Moving Pictures (Rush album)
Moving Pictures is the eighth studio album by Canadian rock band Rush, released on February 12, 1981, by Anthem Records. After touring to support their previous album, Permanent Waves, the band started to write and record new material in August 1980 with longtime co-producer Terry Brown. They continued to write songs with a more radio-friendly sound, featuring tighter and shorter song structures compared to their earlier albums.
"Limelight", "Tom Sawyer" and "Vital Signs" were released as singles across 1981, and the instrumental "YYZ" was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance. Rush supported the album on tour from February to July 1981. In 2020, Rolling Stone ranked the album number 379 on its list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time".
Moving Pictures received a positive reception from contemporary and retrospective music critics and became an instant commercial success. The album reached number one in Canada and number three in both the United States and the United Kingdom. Moving Pictures is the fastest-selling album in the band's catalogue. It was certified Platinum by the RIAA on April 27, 1981 for one million copies sold, just two months after the album's release. It has since been certified Platinum five times over, for five million copies sold in the United States.
Background and recording
In June 1980, the band ended their 10-month tour of the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom in support of their previous album, Permanent Waves. The tour was a commercial success for the group, becoming the first of their career to earn them a profit. During their stop in New York City a month prior, the band decided to scrap plans for a second live album in favor of making a new one in the studio. Cliff Burnstein of Mercury Records suggested the idea to the band, and Neil Peart was particularly enthusiastic about the new ideas that were being developed at sound checks and was keen to put them to tape. Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson caught on to his enthusiasm. The trio pitched the idea to their manager and producer, who had already mapped out a two-year plan for them, but agreed to the change and cancelled the schedule. Lifeson looked back on this change of plan as the most important one in the band's history since the decision to record 2112, which became their breakthrough hit. Prior to starting on the album, Rush joined fellow Canadian rock band Max Webster to play on "Battle Scar", a track for their album Universal Juveniles. During the sessions their lyricist Pye Dubois suggested a song that he thought was suitable for Rush; this was developed into "Tom Sawyer", the opening track on Moving Pictures.The band retreated to Stony Lake, Ontario to write and develop new material. The sessions were productive. "The Camera Eye" was the first song to be worked on, followed by "Tom Sawyer", "Red Barchetta", the instrumental "YYZ", and "Limelight". Lee noticed a change in Peart's lyrics during this time, which had started with Permanent Waves, towards more concise and direct words. Following these sessions, Rush returned to Phase One Studios in late August 1980 with their longtime co-producer Terry Brown and prepared demos of these songs. The tracks were refined further during subsequent rehearsals for a series of warm-up shows across the US in September and October 1980, during which "Tom Sawyer" and "Limelight" were performed live for the first time.
Moving Pictures was recorded at Le Studio in Morin-Heights, Quebec in October and November 1980. Rush and Brown worked with 48-track recording for the first time. They'd record the basic tracks - drums and bass - to one 24-track tape reel, and transfer a stereo mix of these to a second 24-track reel for overdubs. This allowed them to preserve the quality of their recordings as much as possible as they were able to place the original backing track reel in storage until the mixing stage, thereby reducing potential damage to the tape from frequent playback. They experimented with a pressure zone microphone, a type of boundary microphone that picks up direct sound and no reverberated signals, that was taped onto Peart's chest as he played the drums. The audio captured from it was used to pick up the ambience in the studio room and was inserted into the final mix. Peart is seen wearing the microphone in the music video for "Vital Signs". The album was mixed down onto a Sony digital mastering machine, being an early example of digital recording. However, the completion of the album was delayed by two weeks due to technical issues in the studio, including with the Sony unit, but, as Brown elaborated, "it’s to be expected when you’re pushing the latest gear to its limits".
Songs
Side one
"Tom Sawyer" features a backbeat in a time signature, along with instrumental and closing sections in. It was the first Rush recording for which Lee used his 1972 Fender Jazz Bass, which provided a punchier lower end than he had been able to obtain with his usual Rickenbacker 4001. The bass became Lee's primary studio instrument from the recording of Counterparts onward. Lee said the group had more trouble with "Tom Sawyer" than any other song on Moving Pictures, and at times had doubts as to whether it would work. The band had technical difficulties with the computer that mixed the tracks, so they decided to operate the mixing desk manually with each member handling their own set of faders. Peart described it as "an enjoyable work", which took around a day and a half to record, "collapsing afterwards with raw, red, aching hands and feet". Its instrumental section grew from what Lee would play on his synthesizer during sound checks on tour, which initially was forgotten about until the band traded ideas on what the section should be. It became one of the group's best-known songs and a mainstay of subsequent live shows. The song was used as the opening music to the Brazilian dub of the spy TV show MacGyver.Peart's lyrics for "Red Barchetta" were inspired by the short story "A Nice Morning Drive" by Richard S. Foster, originally written in the November 1973 edition of the American car magazine Road & Track. Lee described the tale as "Orwellian in nature", which deals with an individual taking their Barchetta on a fast ride despite the banning of high speeds and is chased after by hovering patrol cars for breaking the law. Instead of an MGB roadster as featured in the original story, Peart reported the Ferrari 166 MM Barchetta was the car that inspired the song's title. In 2007, Foster and Peart met for the first time and shared their mutual interest of BMW motorcycles, which was documented in an article titled "The Drummer, The Private Eye, and Me".
"YYZ" is an instrumental titled after the IATA airport code for Toronto Pearson International Airport; its rhythm is that of the letters "YYZ" in Morse code. It stemmed from the band's enjoyment of recording "La Villa Strangiato", a nine-minute instrumental on Hemispheres ; it was something they wanted to do again for Moving Pictures, only shorter. The music originated while Lee and Peart were jamming as a warm-up, during which Lee came up with the main riff and Peart suggested to have a more mellow section with Lee playing keyboards. "And then, almost out of nowhere, we had this song."
The lyrics for "Limelight" are autobiographical and based on Peart's own dissatisfaction with fame and its intrusion into one's personal life. The song contains two self-references: the first, the line "living in a fish-eye lens, caught in the camera eye" references the album's following track, "The Camera Eye", while the line "all the world's indeed a stage, and we are merely players", references the title of the band's first live album All the World's a Stage, itself taken from William Shakespeare's comedy play As You Like It.
Side two
"The Camera Eye" is a two-part track with sections unofficially titled "New York City" and "London". Peart wrote the lyrics after taking walks in both cities, recalling observations and the rhythms he felt during them. It was the final song the band included on a studio album with a length of over ten minutes, something which was a frequent occurrence on their earlier albums. Its title refers to short pieces of the same name in the U.S.A. trilogy of novels written by American writer John Dos Passos, which Peart admired. The opening of the track features an audio clip of a busy Metropolis city from Richard Donner's Superman"Witch Hunt" opens with faint voices, which were recorded on the driveway of Le Studio in sub-zero temperatures, with the band and studio staff shouting in a humorous way while drinking Scotch whisky. Lifeson said one of his lines, "Fucking football", can be heard if the listener tries hard enough. The tracks were overdubbed multiple times until it sounded what Lee described as a "vigilante mob". The main riff was written by cover designer Hugh Syme on a synthesizer and double-tracked drums in one verse. "Witch Hunt" would become a part of the Fear series of songs, which includes "The Weapon" from Signals, "The Enemy Within" from Grace Under Pressure, and "Freeze" from Vapor Trails, and went on reverse chronological order by the album, except "Freeze", which is the fourth part like normal chronological order.
"Vital Signs" was the last song that the band wrote for the album, which was pieced together at Le Studio. It features a sequencer part produced by an Oberheim OB-X synthesizer, and shows a distinct reggae flavour. Reggae influences in Rush's music were first heard on Permanent Waves, and would later be heard more extensively on their next two albums.
Artwork
The cover was designed by Hugh Syme who estimated the artwork cost $9,500 to produce. Anthem Records refused to cover the entire bill, leaving the band to pay for the rest. It is a triple entendre; the front depicts movers who are carrying pictures. On the side, people are shown crying because the pictures passing by are emotionally "moving". Finally, the back cover has a film crew making a motion picture of the whole scene. It was photographed outside the Ontario Legislative Building at Queen's Park, Toronto. The pictures that are being moved are the band's Starman logo featured on the reverse cover of 2112, one of the Dogs Playing Poker paintings entitled A Friend in Need, and a painting that shows Joan of Arc being burned at the stake. The film crew on the back cover actually shot the scene, from which a single frame was used for the cover. This was revealed to Rush concertgoers several years later when the still image was shown on the stage projector, which suddenly came to life as a film sequence.Mike Dixon, one of the movers on the cover of Moving Pictures and the band's next album, Exit...Stage Left, discussed the various people on the Moving Pictures cover. The first, Bobby King, seen furthest to the left, was a member of Syme's design team and is credited for assisting Syme on A Farewell to Kings, Hemispheres, and Archives. Dixon explained that King is not only one of the movers, but also the Starman logo and the man in the hat on the Hemispheres cover. The mover holding the Starman painting is Kelly Jay, singer of the Toronto band Crowbar who performed a show with Rush in 1973. Photographer Deborah Samuel is the Joan of Arc character, and her relatives are the family on the right. However, this conflicts with information provided in the Rush biography Chemistry, which states: "Hugh borrowed friends, neighbours and even his hairdresser's parents".