Bonded by Music: Ayn Rand’s Evening with Duane Eddy

Grammy Award-winning guitarist Duane Eddy recently passed away at the age of 86, prompting many to commemorate his musical legacy. A member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and ranked among the greatest guitarists of all time by Rolling Stone magazine, Eddy sold millions of records worldwide and was best known for his “twangy” electric guitar style. Interestingly, Eddy was an admirer of Ayn Rand and her philosophy, as evidenced by their personal encounter and correspondence.

When Eddy reread The Fountainhead at the age of twenty-three, he was already a successful musician who had sold over a million copies of his song “Rebel-’Rouser” and been voted the World’s Number One Musical Personality by readers of the UK’s New Musical Express. In interviews now housed in the Ayn Rand Archives, Eddy recounted his burgeoning interest: “I had read [The Fountainhead] once before and I had read it again and really got interested and started buying everything. I bought Anthem and We the Living and Atlas Shrugged. . . . It clarified things I had thought but not been able to articulate. . . . It clarified life, as it were.”¹ Shortly thereafter, Eddy began attending lectures sponsored by the Nathaniel Branden Institute, and he was subsequently invited to have dinner with Rand herself.

Recalling their first meeting, Eddy said: “I’ve met a lot of stars in my life, including Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley and several others. She had the same quality . . . she had a sparkle, a self-assurance that was immediately apparent. . . . She laughed heartily. She didn’t just giggle or snicker, she belly laughed when someone said something funny. I thought this is a very earthy, normal, wonderful woman.”²

After dinner, Rand played one of her favorite songs for Eddy from an old, worn-out record: “Will O’ The Wisp” composed by Herbert Küster.³ This prompted Eddy to ask, “Could that possibly be the ‘Song of Broken Glass’ in We the Living?” Stunned that Eddy had recognized the thematic connection between both songs, she praised him for being one of the few readers who “really understand what I’m saying.”⁴ For Rand, the record was a prized possession despite its degraded quality. She had never been able to find another copy of the out-of-print record.

Some time later, Eddy visited the BBC Radio archives in London, where he was able to locate another copy of “Will O’ The Wisp”—believed to be the only other copy in existence.⁵ He enlisted the help of a sound engineer to clean up the record, which Eddy claimed had gone out of production in 1935.⁶ He then sent the new version to Rand along with a letter stating, “Since you have been such a constant ‘shortcut to knowledge’ for me, . . . I am very happy that I was able to do this small thing for you.”⁷ 'Recalling their first meeting, Eddy said: “I’ve met a lot of stars in my life, including Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley and several others. She had the same quality . . . she had a sparkle, a self-assurance that was immediately apparent.' Share on X

Rand replied with a letter of gratitude. “I must tell you that no present can give me a thrill today, only my kind of music can and does,” she wrote. “You have given me a powerful source of my personal ‘benevolent universe.’ No, it is not a ‘small thing,’ it means a great deal to me—and I appreciate it profoundly.”⁸

In an interview when he was sixty-one years old, Eddy said that Rand continued to influence him and that “I’m still introducing people to her. . . . I just think she’s the greatest mind who ever lived. Most coherent, most logical, most far-reaching thinker of anybody that I have ever been able to discover.”⁹

A previous version of this article stated that Herbert Küster’s composition “Will O’ The Wisp” served as inspiration for “The Song of Broken Glass” in We the Living. However, as noted in footnote four, the song was released after Rand had finished drafting the novel, and available evidence suggests that she wasn’t aware of the song until after the novel’s publication. We regret this error and apologize for the oversight.

Image credit: GAB Archive/Redferns via Getty Images.

1. Interview with Duane Eddy; interviewed by Scott McConnell and Harry Binswanger, March 9, 1999, Ayn Rand Archives (unedited transcript).
2. Interview with Duane Eddy.
3. To hear a recording of this song, as well as the other songs in Ayn Rand’s “musical biography,” readers are invited to consult this article by Michael S. Berliner.
4. Interview with Duane Eddy. Herbert Küster’s composition “Will O’ The Wisp” was released after Rand had finished drafting We the Living and could not have served as the direct inspiration for “The Song of Broken Glass.” Nevertheless, as Michael S. Berliner notes in his article, Duane Eddy reported being told by Rand that “[“Will O’ The Wisp”] was a song that most profoundly illustrated her conception of how music should be and that it expressed human joy—musically.”
5. Letter dated May 11, 1967, from Duane Eddy to Ayn Rand, Ayn Rand Archives, 100_12A_026.
6. Letter from Duane Eddy to Ayn Rand.
7. Letter from Duane Eddy to Ayn Rand.
8. Letter dated June 1, 1967, from Ayn Rand to Duane Eddy, Ayn Rand Archives, 100_12A_025. For more on Duane Eddy’s thoughts about Ayn Rand, see his interview in 100 Voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand, ed. Scott McConnell (New York: New American Library, 2010).
9. Interview with Duane Eddy.