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  Writing lyrics at the farmhouse, Neil found his skills rapidly improving; his cinematic approach to writing on tracks like “Red Barchetta” and “Witch Hunt” were reflected by the eventual title of the album, Moving Pictures. “Red Barchetta” was specifically inspired by “A Nice Morning Drive,” a piece in Road & Track magazine by journalist Richard S. Foster. Meanwhile, over in the soundproofed barn, Geddy was experimenting with the latest Oberheim and Prophet synthesizer technologies, inspired by the plethora of keyboard textures within the postpunk music he was consuming to stay current.

  “By Permanent Waves we had started to change,” explained Neil, charting the path toward Moving Pictures. “We had already decided at the end of Hemispheres that, ‘Okay, that’s the end of that.’ We had verbalized it. We were very self-aware at the end of Hemispheres. We wanted to move on. Then in 1978 and ’79, things are changing so much in music around us, and again, being music fans and listening and responding to it—and wanting it, wanting to do it—‘Spirit of Radio’ was a huge step in that direction. It was of course a deliberate attempt to encapsulate all the different threads of modern music that we thought were cool. So that moved on, and we were of course still playing around with the epics at that time, with ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ and ‘Natural Science’ and all that, but they were taking on a different focus. Moving Pictures became truly focused. Where we could be concise and … overblown at the same time [laughs], which was what we had been looking for, obviously. That became the foundation for everything that followed through the ’80s. With all humility, I like most of what comes after Moving Pictures. Talking about songs being designed to play live and be challenging, ‘Tom Sawyer’ right off the top—I never get tired of it, it never gets easy, and it’s always challenging. I’ve changed tiny little baby details in that song over the years, but almost nothing from that drum part fails to satisfy me now, as a player or as a listener…. I think we started to learn so much about musicianship, about composing, about arranging, and consequently the records became much more satisfying.”

  Courtesy Wyco Vintage/www.wycovintage.com

  T-shirt for the Philadelphia show that was part of the Moving Pictures warmup tour.

  London, June 1980. Fin Costello/Redferns/Getty Images

  Moving Pictures warmup tour, Allentown, Pennsylvania. Both Jim Altieri collection/www.altieriart.com

  Permanent Waves tour soundcheck, De Montfort Hall, Leicester, England, June 21, 1980. Fin Costello/Redferns/Getty Images

  Print ads, U.K.

  Author collection

  “Tom Sawyer,” with its hive of activity despite its slow tempo, would become the band’s biggest hit of all time, Rush’s No. 1 most beloved song, with Neil’s swirling, surround-sounding drum fills at the apex of the track serving as, quite possibly, the most famous drum passage in all of recorded music (certainly the most ardently air-drummed). But the power of Moving Pictures was that the entirety of side one was hit after hit, with “Tom Sawyer,” “Red Barchetta,” “YYZ,” and “Limelight,” surely among the top ten most cherished tracks from the entire Rush oeuvre. Side two packs in the eleven-minute “The Camera Eye,” but “Witch Hunt” and “Vital Signs” are quite accessible, the latter expanding on the Police-inspired reggae that spiced “The Spirit of Radio.” Of note, “Witch Hunt” would be identified as part three of Neil’s “Fear” trilogy, the rest of it coming in quirked reverse order over the next two albums, with a fourth part arriving way up into 2002’s Vapor Trails.

  “Tom Sawyer” b/w “Witch Hunt,” U.S., 1981.

  “Tom Sawyer (Live)” b/w “A Passage to Bangkok,” U.K., 1981.

  “Vital Signs” 12-inch b/w “A Passage to Bangkok,” “Circumstances,” and “In the Mood,” U.K., 1981. Author collection

  Moving Pictures tour, Coliseum, Oakland, California, June 6, 1981. Larry Hulst/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

  Author collection

  “Limelight” would hold particular significance for the band, especially Neil, who had seen the most need among the guys to pull away a bit from the mania surrounding Rush. “It has much more to do with our lives than just image. I think it was Todd Rundgren who said that the more popular he became, the less accessible he would become. It’s very much a truism, especially if you have a writer’s inclination. You want to go to cities, you want to blend in, walk around, probe the areas of the city you may want to use—it’s all part of your writing—and you have to do that anonymously. You can’t walk in there as some face that’s been sold for years. That’s another important part of my future that I’ve got to work on eliminating. I don’t want to sell my face anymore: I don’t want my face to be a household image. You dare not stick your head out of the window or door. Sitting around in your hotel room not being able to open the curtains and not being able to leave the room is a prisoner’s existence! I don’t get angry about it or patronizing or condescending about it. I get embarrassed. I feel I want to be back in my room as a regular person again. Basically that’s what it comes down to.”

  In general however—and “Limelight” included—Moving Pictures was an easily accessible Rush album, upbeat, quite guitar-charged, very much a power-trio record augmented with just the right amount of synthesizers, and above all the work of a band trying to be less complex. “To me it was a necessary change,” said Neil. “Like, for me without Caress of Steel, 2112 couldn’t exist. And to me 2112 is the stronger, more important work. We may lose touch at times or fall into erring ways but to me this is the price we pay for retaining our integrity and always following a natural path. So if the natural path does lead us through improper areas, that’s fine, because it always leads us to the right way. So, without going through A Farewell to Kings and Hemispheres there’d be no Permanent Waves, and without those three there could be no Moving Pictures. Everything we’ve been through in the past, Moving Pictures takes a less busy, less nervous crack at. But without that experimentation we wouldn’t have the ability, the understanding, or the compositional talents to create this album.”

  MOVING PICTURES Gary Graff

  Moving Pictures is Rush’s defining moment—what Dark Side of the Moon was for Pink Floyd or Frampton Comes Alive! was for Peter Frampton. It’s the full realization of a sound that got many to jump on board the bandwagon without losing many who had been there since the beginning.

  It’s a damn good album, in other words, connecting with those who knew the words to first-album staples such as “Working Man” and “Finding My Way” with those who just liked “Tom Sawyer” when they heard it on the radio.

  With the previous year’s Permanent Waves, Rush cleverly took some leads from the burgeoning New Wave moment and discovered that shorter songs and leaner structures led to greater radio play and popularity. But importantly, the trio managed to achieve that without compromising or dumbing down its brainy, muso brand of rock. Moving Pictures brought more of the same but honed it even further. Heck, you could even dance to some of this stuff.

  Rush has never straddled the prog and pop divide better than on the album-opening “Tom Sawyer.” The group has always been adept at dynamics but this time they brought in actual space, which allowed the individual components of the mix to breathe and made the punchier elements even more formidable. Lee’s chorus raps were head-turning new sounds in 1981, while his playful Oberheim OB-X squiggles gave the song a colorful energy. But if there was any doubt about Rush’s musical intent, “Tom Sawyer” hops between standard 4/4 and trickier time signatures like 7/8 and 13/16, and Lifeson’s unhinged guitar solo gave the song some auteur flare.

  Lyrically, Peart worked with Pye Dubois of the Canadian band Max Webster to create a portrait of a “modern-day warrior” or rebel—not the first time the drummer addressed that topic, but this time with a reference point that certainly caught the imaginations of hundreds of thousands who knew Tom Sawyer’s name, whether or not they’d read the book, and certainly had Mark Twain grinning in his grave.

  But Moving Pictures was
not subsumed by its big hit, a sign of the strength of its other six songs. A killer Lifeson riff drove a lament about the challenges of notoriety in “Limelight,” while “Red Barchetta” moved with the speed of the sleek automobile Peart was writing about. And the Grammy Award–nominated “YYZ” (the abbreviation for Toronto’s Pearson International Airport) let Rush flex its instrumental muscles with a kind of brevity (less than four and a half minutes) that was to its benefit.

  The enduring impact of those four songs have somewhat eclipsed Moving Pictures’ second side over the years, and undeservedly so. “The Camera Eye,” whose title refers to part of American artist John Dos Passos’ U.S.A. Trilogy, is a heavily synthesized eleven-minute epic meant to convey impressions of New York and London—or, if you prefer, just sound like the Rush guys showing off, but tastefully so, wailing away for three and a half minutes before Lee starts singing. “Witch Hunt” emerges from a sea of synthesizer-generated sound effects into a measured composition that encases Peart’s detailed lyrics in layers of synth and guitar ambience, while “Vital Signs” picks up on the reggae influences introduced on Permanent Waves.

  Moving Pictures has stacked up a slew of honors since its release, including quadruple-platinum certifications in both the United States and Canada, and “Tom Sawyer” has been feted with all sorts of TV and film placements and other pop culture references, from South Park to The Sopranos, Rob Zombie’s Halloween recast and The Waterboy. But it’s one of those instances where the accomplishments merit the achievements, an exceptional album that found its place and brought Rush the large audience it deserved.

  PolyGram paired Rush with some other bestselling Canadian institutions—Canada Dry and Bob and Doug McKenzie—for this trade ad.

  Author collection

  “The difference is in the organization of the music,” offered Geddy in agreement. “We learned a lot about composition and arrangement in making Hemispheres. Permanent Waves and Moving Pictures are the result of application, of saying, ‘Okay, we know we can do this and we learned all this. Now let’s see if we can make a song out of it that’ll really have a lot happening in it.’ It’s not just that the songs are four minutes long so they can get on the radio. It’s the quality of those four minutes.”

  Even in the composition of instrumentals, Rush seems to have raised its songwriting game, “YYZ” (named for the call letters of Toronto’s Pearson International Airport), becoming far and away the band’s zestiest yet most concise spot of vocal-less fun, at any given show, air drummers joined by air bassists and air Alexes in a communal display of Rush zaniness. Fans have even decided to sing along to the thing, as made famous on the Rush in Rio video, taking over where Geddy stays silent, save for his hammering, chunky bass lines.

  New Musical Express, March 7, 1981. Author collection

  Author collection

  Frank White collection

  The cleverness, class, and detail afforded Moving Pictures carries through to the cover art as well, as visual puns on the concept of “moving pictures” was promulgated, right there on the tripartite entranceway of Queen’s Park, Toronto, headquarters to the Ontario government, just a handful of blocks from Massey Hall.

  With the album in the hands of fans on February 1, 1981, Rush conducted its usual blitz of North American markets, with support acts ranging from Ian Hunter to FM, Goddo, Saga, and the Joe Perry Project to longtime chums and label mates Max Webster—indeed Rush had collaborated with Kim Mitchell and the guys the previous year on a goliath of a metal track called “Battlescar,” arguably the highlight of Max’s final album, Universal Juveniles.

  Rush was in their element, making full use of an increasingly expensive show that for one night wholly transformed hockey barns into hubs of visual and aural technology, all the while stacking up the certifications: in February, 2112 became the band’s first platinum record; All the World’s a Stage attained that status the following month, with Moving Pictures zooming past gold to platinum by the end of April.

  Taking the summer off, Rush returned with their second double live album, Exit … Stage Left, issued October 29, 1981, and certified gold a couple of months later. Touring for Moving Pictures filled up the rest of 1981, first in Europe with Girlschool as main support, then back in America along the eastern seaboard with Riot supporting. Rush was truly part of rock’s elite by this point, with some grumbling that the second live album indicated as much, feeling a tad impersonal compared with the house-on-fire performances of All the World’s a Stage.

  Sounds ad, August 23, 1981.

  Taking the summer of 1981 off, the band returned with their second double live album, Exit … Stage Left, issued October 29.

  Print ad, Japan.

  Rush collaborated with label mates Max Webster on a goliath of a metal track called “Battlescar,” arguably the highlight of Max’s final album, Universal Juveniles.

  Exit … Stage Left tour, Ahoy Sportpaleis, Rotterdam, November 14, 1981. Rob Verhorst/Redferns/Getty Images

  “Obviously any follow-up live album has a lot to live up to,” wrote Melody Maker’s Brian Harrigan. “As yet I’m not sure whether Exit is as strong as its predecessor: it’ll take a lot more living with to establish that. But even on the strength of a week or two I’m convinced it’s a very good try. Exit consists of three sides recorded in Canada and one in the U.K. The tapes were then taken to the solitude of Le Studio in Quebec’s Morin Heights where producer Terry Brown spent several months cleaning them up. And that’s possibly where my reservations might lie: the album seems a little too clean. I’m told by the band that they did a little overdubbing, but I reckon Brown went a bit too far in his search for the best performance of each individual track from the mounds of tape he had. I would suggest that Exit marks the end of a second phase in Rush’s career as All the World marked the first. A fine achievement—a little less ‘live’ than it should be, perhaps, but powerful and cohesive nonetheless. Personally I can’t wait to see what Rush have in store for us in phase three of their career.”

  There’d be no truck to complacency in “phase three,” no settling in for a next record that sounded like the wildly successful last. The new year would find Rush further immersing themselves in the convention-challenging new wave music coming mostly out of England and surprisingly eschewing the massive metal uptick that was NWOBHM, choosing to follow their muse away from guitars into what fans (mostly) lament as the band’s “keyboard phase.”

  German advertisement, 1981.

  New Musical Express, November 7, 1981. Ray Wawrzyniak collection

  New Musical Express, June 21, 1980. Author collection

  1982–1988

  KEYBOARDS, MULLETS & FINE HABERDASHERY

  “Grace Under Pressure has a sombre message, but one that is well thought-out. It takes the form of paranoia snaking its way throughout. The music beckons many listens because Rush does not neatly identify the source of fear. It is left as a puzzle.

  “Some songs hint that the enemy is illusory. But Rush also talks of electronic surveillance and other high-technology demons. The question is, how big are these monsters? Do we fear them when they are not even there, then remain oblivious to the ones that exist?

  “The answer, says Rush, is that we cannot discern which enemies are real and which are imagined. The terrorism of the age of technology is that no one knows.”

  —Evelyn Erskine, Ottawa Citizen, 1984

  AS AN INDICATION THAT RUSH COULD DO NO WRONG, Geddy started showing up on best keyboardist polls, causing chuckles within the camp, considering that Lee’s transition from single notes to actual chords would represent his breakthrough for the year. Rush’s massive multimedia live show had a lot to do with the accolades, for while state-of-the-art animation was flashing on the screen above Peart’s head, Geddy often found himself juggling double duty between Rickenbacker and synthesizer.

  Perhaps foretelling that the next album wasn’t going to celebrate the resurgence of metal taking place in the early ’80s, Si
gnals (a third Le Studio creation) arrived wrapped in a cover of muted grayish green, punctuated by an arty shot of a Dalmatian and fire hydrant. An additional quirk is that the band’s baseball positions are listed, along with those of various other recording helpers and road crew, a nod to the fact that the guys were known to play many a game of baseball and softball on tour to keep limbs limber and spirits positive.

  Signals tour, Ahoy Sportpaleis, Rotterdam, May 3, 1983. Rob Verhorst/Redferns/Getty Images