Frontman Geddy Lee said that "the acoustic was recorded out there to get that really crisp sound and I remember Alex was walking around this mic that Terry had set up while he was playing.
Lee also said that the song "was quite a different piece for us, because of the way the intro’s structured, and then it comes in with a bang and there’s this weird time signature going on.
Robert Telleria in the book Merely Players tells of the song: The title is adapted from Ernest Hemingway's novel A Farewell to Arms.
Longing for a new Renaissance era (which focused on our place in the cosmos), this revolution is more down to earth, the new world envisioned in "2112", a timeless realm.
[6] AllMusic reviewer Greg Prato picked the "A Farewell to Kings" as one of the highlights on the album, and called the song's intro "a tasty classical guitar/synth passage, before erupting into a powerful rocker.