It starts with a simple, almost nursery-rhyme acoustic guitar pluck. Then, Neil Peart’s lyrics for The Trees by Rush drop you right into the middle of a forest floor power struggle. Most people hear it and think, "Oh, it's a fable about maples and oaks." But if you’ve spent any time in a classic rock forum or a philosophy class, you know it’s never just about the timber.
The song, tucked away on the 1978 album Hemispheres, is a brief four-and-a-half-minute masterclass in how to piss off almost everyone while trying to make a point about equality. Or was it about greed? Honestly, even the band members have spent decades trying to clarify what Peart was actually thinking when he scribbled those lines down.
The literal struggle in the lyrics for The Trees by Rush
Let's look at the "plot" first. It's basically a botanical civil war. You have the Maples, who are annoyed because the Oaks are hogging all the sunlight. The Oaks, being huge and sturdy, basically tell the Maples to deal with it. They wonder why the Maples can't just be happy in their shade. It’s a classic upstairs-downstairs dynamic played out in the Canadian wilderness.
The tension builds. The Maples form a union. They demand equal rights. They get them. How? By "hatchet, axe, and saw."
That ending is where the song goes from a cute Disney-esque story to something much darker. It’s a total rug-pull. Just when you think the trees have found a peaceful resolution through some kind of forest legislation, the humans show up with blades. Everyone is made equal, but only because everyone is cut down to the same height. Or, you know, dead.
Where the idea actually came from
Neil Peart was famously a reader. He didn't just write "baby, I love you" songs; he wrote about Ayn Rand, Greek mythology, and the heat death of the universe. But the origin of The Trees by Rush is surprisingly mundane. Peart once mentioned in an interview with Modern Drummer that he saw a cartoon of trees acting like people. That’s it. That was the spark.
He thought it was funny to see plants bickering over things that only humans care about. He took that tiny, silly image and expanded it into a grand metaphor for social engineering and the dangers of forced equality. It’s a very "Peart" thing to do—taking a comic strip idea and turning it into a prog-rock epic that sounds like a medieval battle.
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Why people still fight over what it means
If you ask a libertarian, this song is their anthem. They see it as a direct critique of socialism or any system that tries to "level the playing field" by dragging the successful down. To them, the Oaks are the high achievers, and the Maples are the envious masses using the law to steal what they didn't earn.
But then you talk to someone on the left, and they see it totally differently. They see the Oaks as the 1%, the hoarding elite who take all the resources (the light) and wonder why everyone else is complaining. The "hatchet, axe, and saw" isn't a critique of the Maples; it's a warning that if you don't share the light, the whole system collapses for everyone.
The beauty—or the frustration—of the lyrics for The Trees by Rush is that Peart never explicitly picked a side in the song itself. He describes the conflict with a sort of detached, journalistic eye.
- The Oaks think the Maples are just being dramatic.
- The Maples feel oppressed.
- The solution is catastrophic for both.
The Randian connection
We can't talk about Rush in the late 70s without mentioning Ayn Rand. Peart was heavily influenced by her writing during the 2112 era, famously giving her a shout-out in the liner notes. Because of this, many fans view the song as a sequel to those individualist themes.
However, by the time Hemispheres came out, Peart’s views were already starting to shift. He later described himself as a "bleeding-heart libertarian," which is a weird contradiction that perfectly fits this song. He valued the individual, sure, but he wasn't blind to the cruelty of the world.
The musical irony of the forest
One thing that often gets overlooked is how the music mirrors the lyrics. The song starts very delicately. It's gentle. It's "folksy." But as the Maples get more indignant, Geddy Lee’s bass gets more aggressive. Alex Lifeson’s guitar goes from a classical nylon-string sound to a screaming electric roar.
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By the time the saws come out, the band is playing at a frantic, almost mechanical pace. The music itself becomes the machinery of the "equalization" mentioned in the final verse. It’s a brilliant bit of songwriting where the instruments are doing just as much storytelling as the words.
People often forget how difficult this song is to play, too. It’s a staple for any aspiring prog drummer because of Peart's woodblock work. Yes, woodblocks. He used them to simulate the sound of the forest, further leaning into that "cartoon" origin story.
Misconceptions that just won't die
A big one: People think it’s a song about environmentalism. It’s not. It has almost nothing to do with saving the planet or the beauty of nature. The trees are just props. Using nature as a metaphor for human politics is an old trick—think Aesop’s Fables—and Rush used it to perfection here.
Another misconception is that the song is "anti-union." While the Maples "sought enlightenment" and formed a league, the critique seems to be more about the outcome than the effort. The song suggests that when we focus entirely on the "law" making us equal, we forget that the tool used to enforce that law might just destroy us all. It’s a grim outlook.
Real-world echoes
You see the themes of The Trees by Rush everywhere today. It’s in the debates over wealth taxes. It’s in the arguments about affirmative action. It’s in the way we talk about "equity vs. equality."
The song doesn't offer a happy ending because, in Peart’s eyes, there wasn't an easy answer. If the Oaks keep the light, the Maples die. If the Maples take the light by force, the forest gets clear-cut. It’s a classic "no-win" scenario that feels remarkably modern for a song written nearly fifty years ago.
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How to listen to it today
To really get the song, you have to look past the "maple" and "oak" labels. Don't get bogged down in which tree represents which political party. Instead, look at the final line: "And the trees are all kept equal by hatchet, axe, and saw."
That is the core of the message. It's a warning about the unintended consequences of trying to force a perfect world. It’s about the loss of individuality in the face of systemic "solutions."
Whether you're a die-hard Rush fan or just someone who likes a good rock song, these lyrics demand that you think. They don't let you sit comfortably. You’re forced to choose a side, and then you're shown that both sides ended up as firewood. It’s dark stuff for a song that starts with a woodblock.
Understanding the song's legacy
If you want to dive deeper into the world of Neil Peart's lyricism, the best next step is to compare this track to "Cinderella Man" from the A Farewell to Kings album. While "The Trees" deals with the collective, "Cinderella Man" (based on the Frank Capra film Mr. Deeds Goes to Town) deals with the individual's role in society.
Reading Peart's book, Far and Wide, also gives a lot of insight into how his perspective on these early songs changed over his life. He was never a man to stand still, and his lyrics evolved as he did.
The most important thing to remember about the lyrics for The Trees by Rush is that they aren't a lecture. They’re a question. They’re asking: "Is this really how we want to solve our problems?" And decades later, we still don't have a better answer than the one the woodsman gave.