Rush made 19 studio albums in the group’s 38 years as a recording act. And Alex Lifeson says each was memorable in its own way.
There was Caress of Steel, the 1975 album that saw the band pursue a more prog-rock direction, with disastrous results.
"That record didn't do very well," Lifeson told Guitar Player, who says its commercial failure led them to call their subsequent road trek the Down the Tubes Tour.
And there was its followup, 2112, the commercial breakthrough that came about after Rush decided to embrace, rather than retreat from, their prog leanings.
“We thought, Listen, we're gonna do what we're gonna do,’” Lifeson explained. “‘If it crashes and burns, so be it. At least we stuck to our guns, and did it the way we thought we should.’”
But Lifeson says no record was as much fun to make as the group’s eighth album, 1981’s Moving Pictures. Featuring long-running fan favorites like “Tom Sawyer” and “Limelight,” the album became Rush’s biggest seller in the U.S. and reached number three on the charts. Naturally, it went to number one in the band’s home country of Canada.
As Lifeson tells Fox News 4 San Antonio, the joy of making the album was down to the nearly perfect circumstances under which it was made at Le Studio in Morin-Heights, Quebec.
"We did a lot of records at Le Studio,” he says. 'Moving Pictures was the most fun record we ever made. It was such a great energy and a great vibe.”
The album was recorded over October to November, 1980, during a brutal cold snap.
“It was winter — it was a very cold winter as well. When I say 'very cold', I mean minus 30, minus 40. You'd have a week of that kind of weather. But it was still a lot of fun to work there. We would snowshoe or cross country ski to the studio. I generally drove over [laughs], but it was part of that whole Canadian experience, the Great North."
The trio entered the studio with their song’s written and rehearsed. Some of those tracks were composed during the band’s 10-month tour for 1980’s Permanent Waves. The group had been trying out their new ideas at soundcheck and were eager to get back to the studio to commit them to tape.
Although they had planned to record and release a live album, and had even mapped out a two-year plan for their career, Rush scrapped everything and retreated to Stony Lake, Ontario to write new material. Lifeson called the decision the most important they made in Rush’s history since choosing to follow a more progressive rock direction on 2112.
When it came time to record Moving Pictures, Lifeson played Fender Stratocasters modified with Floyd Rose locking trems and Bill Lawrence humbuckers in the bridge position, playing them through Marshall combos.
"When we started working on 'Moving Pictures', everything came along just so effortlessly,” he explains. “We were well prepared, we'd written all the material, we knew what we were doing. We went in, we got sounds.”
For the first time, the group employed digital recording technology, which was just beginning to catch on in professional recording studios.
“We did things a little differently,” Lifeson says. “We actually mixed it down on digital, which was one of the first Sony digital machines. Compared to modern digital, that thing was a Model T. But the record sounds great. So, so long as you get the results."
One of his favorite memories is of recording the angry mob voices for the opening to the album track “Witch Hunt.”
"We were down in the parking area," he recalls. "They set up mics and we were the mob crowd in the background in 'Witch Hunt' in the opening.
"And if you listen carefully, you can hear us laughing because we'd had a few drinks and we were screaming and yelling about the most ridiculous things as a mob. But some of the things that we were saying are totally unrelated to anything.
“But it was such a feel-good record, making Moving Pictures."
An instant commercial success upon it release on February 12, 1981, the album went on to earn a Grammy nomination for Best Rock Instrumental Recording on behalf of the track “XYZ.” The group would go on to tour the album, during which they would for a time be supported by Rory Gallagher, whom Lifeson had befriended years before when Rush opened for the blues guitarist.
Rush would go on to enjoy another 34 years as a band. These days, Lifeson can be found playing guitar with his new group, Envy of None, which has just released its second album, Stygian Wavz.
As Lifeson told Guitar Player, the experience of performing with his new group has been a happy one, particularly during this album, which saw him embrace soloing in a way he hadn’t since his days with Rush.
"I bloomed on this record,” he told Guitar Player. “I let myself go a little more which is a good thing, 'cause I tend to hold back and be tentative with a lot of things. And on this record I just let go, and there was a new confidence and I had a better, clearer picture of what we wanted to create as a band."
In related news, Lifeson has revealed that he and Rush bassist Geddy Lee still get together every week to jam. But he’s warned fans not to get too excited about an eventual Rush reunion.
“Al and I are lifelong friends. We jam together once in a while, it’s true,” he offered. “That’s all I want to say about that right now.”
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