Former Styx frontman Dennis DeYoung recently told us that classic rock died in 1979, and even if you dispute his timeline, there's no getting around the decade's hold on fans of the genre. Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson has noticed it too, and he weighed in on listeners' love for the older stuff during a recent interview with Indie Power.

"I guess it was an era in music, and there's staying power in a lot of that music," Lifeson mused. "Things were so different then. Communication is so instant now and everybody's got thousands of songs on their iPhone. It's a whole different thing. Certainly the music of that era, for the most part, is quite enduring."

Fortunately for Lifeson, occasionally all that lingering goodwill ends up contributing to healthy sales and higher profiles later in bands' careers -- particularly in the somewhat surprising example of Rush, whose decades of cult success exploded into full-on mainstream stardom (and induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame) in recent years.

The group will celebrate its 40th anniversary on Nov. 11 with the release of 'R40,' a hefty box of concert performances displaying their renowned live experience.

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