Geddy Lee wanted to cut out one of Rush’s great songs
One of Rush’s symbolic songs, and the most loved, is certainly “Tom Sawyer“, among the most important pieces of the Canadian band in the Eighties and of their entire discography capable of speaking to a much wider audience than that of progressive enthusiasts. Yet, when the song was completed in the studio, Geddy Lee couldn’t take it anymoreto the point of wanting to leave it off the “Moving Pictures” album from 1981.
The singer and bassist of the historic formation he talked about it in a recent interviewready to return to action with his lifelong companion, guitarist Alex Lifeson, and new members Loren Gold on keyboards and Anika Nilles on drums, called to take the place left empty after the passing of Neil Peart in 2020. In a long conversation with Rick Beatoretracing the making of “Moving Pictures”, the album that definitively consecrated Rush in 1981 and which still remains their greatest commercial success today, Geddy Lee spoke about the birth of “Tom Sawyer”. Lee thus had the opportunity to admit that he had not never really fully explained why that song managed to enter so deeply into the collective imagination. According to the singer and bassist, in fact, the memory linked to the song is anything but excitingbecause every stage of recording turned into a constant source of technical problems and frustration.
On the sidelines of the interview, when asked why he thought “Tom Sawyer” had such an impact on listeners, Lee confessed:
“I don’t know the answer. I have no idea. I’m the last person who would know because when we finished that song in the studio we were so frustrated. It was a very difficult song to make, difficult to mix. Every step of the recording was riddled with problems.
And in the end I was so sick of that song that I didn’t want to put it on the record. Can you imagine how stupid of an idea that was? Like, ‘Let’s not put our most popular song on the record.’”
Geddy Lee then described the same “Moving Pictures” as “the best moment of our collaboration with producer Terry Brown,” but went on to point out, “Once again, that it was the album we shouldn’t have made“. The musician thus explained that at that moment Rush “they should have done a live album” as a follow-up to 1980’s hit “Permanent Waves,” before their record label stepped in. Lee narrated:
“I remember sitting in the dressing room in New York and being visited by Cliff Burnstein, who was working for our record company at the time. He sat us down and said, ‘I hear you’re doing a live album and I’m here to ask you not to do a live album. Your previous record had so much new energy. I think you should keep writing.'” Burnstein then said, ‘There’s something about that record that really works and I think you’re on the right path. You might do a live album next time. So we looked at each other. We had already planned the recordings, mixing and everything else. But we said: ‘This sounds fun, let’s do it’ and we just said: ‘Ok.’
As well as being one of the band’s major hits, “Tom Sawyer” is one of the songs regularly performed in Rush’s live performances. The presence of the piece will be practically guaranteed in the setlists of the group’s return concerts, which will kick off the “Fifty Something Tour” reunion tour next month. After a series of dates in North America, the “Fifty Something” tour will arrive in South America and Europe in early 2027, with a date also scheduled in Italy for 30 March 2027 at the Unipol Dome in Assagonear Milan.
