40 years ago today Rush released their 2nd studio album, 1975's Fly By Night. This was Rush's first album with drummer/lyricist Neil Peart and their first album produced by Terry Brown, who would go on to produce all of Rush's albums up through 1982's Signals. It peaked at #113 on the Billboard album charts and was certified both Gold and Platinum by the RIAA on December 1, 1993. Neil Peart taking over the lyrical duties led Rush to adopt a more literary-based lyrical style on Fly By Night, differing significantly from their debut album. Songs like Rivendell and By-tor and the Snow Dog are examples of the influence of fantasy literature on Rush's lyrics. Here's an interesting anecdote regarding the origin of By-tor and the Snow Dog from the 2006 Rush biography Chemistry:

... [Howard Ungerleider] moved on to crashing at Ray [Danniel's] house, where he had to suffer Ray's dogs - a German shepherd, which used to look at me and growl, it was always pissed off, and a little, white, fluffy thing, like a snowball, which just jumped up and down, he explains. One day it all got too much - for Howard. I was in Ray's back yard, the f**king snowdog thing was jumping up, and the German shepherd was biting me... Of course when he recounted it to the guys, they thought it was hilarious. A biter, and the Snow Dog, they laughed. Sounds like an epic song!...

Back in 2011 Rush released a remaster of the album as part of the Sectors box sets, which included a DVD-Audio 5.1 surround sound version. Just a few weeks ago the band also reissued the album on vinyl and Blu-ray Audio as part of their 12 Months of Rush celebration where they will be releasing one or two of their Mercury-era titles each month of 2015. The vinyl reissue is on high-quality vinyl with a 320kbps MP4 Digital Audio download code, any you can purchase it here along with the Blu-ray Audio version.