Neil Peart ("Rush Profiled!"): "I'm a weather fanatic -- I really love weather, and I watch the weather and look for a good weatherman. And, one night I was watching it, and there are two incidents in that song that are synchronicity to one weather report, where the weatherman showed a picture of sun dogs, and described them, and they are just two little points of light that appear at sunset, often in the winter when the sky is clear and crystalline, and they are like little prisms, and they sit about ten degrees north and south of the setting sun, and they are just beautiful little diamonds of light, and often times there's a circle of light - one line, that connects them. So they are a really beautiful natural phenomenon, and I love the name too. 'Sun dogs' just has a great sound to it. And in that same weather forecast, the weatherman announced a meteor shower that night, and so my daughter and I went out on the lake in the middle of the night and watched this meteor shower. So the whole idea of the song was response and how people respond to things, and it's a thing I've found a lot in traveling around the world, too. It's not enough just to travel and see things. You have to respond to them - you have to feel them, and a lot of the thrust of that song is how things are transferred, like chain lightning or enthusiasm or energy or love are things that are contagious, and if someone feels them, they are easily transferrable to another person, or in the case of watching a meteor shower, it's made more special if there is someone else there. 'Reflected in another pair of eyes' is the idea that it's a wonderful thing already, just you and the meteor shower, but if there's someone else there with you to share it, then it multiplies, you know, it becomes exponentially a bigger experience, so response is a theme that recurs in several of the songs and was one of my probably dominant sub-themes in the writing."
The Pass
What is "The Pass" about?
Neil Peart ("Rush Profiled!"): "There was a lot I wanted to address in that song, and it's probably one of the hardest ones I've ever written. I spent a lot of time on it, refining it, and even more doing research. There was one song previously, called 'Manhattan Project' where I wanted to write about the birth of the nuclear age. Well, easier said than done, especially when [writing] lyrics, you've got a couple of hundred words to say what you want to say. So each word counts, and each word had better be accurate, and so I found in the case of the Manhattan Project, I was having to go back and read histories of the time, histories of the place, biographies of all the people involved, and that's not without its own rewards, but it's a lot of work to go to to write a song - having to read a dozen books and collate all your knowledge and experience just so you can write, you know, if it says the scientists were in the desert sands, well, make sure they were and why, and all that. So with this song it was the same. I felt concerned about it, but, at the same time, I didn't want the classic thing of 'Oh, life's not so bad, you know, it's worth living' and all that. I didn't want one of those pat, kind of cliched, patronizing statements, so I really worked hard to find out true stories, and among the people that I write to are people who are going to universities, to MIT, and collecting stories from them about people they had known and what they felt, and why the people had taken this desperate step and all of that and trying really hard to understand something that, fundamentally, to me is totally un-understandable. I just can't relate to it at all, but I wanted to write about it. And the facet that I most wanted to write about was to de-mythologize it - the same as with 'Manhattan Project' - it de-mythologized the nuclear age, and it's the same thing with this facet - of taking the nobility out of it and saying that yes, it's sad, it's a horrible, tragic thing if someone takes their own life, but let's not pretend it's a hero's end. It's not a triumph. It's not a heroic epic. It's a tragedy, and it's a personal tragedy for them, but much more so for the people left behind, and I really started to get offended by the samurai kind of values that were attached to it, like here's a warrior that felt it was better to die with honor, and all of that kind of offended me. I can understand someone making the choice; it's their choice to make. I can't relate to it, and I could never imagine it, for myself, but still I thought it's a really important thing to try to get down."
Geddy on the song:
Geddy Lee (Guitar World, March 1990): "Still, there are certain songs, like 'The Pass,' where I felt it was more important to keep the lyrics intact and to build up a musical statement that's born out of the message of the song. In a case like that, I have to do a lot of thinking before a single note is written and I really immerse myself into the song. I mean, if I have to sing Neil's lyrics, I have to feel some sort of relationship with what he's talking about. I have to feel in concert with them in order to make it believable, to myself and to the listener. So there is a lot of conversation that goes down about each song before I start writing melodies."
Scars
What is "Scars" about?
Neil Peart ("Rush Profiled!"): "I think it's part of everyone's experience that a certain record reflects a certain period of their life, and that's a pleasurable scar, you know, there's a mark left on you, a psychological fingerprint left by a very positive experience. And music is an easy one, but it translates to so many other parts of life where it's a given that, for instance, the sense of smell is one of the strongest forces in your memory, where a given smell will suddenly conjure up a whole time of your life, and again, it triggers another scar, it triggers another psychological imprint that was left by a pleasurable thing. So it was just, again, the metaphor of scars and using it to say that, as the song does, that these are positive and negative aspects of life that have both left their mark. Trying to make it universal, it's not autobiographical, and I took a whole autobiographical story of my own and made it one line, basically, but there are other things in there, parts of life that I've responded to in a sense of joy, and in a sense of compassion, and there's the exaltation of walking down a city street and feeling like you're above the pavement, and Christmas in New York is the perfect time to feel that, really, where you just get charged up by the whole energy and the positive feelings of it all."
Alex on guitar during remix
Do you add effects to your guitar during remix, or do you print them to tape when tracking? Alex Lifeson (Guitar Player, November 1991): "I much prefer to print to tape. On "Scars" [Presto], for instance, I got free rein on all atmospheric guitar stuff. Some producers we worked with in the past would have said, "No, let's print your guitar perfectly clean and experiment later," but it's never the same. I say do it and live with it."
Anagram (For Mongo)
What is the song "Anagram (for Mongo)" about?
Geddy Lee ("Rush Profiled!"): "It doesn't really say one thing; it says a bunch of little things, and I think that's OK as long as it sounds good. You know, as long as it rolls off the tongue kind of thing? So I think different songs are different exercises, to a degree, and I think that if they feel like exercises, then there's something wrong with the song. But if they can slip by in a kind of cohesive and fluid way, or if the effect is to be disjoint, and sometimes that's what you're after. Sometimes you want it to be jarring and disjointed and nonsensical. I think it depends on what you're trying to do, and whether you've achieved it in your mind, and whether it actually worked, and 'Anagram,' I think, did work, even though it's a game - the whole song is a game. The choruses are quite smooth and quite interesting, and they have a nice sound to them and they kind of mock the whole song itself, so I think it was effective there."
Red Tide
What is "Red Tide" about?
Neil Peart ("Rush Profiled!"): "It's a bit of a selfish concern, really. I really love wildlife, and I spend a lot of my time in the outdoors when I'm not working, so that's important to me. One of my main hobbies is cycling, so air quality kind of becomes of critical importance. So it is a selfish thing, and it's something I've written about before, on the previous album - the song 'Second Nature'. So, again, you want to say things in a way that is not only not preachy, but also not boring. So finding the images like 'Second Nature' - I was really fond of that analogy of saying 'we want our homes to be a second nature', you know. That was, again, taking a common phrase and being able to twist it to say what you want it to say. So, with 'Red Tide' it was a little more adamant, because I think the time is a little more critical, and I had to be firmer about it, but still there are ways of getting at it, and to me there are jokes in there, too, that probably no one in the world will ever get, but in the first verse, when I'm talking about 'Nature's new plague' and then 'Lovers pausing at the bedroom door to find an open store' and all that, to me that was obviously referring to AIDS, but it was the irony of modern life, you know, where spontaneous love still certainly does occur, but here are two lovers who have just met in the middle of the night, and they have to go find a store before they can consummate their new relationship, you know, and to me, when I put those things down, I have a smile, but I know that it's one that will never be shared."
Alex on the solo:
Alex Lifeson (Guitar World, March 1990): "I wanted to get a lot of tension in that solo because the song is quite intense. There's a kind of disturbing feeling about that solo, which I think ties it all together well. The song is angry. Neil is basically a very ecology-minded person, and he wrote this song dealing with the destruction of our environment. So I wanted the music, and especially my solo, to reflect that anger."
Available Light
Geddy about the song:
Geddy Lee (Guitar World, March 1990): "On a tune like 'Available Light,' where the bass just provides some simple, low-end support, I'd rather play the keyboards and sing. It's just a question of what instru- ment will be rewarding to play from a player's point of view. If the keyboard is simply playing a strict, four-chord repeating pattern, then I'd rather just program it into some MIDI pedal and have some fun playing bass."
Roll The Bones:
The Album Cover
According to "The New Music Magazine" 11/11/91, the boy on the cover is Michael Vander Veldt.
The Album
Neil talks about the album title:
Neil Peart ("Roll The Bones Radio Special"): "'Roll The Bones' is the perfect title, because through all of the thoughts that I go through on the album, about all these nasty things that happen, and all these terrible things that could happen to you: a drunk in a stolen car could run over you on your way home tomorrow night, and you could have the best-laid plans for what you want to do, but there's still that element of chance that it could all go wrong. But the bottom line of that is, "Take the chance, roll the bones." If it's a random universe, and that's terrifying and it makes you neurotic and everything, never mind. You really have to just take the chance or else nothing's going to happen. The bad thing might not happen but the good thing won't happen either, so that's really the only choice you have."
Geddy talks about the making of the album:
You just finished a new record - how did it go for you? Geddy Lee (October 1991): "It was probably the fastest we've made a record in some time. We say we made the record in 8 weeks, but we spent 10 weeks rehearsing and writing so the recording time was quick - that's good because that's usually the painful part."
Neil Peart told me it took a day and a half to put down all the basic drums, which is incredible.
"We did the drums and bass tracks over a long weekend, so that was good. It's nice to know you can do them quickly, but I don't think it really amounts to anything. The bottom line is what you end up with, whether it takes you a long weekend or four weeks. I don't think it matters, as long as you get what you're after."
Bravado
Geddy's thoughts on Bravado:
Geddy Lee ("RTB CD Launch radio broadcast"): "That's a pretty emotional song for me. It's one of my favorites that I think we've ever written. Just because it's quite a change.... it's quite a different song on the album. It's stands out on the record as being a different texture than most of the other tracks. That line to me says really says so much about the people, really that move the world, you know, the people that go out there and do what has to be done. And they're not worrying about what it's going to cost them personally down the road, they're doing what has to be done, and they're prepared to pay the price for it without worrying about.... the payment that comes later."
Alex talks about the solo in Bravado:
Alex Lifeson ("Roll The Bones Radio Special"): "That's a special song for me, that's one of the songs that we lifted some of the guitar parts off the demo tapes we used on the finished record. The solo is a thrown away solo that was just a one-take solo. That song and "Roll The Bones" and "Ghost Of A Chance", but "Bravado" and "Ghost Of A Chance", those two solos I feel are probably among the best that I've done -- the most emotive and the most spontaneous, and they were both one-take solos. And we just got used to hearing them and they fit so perfectly, and the bass and the drums kind of fit into what the solo was doing, there was really no reason to re-record it. You could never capture that innocence and emotion in it. And that's what it really boils down to; sound doesn't really matter, you can get a half-decent sound on anything and enhance it and make it a little better, but at the cost of losing the emotion. It's not worth it."
Alex Lifeson (Guitar Player, November 1991): "The solos in "Ghost of a Chance", "Bravado" and "Roll the Bones" are basically one- or two-take solos played all the way trough. When we're developing the arrangement in the writing stages, I toss a solo on tape so we have something to listen to. It's late at night, the lights are down low, and I'm by myself. These were supposed to be throwaway solos, but when it was time to do the "real" solos, Neil had already adjusted his parts to fit what I'd played. So it came down to me trying to recreate everything - which doesn't work. You might improve the sound, but even if you play exactly the same notes you'll never capture that magic feel. The solos in "Ghost of a Chance" and "Bravado" are certainly my favorites on the record, if not among my favorite solos ever. When I listen to them, I heart the way I felt at that time. That's really the key."
"Bravado" sounds very spontaneous.
"I think it was a first take. I played my Tele through the GK preamp direct to tape. The solo has a particular character and personality that's uncommon for me. If I'd erased that and gone with something else, then it would have been just another solo I put together in the studio, rather than something that happened at a special moment."
Geddy/Alex on the song:
Geddy Lee (Guitar Player, November 1991): "Neil's parts are complex, too. Listen to the end of "Bravado". There's an example of limb independence that rivals any drummer, anywhere. The fact that he nailed taht in one take blows my mind. In only four days, Neil and I had all the drums and bass parts down. When you record that quickly, you wonder if maybe some ugliness will rear its head two weeks down the road. There were only a couple of little moments that sounded a tad unsteady over all that work; we're able to live without them. Alex did almost all the guitars in about eight days. Alex Lifeson: "In the past, it took three to five weeks."
Roll The Bones
Neil talks about the song:
Neil Peart (1991): "The song Roll the Bones is full of any number of little decisions that I had to make about what I thought, and how best to express them and how to introduce the idea that yes we do have free will and yes we do have choices, and yes our choices do affect the way our fates turn out. But at the same time, there are always these wild cards that are going to come along, sometimes tragically, sometimes triumphantly. The motto comes down to 'Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst'."
About the "rap" section in "Roll The bones":
According to Neil on "Rockline", December 2, 1991: Geddy Lee does the rap section.
Neil Peart ("Roll The Bones Radio Special"): Yeah, that started off as a lyrical experiment for me; I was hearing some of the better rap writers, among whom I would include like LL Cool J or Public Enemy, musicality apart, just as writers, it was really interesting. And it struck me that it must be a lot of fun to do that; all those internal rhymes and all that wordplay and everything. That's meat and potatoes for a lyricist; it's stuff you love to do and can seldom get away with being so cute in a rock song. So I thought, "Well, I'll give it a try," and I submitted actually I think the song "Roll The Bones" without that section to the other guys and got them to like it, and said, "Well, I have this other thing I've been working on, and see what you think." You know, not knowing how they'd respond, but I'd had the fun of doing it and I've been rejected before; my notebook's full of things that haven't made it too, so that was the situation there. And they got excited about the idea, but then how to treat it was the other question, and we did think of trying to get a real rapper in to do it, and we even experimented with female voices, and ultimately found that that treated version of Geddy's voice was the most satisfying as creating the persona that we wanted to get across, and was also the most satisfying to listen to. And with the female voice in it, it wasn't as nice texturally going by, where Geddy's voice treated like that became a nice low frequency sound, and you could listen to it just as a musical passage without having to key in on the lyrics or anything, just let the song go by you. And it was pleasant to the ear, so I think that was probably one of the big factors in choosing that. We'd even been in contact with people like Robby Robertson; we thought we'd like to try his voice on it and had contacted his office, and so on. John Cleese we thought of; we were going to do it as a joke version, get John Cleese in it: "Jack, relax." Get him to camp it up, but again from the musicality and longevity factors, that would have got tired quickly; that's the trouble with jokes.
Geddy Lee (October 1991): "Yeah. I guess that track is something that was influenced by more of the spoken word stuff that is going on, although I can't sit here and say I'm a fan of rap. I like some rap things, but a lot of I don't like. I think there's some of it that's really well done - there are some clever people out there. But it's also not a new influence."
"People are talking about rap music like it's something new - it's not new at all. It's been around for over a decade, if not always in one form. And there are songs, like "Territories", where we have used a similar kind of thing, although it was never related to rap because it wasn't the music of the moment - so we have used spoken word sections before."
"This one is written more from Neil's point of view. The lyrics were written very much in concert with contemporary rap music: the way the words react against each other and the structures form more in sympathy with what's going on in a contemporary rap way. To a degree we are having fun with that. We couldn't make up our minds really if we wanted to be influenced by rap or satirize it, so I think that song kind of falls between the cracks and in the end I think it came out to be neither, it came out to be something that is very much us."
Where's My Thing?
Where's My Thing was nominated and was the runner up in the Best Rock Instrumental in the 1992 Grammy's losing to Eric Johnson's "Cliffs of Dover"
What was the reason behind writing another instrumental?
Geddy Lee ("RTB CD Launch radio broadcast"): "It's so much fun to do, too. We tried to do one on Presto.... and every time we started writing it, you know, we played this piece of music and be like, 'Oh. This lyric fits perfectly with it.' So we'd go off, we'd steal from the instrumental and it would become another song. And it kept happening over and over again. And finally Neil said, 'Okay. You keep promising to do this instrumental, and I'm not giving you any more lyrics until you write the thing.' So we sat down and wrote it."
Neil Peart's thoughts on whether the single was a surpise:
Neil Peart ("Roll The Bones Radio Special"): Well it actually was; I was really proud of our record company, that they released "Dreamline" as the first track and then they put out "Where's My Thing?" for alternative stations or basically anyone who had the nerve to play it. And it made a great alternative for college radio in the States or alternative radio anywhere that exists, which isn't very far but at the same time it was just a very creative thing for a record company to do, I thought. Not just to be worried, "Ok, here's our marketing strategy," they would say, "Let's do this because it would be fun and unusual, and the song is there." So I thought that was really a good thing to do. A friend of ours says that it's just another version of "Telstar" like all instrumentals are, which is funny. And very true!
The Big Wheel
Neil talks about song:
Neil Peart ("Roll The Bones Radio Special"): "The Big Wheel" is a good example on this album; where it seems to be autobiographical, but it's really not. It's where I've looked for a universal of that trade-off between innocence and experience, and that song certainly addresses that. Not in the circumstances of my own life so much, or if it is, it's not important that it be autobiographical, that's just by the by really. Very much I want to find universal things that others can relate to, and that's a thing that's part of everyone's life, so I think that's probably one reason why I'm drawn to it. And then so much of it is drawn from observing people around me too, so that becomes a factor in it too; how they responded to life, and how they take to it. How they adapt to that innocence and experience thing.
Heresy
Neil on the rhythm in "Heresy":
Modern Drummer (February 1994) A particular pattern Neil has recorded that demonstrates the value of "world inspiration" comes from Rush's last album, Roll The Bones. "On that record we had a song called 'Heresy' that had a drum pattern I heard when I was in Togo. I was laying on a rooftop one night and heard two drummers playing in the next valley, and the rhythm stuck in my head. When we started working on the song I realized that beat would complement it well."
Geddy on the meaning of "Heresy":
Geddy Lee ("RTB CD Launch radio broadcast"): "Yeah, absolutely. That horrible and wonderful moment all mixed into one when somebody realizes that they've been, you know, had their freedom removed for so many years, and they finally get it back. It must be such a bitter-sweet moment. All those years.... all those lives that were lost and all the struggle, all the people that were fighting, all the years, and suddenly.... it's all over. And what do they do about all the people that did not survive, who were not lucky enough to be around when the wall fell down. It's an unanswerable question, but it's certainly one to think about."
Alex on the guitar:
Alex Lifeson (Guitar Player, November 1991): Occasionally we do things that are slightly out just to give a particular character to the music. On "Heresy" [Bones] I'm playing my acoustics in the chorus -especially the second chorus- to get a 12-string, Byrds kind of sound. We wanted to create the effect of a buch of guys sitting around playing who aren't quite in tune. You can hear it in the acoustic - particularly the [Gibson] J-55, whick has a Nashville tuning. Of course you're gonna get that kind of fluctuation anyway when you're playing high up the neck, because the strings are so light.
Ghost of A Chance
Neil reflects on his recent writings:
Neil Peart ("Roll The Bones Radio Special"): "Ghost of a Chance" is a perfect example; I've always shyed away from love songs and even mentioning the word in songs because it's so much cliche, and until I thought that I'd found a new way to approach it, or a new nuance of it to express, I was not going to write one of those kind of songs. "Ghost of a Chance" fit right in with my overall theme of randomness and contingency and so on, but at the same time it was a chance for me to write about love in a different way; of saying, "Here are all these things that we go through in life and the people we meet, it's all by chance. And the corners we turn and the places we go and the people we meet there." All those things are so random and yet through all of that people do meet each other, and if they work at it they can make that encounter last. So I'm saying there's a ghost of a chance it can happen, and the odds are pretty much against it, but at the same time that ghost of a chance sometimes does come through and people do find each other and stay together.
You Bet Your LifeAlex on the energy of the song:
In "You Bet Your Life" the delay is synced to the tempo. Did you or the engineer do that? Alex Lifeson (Guitar Player, November 1991): "I did it originally, then Stephen added a little bit more DDL to one of the other cleaner guitars to give it more energy. The song seemed quite same as we went through different sections - something was lacking. We wanted to get the first verse seesawing a little more. Edge, from U2, is a pro at that."
Counterparts:
The Album Title
Geddy Lee (Raw Magazine, 1993): "The title came after the record, which isn't always the way it works. We're at that period in our lives where we're starting to question our relationahips with each other. You start to ask 'Why am I still hanging around with these guys?' To some extent 'Counterparts' is a recognition of how the three of us have grown in different ways of the past few years.
Animate
Neil on the rhythm of "Animate":
Neil Peart (Modern Drummer, February 1994) "For the opening track, 'Animate,' for instance, I used a basic R&B rhythm that I played back in my early days, coupled with that hypnotic effect that a lot of the British bands of the turn of the 90's had--bands like Curve and Lush. The middle section of the tune is the result of the impact African music has had on me, although it wasn't a specific African rhythm.
Stick It Out
Neil on the meaning behind the song's title:
Neil Peart ("Counterparts Radio Premiere"): It's just a play on the words, really. "Stick It Out" meaning both a kind of arrogant display, "stick it out", but also the endurance thing; if you have a difficult thing to endure, stick it out and you get to the end. It was the pun on both of those, really, so again the duality in the song is a bit leaning both ways. The sense of forbearance, of holding back, and also the idea of fortitude: stick it out, you know, survive. But that was more of a piece of fun, that song I would say, both lyrically and musically it verges on parody, and that was one I think we just had fun with, and lyrically I certainly did, too. "Stick it out" and "spit it out" and all that was just a bit of word play.
A song like "Stick It Out" proved difficult for Neil because of its fairly simplistic riff.
Neil Peart (Modern Drummer, February 1994) "How could I approach that song properly and yet give it a touch of elegance that I would want a riff-rock song to have? I don't want it to be the same type of thing you'd hear on rock radio. So I started bringing in Latin and fusion influences. There's a verse where I went for a Weather Report-type effect. I used some tricky turn-arounds in the ride cymbal pattern, where it goes from downbeat to upbeat accents--anything I could think of to make it my own. That song verges on parody for us, so we had to walk a careful line. We responded to the power of the riff, yet still found some ways to twist it to make it something more."
Cut To The Chase
Alex about the song:
(Guitar Player, December 1993): On several songs, including the punchy "Cut To The Chase", Lifeson's bandmates encouraged him to keep the original guide solos. "Solos are a funny thing," Alex observes, "Many solos I record at the demo stage make it to the final mix. I tend to be a perfectionist, but I've come to realize my best work is spontaneous. An unrehearsed solo may not be particularly in time or in tune, but it can possess an emotional quality that's very difficult to recapture. At this point, I'd rather live with some technical imperfections."
Nobody's Hero
Neil on the topic of heroes:
Neil Peart (Modern Drummer, February 1994) I had a lot of reflections over the last couple of years about the nature of heroism, what a 'role model' is supposed to be, and the differences between the two. That thought manifested itself in a song on the new album called 'Nobody's Hero.' A role model is obviously a very positive example of what can be accomplished, and it's what I think, with all humility and pride, Rush has been--a good role model for other bands.
Nobody's Hero - on AIDS/Homosexuality
Neil Peart (Raw Magazine, 1993): "If people think that discussing homosexuality is controversial, then they've been living under a rock. "Nobodys Hero" will probably polarise people, even though the AIDS issue is only a small part of the lyrical theme, and people will probably jump to conclusions. That's their problem. I don't worry about it, whether it's brave or foolish or whatever. When things affect you, you talk about them and it comes out in your music. You let it fly. I never had the slightest idea that it could be interpreted as controversial until someone pointed it out to me after we'd finished the record. I guess I've always worked in the music business, which is a very tolerant environment."
Between Sun and Moon
Neil on his collaboration with Pye Dubois
Neil Peart ("Counterparts Radio Premiere"): Yeah, in the past, "Tom Sawyer" of course was cowritten with Pye, and "Force 10" on Hold Your Fire was too, and I really like his style of writing. It's inscrutable to me, sometimes, as I think it is to other people too, but at the same time it has a certain power in his images and writing. And also, there was some strange symbiosis that seemed to affect the songs; when Pye was involved in "Tom Sawyer" and in "Force 10", it made them somehow a little different musically, you know, his percolation through me. I would get his ideas and then I would add mine to them and structure it as a Rush song, and then pass it along to the other guys. Even through that chain of events, somehow there was some outside influence that was good, so we've always kind of kept the open door to Pye's ideas. Anytime he had anything to submit he would send it along to me, usually scrawled in an exercise book. And in this case that was one that we all responded to some of the images in his presentation, so again I went to work on it, shaped it up into the kind of structure that we like to work with, and then added some of my own images and angles on it. And so it went.
Alex on the song:
(Guitar Player, December 1993): It's no surprise that 'Counterparts' acoustic guitars recall 'Tommy'-era Who tracks. "Pete Townshend can make an acoustic sound so heavy and powerful," affirms Alex. "I've always admired that. On "Between Sun And Moon" there's a musical bridge before the solo that's very Who-ish. I even throw Keith Richards in there." Lyrically and musically, Lifeson notes, the song is "really a tribute to the '60s." Yet these days, he find himself listening to contemporary players. "Particularly Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains -I've been really getting off on 'Dirt'. And I love Eric Johnson's playing."
The Speed of Love
Neil reflects on the difficulty of recording the song
Neil Peart (Modern Drummer, February 1994) "'The Speed Of Love' is kind of mid-tempo, more sensitive rock song. That song probably took me the longest to find just the right elements I wanted to have in a drum part. What made it a challenge is that I wanted the feel and the transitions between sections to be just right. I played that song over and over, refining it until I was satisfied. I don't think a listener will hear all the work that went into that track."
Double Agent
What were you doing on "Double Agent"? There's that kind of ...
Geddy Lee ("Counterparts Radio Premiere"): We were losing our minds, is what we were doing! "Double Agent" was a complete exercise in self-indulgence, and really, it was one of the last things we wrote on the record, and we just kind of -- we'd written all these songs that were heavily structured, and, you know, were crafted and meticulously worked on: this note and that note, and this is a song we just wanted to kind of get our yah-yahs out and just have a bit of a rave. And really, it's one of the goofiest songs I think we've ever written, but I'm quite happy with the result. In its own way, I think it's an interesting little piece of lunacy.
Where did the phrase "wilderness of mirrors" come from?
Neil Peart (Counterparts Tour Book): "Wilderness of mirrors" is a phrase from T.S.Eliot's "Gerontion," and was also applied by former CIA counterintelligence chief James Jesus Angleton to describe the world of espionage-hence the twist on "Double Agent," reflecting the clandestine workings of dreams and the subconcious.
Cold Fire
Geddy & Alex discuss the song:
"Cold Fire"'s one of my favorite tracks. Can you tell me a bit about that?
Geddy Lee ("Counterparts Radio Premiere"): Um, "Cold Fire". That song went through many permutations.
Alex Lifeson: Yeah, that was actually one of the songs that we had a bit of a problem getting into lyrically, working on it from a musical point of view.
GL: Yeah, it was hard to know the approach, and that was a song that we felt a little ...
AL: That's right! Actually we had a few rewrites of this musically.
GL: We rewrote that song quite a bit. And thankfully, I think Peter Collins' presence really pulled that song together. He came in and he pointed out certain strengths in the previous versions of the songs that we had, and he really helped us reorganize that song. It wasn't until he got there, I think, that we finally locked in on a feel for those verses that enabled Alex to play those great kind of steel guitar lines -- steel guitar-like lines -- that he's playing, and enabled me to open up harmonically. I was having trouble with the verses, you know, it's a tough song, when you're dealing with this issue of male/female relationships, which is such a foreign subject for us to deal with, in a song. You want to make sure it doesn't sound trite or hackneyed or you're not just doing yet another -- who needs another song about relationships? It took us a while to get the right mood, and I was really happy with the mood we ended up with in the verses, and I think, oddly enough, as much as it was a nightmare, that song for me, when I hear the record now, I think the verses are one of the strongest parts of the album, in that song.
AL: Yeah, I think there's a great balance between the romantic picture on the one side, and how the music is sympathetic to those lyrics, and then the other point of view, which is much colder ...
GL: Much tougher.
AL: ... more based in reality. And the contrast between the lyrics and the music, and how they support each other, I think really worked out successfully on that song, from what Ged said was a very difficult song for us to work on.
Neil on the song:
Neil Peart (Network Magazine, November 1993): "In 'Cold Fire' I have the woman speaking to the man and she's smarter than he is. It was a difficult technical challenge lyrically, but those are the kind of things that now, after all these years, you start to feel you have the craft to take on. I don't mind writing about love now, where I would have avoided that in the previous years just because of the inability to get beyond cliches."
