In 2022 Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee of Rush told Prog how they’d come up with YYZ, the instrumental track from 1981 album Moving Pictures that won them a Grammy nomination.
In 1980, following the success of that year’s album Permanent Waves, Rush very suddenly made a change of course. “We were scheduled to do this big live album,” Alex Lifeson recalls.“And at the last minute we said, ‘You know what? Fuck this – we’re not going to do a live album. We’re going to go back into the studio and do our next album.’
“And that’s how Moving Pictures came to be. And it turned out to be the most important decision of our careers. Or the second most important decision, the first one being 2112. Because without 2112, there would be no Rush.”
Geddy Lee says the band had been inspired by record label exec Cliff Burnstein (who later managed Metallica and Def Leppard). “We had played New York; Cliff came to the gig and we were talking about doing a live album.
“He said to us, ‘You know, Permanent Waves was so great that maybe you should think about going straight back in the studio to do another record.’ So we talked about it and thought, ‘That does sound more fun!’ So that’s what we did, but Cliff sort of planted the seed of us changing.”
Lifeson, Lee and late drummer Neil Peart enjoyed the experience of making Moving Pictures in their home-from-home Le Studio complex in Morin-Heights, Canada. “We had kind of hit on a new style for ourselves,” Lee says, “working in these shorter timeframes, but still building these complexities within those timeframes, and it was kind of an exciting period for us.”
“If you think about it,” adds Lifeson, “Moving Pictures is the cute, sweet, happy offspring of Permanent Waves! We learned a lot about writing and how we work best to accomplish our goals so that an ambitious album such as Moving Pictures could be made without wanting to kill ourselves.”
It was late when Lifeson got back to the barn studio one night after driving the five hours up from Toronto. Inside, Lee and Peart were beaming. They’d written a new song they thought might work for the album. “I stood there – hadn’t even been in the city that long,” remembers Lifeson. “And it’s the worst thing you can imagine: a fucking song written by the rhythm section! I have to fit a guitar part over this?”
Lee explains the backstory: “Pratt [Peart’s nickname] and I had gone into the barn and started jamming to loosen up. I got this idea for that main riff, and so we just went back and forth.
“Pratt would say, ‘Hey, it would be great if we had a part that was a bit more mellow now.’ And I’d say, ‘Well, I can use keyboards here.’ And then, almost out of nowhere, we had this song.”
“Then I had to learn that stupid bass part and transpose it to guitar. Thank you!” Lifeson laughs.
But there was one more ingredient yet to be added. “We were on a break and a friend of mine flew up to pick us up in a small plane,” the guitarist says. “We were flying back to the city and, approaching the airport, they have this identifier in Morse code. It’s that ‘dada, dada, dada’ signal that would be the intro to the song.
“I don’t know – was it you, Ged, or was it Neil? But somebody said, ‘Hey, that’d be a cool way to start the song, with that rhythm, the identifier.’ And then, when we went back to the studio, we fit it in. And that’s such a signature.”
YYZ was nominated for the Best Rock Instrumental Grammy in 1982, but lost to The Police’s Behind My Camel. Despite that, it remained a key part of Rush’s live set in the years that followed – and may very well return.
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