The Rush Album That Alex Lifeson Had the ‘Most Fun’ Making

Rush‘s Alex Lifeson just revealed which album he had the “most fun” making and it was a pretty big one, to say the least.

Some bands’ biggest albums are a total nightmare to make, causing members to splinter under the pressure of delivering the goods. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case for Rush.

Lifeson reflected on the making of the band’s blockbuster 1981 album Moving Pictures in a recent interview with Fox San Antonio, calling the multiplatinum LP “the most fun record we ever made.”

Alex Lifeson on the Making of Rush’s ‘Moving Pictures’

Rush recorded Moving Pictures in the now-defunct Le Studio in the Quebecois town of Morin Heights during a winter that even the Toronto natives found brutal.

“Moving Pictures was the most fun record we ever made. It was such a great energy and a great vibe,” Lifeson said. “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 ski, like cross-country ski, to the studio. I generally drove over. But, you know, it was part of that whole Canadian experience, the Great North.”

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The bitter temperatures were offset by the red-hot chemistry of Lifeson, Geddy Lee and Neil Peart. “And when we started working on Moving Pictures, everything came together. It was just so effortless,” Lifeson continued. “We were well prepared. We’d written all the material. We knew what we were doing. We actually mixed it down on digital, which was like one of the first Sony digital machines. Compared to modern digital, that thing was a Model T. But the record sounds great. That was really, really a lot of fun to do.”

How ‘Moving Pictures’ Took Rush to New Heights

Rush’s preparedness while making Moving Pictures paid off. The album soared to No. 1 in Canada and No. 3 in the U.S., selling 5 million copies in the latter country.

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Moving Pictures‘ slightly streamlined sound resonated with fans and critics alike, with “Tom Sawyer,” “Limelight” and “YYZ” becoming some of Rush’s most beloved songs. “YYZ” even netted the band a Grammy nomination for Best Rock Instrumental Performance.