Reflecting On 35 Years Of Rush's Moving Pictures!

On February 12th 1981 Rush released what has become their most commercially successful and critically acclaimed album to date, Moving Pictures. While moving towards a more “radio friendly” sound but still holding the progressive foundations of their previous albums, Moving Pictures spawned four singles that are still rock radio and concert staples today. A Grammy nomination for “YYZ”, a number 3 spot on the billboard 200 and a quadruple platinum certification make this an album to look back on. Scroll down for a few tidbits on the album.

We’ll go over a couple things about Moving Pictures including

• Pop Culture References
• The Recording Process
• The Songs
• Album Accolades

Moving Pictures in Popular Culture:

From South Park to Trailer Park Boys to Adam Mckay Movies, Moving Pictures has become a pop culture reference for a slew of “Rush Nerds” who grew up in the 80’s. Not that being a “Rush Nerd” is a bad thing.

Some clips may be NSFW

“Play that ‘Diane Sawyer’ song”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtxyjf9eerI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dnkefzSwsQ

Kerry Von Von Erich the ‘Modern Day Warrior’ had ‘Tom Saywer’ for entrance music from 82-81

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptGyztdHQm0

All Rush, all the time from “Fanboys” while “Limelight” plays in the background

The Foo Fighters performed “Tom Sawyer” every night during their 2015 tour

The Recording Process Behind Moving Pictures

After taking a break from touring their previous record, Permanent Waves, the three members of Rush, Alex Lifeson, Geddy Lee, & Neil Peart, decided to bunker down and record a follow up. The band rented a house in Stony Lake, Ontario and got to work on new song ideas. Jamming together Monday to Friday and heading back to Toronto on weekends.

Once they were satisfied with what they had put together Rush went to Quebec to work with Co-Producer Terry Brown (Who had produced all of Rush’s previous records and would continue to do so until Signals) at “Le Studio”. Having gone from an opening act to a heading act through the success of “The Spirit Of Radio” Rush had achieved a more mature mentality and different world view from touring. This resulted in Peart and Lee having open and two way communication about the song writing‘.

Moving Pictures being recorded in 1980 meant it was just around the same time digital recording and mastering was starting to be introduced to music industry. Rush, being the boundary pushing musicians they are, wanted to record with as many tools as possible, wether it be new mics, new guitars, computers, and really anything the musical nerds could get their hands on. In an interview with RecordingHacks.com Album Engineer Paul Northfeild explained he was suprised the album came out the way it did:

“In the case of Rush, their own experimental eccentricity was that they always wanted to record things differently each time. It drove me nuts. We’d get a drum sound and then, after we’d recorded a song, they’d say, “Ok, well, that sounded great, so what mic shall we use on this next song?” It took a while to convince them — a couple of albums, actually! — to convince them that a lot more sound change would come from performance and the way something sits in an arrangement, than changing mics for change’s sake.”

“I wouldn’t choose to use old A80s to record on, even though they’re a great tape machine, and I certainly wouldn’t mix something down to a 16-bit Sony Digital machine, like we did with Moving Pictures. As good as Moving Pictures sounds, it was mixed onto what would now be regarded as a horrible digital stereo machine. Which just goes to show that it’s not always just about the gear.”

 

The recording was actually plagued with issues due in part to the new technology and it all coming down to a faulty wire. This caused the album to be completed four days late and for Rush to revert back to the manual ways they recorded their previous records.

The Moving Pictures album cover & back sleeve has come to be known as one of the most iconic album covers in rock. A visual pun and triple-entendre on title, showing the movers carrying pictures, with the people watching them who are emotionally moved by the pictures. The third meaning is shown on the back cover, where the entire scene is revealed to be a set for a motion picture. In a interview with Cyngus, Geddy Lee mentions he’s still fond of the albums cover, which was a big departure for a band fond of using somewhat pretentious symbols to mark the front of their records:

“I like the triple play on the sleeve with the words moving pictures,” Lee explains. “You’ve got the pictures literally being moved out of the building, then the old couple who were moved to tears because they’d dropped their shopping bag, and finally the film crew on the back cover, making a moving picture. Again, it’s all to do with our sense of humour. We were very aware that it was really time to get away from the fantasy and science fiction elements that had always been part of what we were about. But as that musical side of things changed, so did our feelings of the way our album artwork should look.”

 

 

 

The Songs Of Moving Pictures…As Described By Rush

 1. Tom Sawyer

“There’s no making [‘Tom Sawyer’] easier to play – it still takes everything I’ve got. To get the right sound and feel, a drum part like ‘Tom Sawyer’ requires full-force, blunt-object pounding with hands and feet, but there’s also a demanding level of technique, smoothness, and concentration. Playing ‘Tom Sawyer’ properly – or as close as I can get on a given night – requires full mental, technical, and physical commitment, and I can’t imagine there would be any way to make that kind of output easier. And if you ask me, it shouldn’t be. If it wasn’t hard, it wouldn’t be satisfying to get it right!” – Neil Peart, “Thus Spoke Neil”, Drum Magazine

“Tom Sawyer was a collaboration between myself and Pye Dubois, an excellent lyricist who wrote the lyrics for the band Max Webster,” Neil Peart has recalled. “His original lyrics were kind of a portrait of a modem day rebel, a free-spirited individualist striding through the world wide-eyed and purposeful. I added the themes of reconciling the boy and man in myself, and the difference between what people are and what others perceive them to be – namely me I guess.” – Peart, Classic Rock Magazine Rush: Living Legend Award / Making of Moving Pictures

2. Red Barchetta

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eULGEKncHvI

“That was the intention with Red Barchetta – to create a song that was very vivid, so that you had a sense, if you listen to it and listen to the lyrics, of the action. It does become a movie. I think that song really worked with that in mind; it was successful with that intention. It’s something that I think we’ve tried to carry on– become a little more visual with our music, since then. But that one in particular was very satisfying. It was always one of my favorites. I think it’s probably my favorite from that album. I like the way the parts knit together. I like the changes. I like the melody of the song. I love the dynamics of it, the way it opens with the harmonics and creates a mood, then gets right into the driving, right up to the middle section where it’s really screaming along, where you really feel like you’re in the open car, and the music’s very vibrant and moving. And then it ends as it began with that quiet dynamic, and lets you down lightly. So it picks you up for the whole thing and drops you off at your next spot.” – Alex Lifeson, In The Studio for Moving Pictures

3. YYZ

“The title [YYZ] refers to the identity code used by the Toronto International Airport. We used the Morse Code signal emitted by the control tower as a rhythmic device for the introduction (-.–/-.–/–..) dah dit dah dah dah dit dah dah/dah dah dit dit, = Y-Y-Z.” – Neil Peart, “Notes On The Making of Moving Pictures”, Modern Drummer,

 “I create them by playing off the pick and my thumb. I hold the pick so there’s a slight edge of it showing between my thumb and finger. This allows my thumb to mute the string, and that’s what causes the harmonic to ring.” – Lifeson explaining the bizarre-sounding harmonics heard before the solo, Guitar World 

4. Limelight

“Sometimes I have a change of heart about being in the first person, and change to the third person. For instance, in ‘Limelight’, which was a delicate subject to handle, especially for Alex and Geddy, for them to be able to sympathise and empathise with the song, there were times when I had to change it from the first person, to say ‘One must put up barriers to keep oneself intact’. Whereas my original intention had been ‘I must put up. . . ‘ And when Geddy suggested that change of focus, I realised it was right. Because it’s not just me who has to do this.” – Neil Peart, Sounds

*”Limelight” contains two lines referencing the song to Peart, who wrote the lyrics about his struggles with success. The first, “living in a fish-eye lens, caught in the camera eye” references the next track, “The Camera Eye”, While the second, “all the world’s indeed a stage, and we are merely players,” references their 1976 live album All the World’s a Stage.

5. The Camera Eye

“We were looking for an urban sound effect, and we ended up using a part of Superman, when Clark Kent is arriving at the offices of the Daily Planet amid the traffic and bustle of Metropolis.” Neil Peart, “Rush Backstage Club Newsletter”

“It’s funny, some of those old songs sound so strange to me now, but when you start playing them you get back into that head-space you were in when they were written and recorded. It’s really all about your sense of perspective. A few years ago we brought back ‘The Camera Eye’. I never wanted to play that song. I never thought it was particularly worthy. And yet it was one the most requested Rush songs. I couldn’t understand it. How could people be so wrong? I realised I underestimate the moment in time – the context of that moment. When we started playing ‘The Camera Eye’, I thought, okay, there are a lot of pretentious moments in this song. It hasn’t aged well. But then I started re-learning the keyboard parts and putting together a slightly different version – instead of eleven minutes it clocks in at nine-and-a-half. And in the playing of it, yes, I fell in love with it again. And that’s where it becomes very subjective, and not objective. I stopped being able to tell if it was a pretentious song, and I just enjoyed playing those chords and I remembered why the song got recorded in the first place – I liked the chord progression and the vocal melodies. You can go back to that time and appreciate what you were trying to do. This song – it was a point in your life, and fans want to relive that point in your life and you can have fun playing it. I dig the hell out of that song now.” – Geddy Lee,ClassicRock.com

6. Witch Hunt (Part 3 of ”Fear”)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RwD644odIU

“I remember the day ‘Witch Hunt’ was recorded. Sadly, it was the same night that John Lennon was shot in New York. We were right in the middle of recording it when that all went down. It’s one of those songs that means as much today, if not more, considering what’s gone on in the world with racial profiling and all these different issues. The sentiment of that song is as appropriate as ever.” – Geddy Lee, Cleveland.com,

“Parts one and two do exist, in my notebook. Part one was called ‘The Enemy Within’; how fear affects your life and restricts what you do. And part two was called ‘The Weapon’; how fear is used against you. How other people keep you in your place, or keep you out oftheir place.” – Neil Peart, Sounds, March 14, 1981, confirming the original “Fear” trilogy was already completely written at the time of the release of “Witch Hunt”

7. Vital Signs

“It’s the first time I’ve done something like that; I almost always double-track my guitars for a nice, fat sound. This time we went for a particular sound that would be very individual. It’s a very clean, bright sound.”  – Alex Lifeson on the unique sound of “Vital Sings” 

At the end of an album it’s impossible for us to judge which songs will truly be popular and which won’t. We’re inevitably surprised. And then there are songs like “Vital Signs” from our Moving Pictures album. At the time it was a very transitional song. Everybody had mixed feelings about it, but at the same time it expressed something essential that I wanted to say. That’s a song that has a marriage of vocals and lyrics I’m very happy with. But it took our audience a long time to get it, because it was rhythmically very different for us and it demanded the audience to respond in a different rhythmic way. There was no heavy downbeat; it was a counterpoint between upbeat and downbeat, and there was some reflection of reggae influence and a reflection of the more refined areas of new wave music that we had sort of takes under our umbrella and made happen. That song took about three tours to catch on. It was kind of a baby for us. We kept playing it and wouldn’t give up. We put it in our encore last tour-putting it in the most exciting part of the set possible-and just demanded that people accept it because we believed in it. I still think that song represents a culmination-the best combination of music, lyrics, rhythm. It opens up so many musical approaches, from being very simplistic and minimal to becoming very overplayed. Everything we wanted in the song is there. So that song was very special to us. But we had to wait. We had to be patient and wait for the audience to understand us.”  – Neil Peart, Guitar For The Practising Musician

Accolades Of Moving Pictures

Considered by many to be the epitome of Rush’s creativity, musicianship & songwriting, Moving Pictures has gone on to receive praise from fans and critics alike in the 35 years since it’s release. Considered by many to be the most accessible Rush album, it contains the musical complexity to please the progressive rock fans from the bands previous release, while shooting them to the top of the charts and a wider fanbase. Some of the albums accolades include:

• 1981 nomination for Best Rock Instrumental Performance – GRAMMYs
• A 4x Platinum certification in both the US & Canada
• “Tom Sawyer” Best Rush Song – Sterogum
• “Tom Saywer” Best Rush Song – Rollingstone 
• 3rd Greatest Progressive Rock Album Of All Time – Rollingstone
• One of two Rush albums in 1001 Albums To Hear Before You Die (2112 is the other)
• Greatest Heavy Metal Albums Of All Time (#34) – Kerrang
• Greatest Drumming Album In The History Of Progressive Rock – Rythm

In closing, 35 years later Moving Pictures is still a driving force in music. Enjoy the album and let us know your favourite song in the comments!