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Alex Lifeson track-by-track breakdown of Moving Pictures

Mon, May 9, 2011@4:05PM | comments removed/disabled

[Rush's Alex Lifeson talks Moving Pictures: track-by-track]

MusicRadar.com recently conducted an interview with Alex Lifeson where he breaks down Rush's Moving Pictures track-by-track.

'It was a beautiful time,' says guitarist Alex Lifeson, recalling the summer of 1980, when he and his Rush mates (singer-bassist Geddy Lee and drummer-lyricist Neil Peart) rented a house in Stony Lake, Ontario and wrote their eighth album, Moving Pictures, together. 'We'd spend the weeks working, and on weekends we'd drive back to Toronto. Rehearsing, figuring out arrangements – everything just flowed. Electricity was in the air.'...In 2011, the whole of Moving Pictures is being celebrated by Rush on stage – they've been playing the album in its entirety since last year - and on a just-issued special edition Blu-ray CD+DVD package, which renders its seven wondrous cuts with a level of sound clarity that Lifeson calls 'mind-blowing. Richard Chycki, who remixed the album, knew he was working with a part of history, and he did an amazing job. He didn't change the record, just expanded on it. When I heard what he did for first time, I couldn't believe it. It was impeccable. It was Moving Pictures in a 3-D box!' ...

Alex then goes on to break down each of the 7 tracks on the album. Here's what he had to say about The Camera Eye:

“A lot of this song came from separate parts that were written and then connected. I think that’s why we always had a bit of a problem embracing it fully in its early days.

“It was hard work. The opening was easy, and then we decided to build up to a crescendo. There's a lot going on. It was one of the last really long songs that we would write.

“There’s some very difficult playing here. Neil does an amazing job on it. He plays so dynamically, handling all of the changes and shifts in tempo and time. And Geddy, he’s playing bass, he’s singing, he’s playing bass pedals and keyboards – really something else.

“The guitar solo took me a while to get right. Funnily enough, The Camera Eye has now become one of our favorites, and the crowds really respond to it. Our feeling is, we haven’t just resurrected a song; we’ve improved it.”

You can check out the entire article at this link. Geddy Lee did a similar track-by-track breakdown of the album for the Cleveland Plain Dealer last month. Thanks to Power Windows for the heads up.

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