

It’s what we always do, we get up and live and go riding on. And we sacrifice or give up control, a little bit of our freedom each time which brings us back to the first verse and the words of being driven up and down in circles.

And the cycle repeats.

And after the “Test For Echo” tour, the band was put on hold as Neil Peart would see tragedy with the passing of his daughter and a year later, his wife.