Moving Pictures

About Moving Pictures

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 (1980), 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.

Overview

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 (1980), 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 with their earlier albums. Moving Pictures received a positive reception from contemporary and retrospective music critics and became an instant commercial success, reaching number one in Canada and number 3 in both the United States and the United Kingdom. It remains Rush's highest-selling album in the United States, with 5 million copies sold. "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. 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 (1980). 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 (1976), 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 (1980). 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 arrange new material.

From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Notable quotes

“Fate wins. At least, so it is claimed. Whatever happens, they say afterwards, it must have been Fate.‡”
— ‡When someone is saved from certain death by a strange concatenation of circumstances, they say that's a miracle. But of course, if someone is killed by a freak chain of events—the oil spill just there, the safety fence broken just there—that must also be a miracle. Just because it's not nice doesn't mean it's not miraculous. (p. 1)
“Over the last year or so Tiffany’s mother had been quite surprised, and a little worried, at Tiffany’s sudden thirst for education, which people in the village thought was a good thing in moderation but if taken unwisely could lead to restlessness.”
— Chapter 1, “Leaving” (p. 24)
“Presumably he was insane, by the usual human standards, but it was hard to tell; the phrase “differently normal” might do instead.”
— Chapter 7A, “Post Haste” (p. 223)
““The king is insuring against ‘what everyone knows’ being wrong. It so often is.”
— Chapter 1 (p. 3)
“His hands had closed automatically into fists because he had always been a man who thought with them. Soon he would try to use them; she knew it, because it was easier to punch than think.”
— Chapter 2, “Rough Music” (p. 27)
“There are quite a lot of reasons why that course of action might not, with ease, be rescued in any coherent way from the category of the insanely unwise, Dean.”
— Ponder Stibbons, in Ch. 11

Quotes via Wikiquote (CC BY-SA), each with its original source.