Why does Rush’s album Moving Pictures have such durability; durability that the band both reaps from and at the same time is haunted by? (They will always be known for this album as if this is the album that defines them.) Maybe it stems from the fact that it is the album that defines not necessarily them (as if any album could do that) but instead what they constitute-which is illusiveness, staying out of the limelight of definition, even when your fan base and your detractors beg for such a definition. Maybe the answer resides in Red Barchetta.
Before I write about this song, a song that all three members of the band say is the one song that never gets old when played live, or when the original recording is simply listened to, consequently inferring that many of their other tunes do when making such a comment, I want to talk about the bands awareness of themselves and what they constitute; it’s this quality that makes me such a fan of theirs. The moment, heavily documented in the Rush documentary, when Rush exhausted themselves as a band simply from overexerting themselves technically as musicians, marks a turning point in their career. What were they going to do; sell out and make radio friendly tunes? Permanent Waves held the answer. The album started with a song that dealt with this conundrum entitled the Spirit of radio, a song that was a critique of their sounds new home. The band doesn’t like their abode at all. This song is the antithesis of that home. It’s the most exuberant thing I’ve ever heard. Yet, there’s a tragic awareness to the music-to the whole album-that gives the sound its depth. It’s the awareness that that home will always be there, no matter how eroded. The song is a view into the future. It’s aware of lady gaga and how Gaga will have more lasting impact than this band ever will have in the general consensus of the listening audience. The tragic awareness is not that that’s a shame because Rush is the better artist. That would be self-indulgent and egotistically biased, but rather that for the sake of the radio, Gaga is a horrible influence. Actually, Rush, as guitarist for the band Alex Lifeson has said, has always benefitted from this strange position of being sandwiched in the middle of adulation and contempt; of you’re the greatest band I’ve ever heard to who are you again? There’s more pressure on a Gaga to go in one direction or the other. Rush is completely free. That’s the sound that I hear on Permanent Waves. The album is the awareness that this wiggle room can’t do anything to influence anybody. There’s tragedy behind the happy go lucky sound of the album. It’s the depth that people who say they don’t like Rush can’t hear. It’s the awareness on the artist’s part that they can’t do anything to stop the impending doom that is the future.
The band’s epiphany (which is Moving Pictures) comes when the band decides to become more radio friendly. Like I stated earlier I love their self awareness because it was a right decision no matter if their loyal fan base got mad or not. The statement from such an act was not that this bands simply about making money but that they are not merely a cult progressive rock band. In other words, that they are not just a band that exists to not make money. In my opinion, what this means is that there’s no guilt in this band’s not trying to change the world like they were trying to do so much in the past. If Hemispheres is the last time that they did try to change the world, and Permanent Waves is the lament over this, then moving pictures is the celebration. There’s a part in Red Barchetta when Alex’s guitar part is the sound that they could never have on their earlier more “complex” albums. It’s the weapon that keeps the picture moving; that is progressive while at the same time making a term like prog rock look trite and too constricting. This band is not just about changing time signatures. When one listens to their music they shouldn’t be saying: ahh I understand completely what they are doing here. What they should be saying is: what am I listening to? Simply talking about their musicianship or their objectivism or whatever, is making them the lie that most rock critics see them as, which is something boring and geeky. The sound of Alex’s guitar on Red Barchetta is the doorway out of this. It’s the car that is outlawed. It’s something taken for granted. Something not talked about properly by either its detractors (the ones who expect too much of them) or its fans (the ones who expect too little). Something unheeded and completely itself. This sound is where the durability of the album stems from. Fans like Billy Coogan and the filmmakers of the rush documentary ask the question: can Rush be the ultimate way in which to save the radio in order to enrich the potentiality of the music form? The song answers: who cares?
The other extremely poignant song off Moving Pictures that I want to write about is Limelight. Limelight is the song that deals with the outlawing of nebbishness; of not ever being able to be completely aloof and completely yourself anymore because of societal pressures (in other words the antithesis to Rush). The plangency that is felt when one listens to the song comes from the fact that there is no red barchetta in this song. There isn’t even any future. Now is the future, which means one has to take action now. What is now in the drummer and lyricist for the band Neil Peart’s eyes? More importantly: where do the constraints come from? Do they come from the accuser, or something much more terrifying to consider, the accused? Now in Neil’s eyes is the feeling that he’s going to lose his integrity because of his fan bases misconstruing what he is. (Suddenly that fan base becomes the person beating up that kid in glasses, while ineptly thinking that it is that kid. It becomes the societal pressure that it thought it was up against.) Its Neil’s depth. What is so shocking about his depth is that it makes one realize that most, if not all, in the limelight don’t have it. It makes Neil himself realize that he could very easily become what he always feared and fought against. His prognosticating skills, his ability to see that the album he’s making that’s turning him on so much creatively might very well be his downfall (because he will forever keep trying to replicate that magic because he will believe what society tells him now that he’s in the limelight; now that he actually has a chance of being influenced by what they say: that this is his best album and he shouldn’t try to make anything better but to simply make the same album over and over again) and his ability to talk about this in one of the songs on the album explicitly is, I think, his true brilliance. This daring song, a song that criticizes the adulation that it’s receiving, is a criticism against the whole album, against even itself.
If there was one sentence that conjures up this band for me it’s: How far can you progress creatively before outlawing yourself and ultimately pleasing everyone except yourself? If Neil’s way of combating this is by being totally cut off from his fans which means not only never meeting them in person but never satisfying their expectations as well, in effect never making Moving Pictures 2 which ultimately makes one realize that he’s a consistently changing viable artist, more power to him. The listener that’s listening to Limelight is hearing Neil’s realization that this is the turning point and that barriers have to be put up in order to cut off the influence of fame; in order so that he doesn’t become another Hemingway. In order so that he doesn’t become a talented individual that’s a lost cause, that’s even made infamous by that lost cause (which is an adherence to the style that everyone wanted him to write in to the point where he couldn’t evolve away from that style). Rush isn’t that kind of band. Rush is a band that has always been destined to draw the line between fame and influence (In other words, even if they are incredibly famous, what they turn out is only influenced by themselves, not by what initially garnered them their fame), and moving pictures is that line. The line that creates durability-that keeps a band going. The line that makes the band realize that it’s done something that they could never improve by making something similar and ultimately better from it. After that line is drawn, for the first time the band doesn’t feel intimidated over the fact that they will never make a better album in their fan bases eyes. Once Neil stops writing fantasy lyrics (once the fantasy is dropped) that band realizes that that flying car was their need to please their fan base without pleasing themselves.
Now that Neil’s deep need to appeal to his fan base in order to understand himself has already been done on this album, for the rest of his career he’ll be an objectivist looking at everyone but himself. His integrity throughout the rest of his career becomes his struggle to stay this way. The struggle that is outlined in Vital Signs, the last song off Moving Pictures: “Everybody got to elevate from the norm” repeated over and over again, which shows how hard it is to maintain this feeling. The struggle is the friction of the day alluded to in Tom Sawyer, the first song off Moving Pictures, which is this band’s existence; which should be all band’s existences. The friction is to stay out of one’s comfort zone in order to evolve creatively even if your fans don’t want you to. Why should one be so adverse to their fans wishes? One should be this way because in actuality, those fans secretly do want you to evolve even if they tell you otherwise.
Once one becomes implicated by this band (that one is comprised of this bands fan base; the one that is considered the norm in Vital Signs), one begins to say, why can’t there be more Moving Picture type Rush albums? The turning point itself is so great. Silly, I presented the answer a couple of paragraphs above. Limelight is terrifying because it knows too well how much you like it.
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