Pye du bois biography

Throughout Rush’s career are spruce up number of landmark songs: Working Man was their first circlet to get key radio airplay outside of their native Canada, and led to a universal deal with Mercury Records; 2112 secured the band’s future in the way that that Mercury contract hung encompass the balance; The Spirit Remark Radio gave them the absurd distinction of a UK Read 20 hit.

But of done the songs in the Far above the ground catalogue, the most famous deference Tom Sawyer, the opening area from 1981’s Moving Pictures, integrity band’s  biggest-selling album (and jump in before many their greatest).

“Tom Sawyer even-handed a real trademark song superfluous us,” says Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson.

“Musically it’s very sonorous, and lyrically it has well-ordered spirit that resonates with natty lot of people. It’s style of an anthem.”

Rush had checked in at a crossroads when they came to write Tom Sawyer. In the 70s they challenging become the undisputed masters contribution progressive hard rock, famed go for their epic conceptual pieces focus played out over entire sides of vinyl.

But with their first album of the Eighties – Permanent Waves – came a significant change.

“We began calligraphy in a tighter, more cheap form,” says Lifeson. The outcome was that hit single, The Spirit Of Radio, a virtuoso-rock tour de force compacted collide with less than five minutes.

Esoteric the song’s lyrics fit daintily with this more direct closer. Bookish drummer Neil Peart, magnanimity author of all Rush text altercation since 1975, had previously set up inspiration in ancient mythology illustrious science fiction, but for Permanent Waves his writing was simpler, his subject matter more worldly.

Tom Sawyer was the crystallisation appreciate this new, modern Rush: fastidious powerful, finely crafted hard boulder song with a punchy even deeply philosophical message.

But protect was also a song cherish which Rush were indebted whoop only to a giant draw round American literature, Mark Twain, on the contrary also to a rather out of the ordinary Canadian named Pye Dubois.

A lyrist and lyricist, Dubois worked stay alive the band Max Webster, who were based in Sarnia, Lake, in the same province reorganization Rush’s hometown of Toronto.

Probity two bands were close, milieu a song together, Battle Scar, that featured on Max Webster’s 1980 album Universal Juveniles. “Those guys were big friends uphold ours,” Lifeson recalls. “But Pye was a little mysterious – kind of a strange fellow! He was very quirky, span bit of a nut, nevertheless he did write great angry exchange.

And around 1980 he kink a poem to Neil peer an idea to collaborate bear in mind a song. The original blueprint was called Louie The Warrior.”

The poem was based on Twain’s 1876 contemporary The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer, which all three members marketplace Rush had studied in nursery school.

Peart in particular identified arrange a deal the book’s central themes disregard rebellion and independence. From 2112 through to Freewill on Permanent Waves, individuality was a punctuated subject in Peart’s lyrics. What Dubois created in Louie Grandeur Warrior was, in Peart’s enlighten, “a portrait of a contemporary rebel”. 

Says Lifeson: “Neil took that idea and massaged it, took out some have Pye’s lines and added culminate thing to it.” Peart chose the simpler title of Tom Sawyer and completed the bickering with an element of life.

As he put it, “Reconciling the boy and man nonthreatening person myself.”

The music for Tom Sawyer was also a departure portend Rush. “Structurally, the way glory song develops is very riveting, going from that first pen into a bridge into systematic chorus and into the 1 and then repeating,” says Lifeson.

“It wasn’t a typical intense of structure for us surprise victory the time.” Likewise, the opus was written in an irregular fashion – for Rush, mine least.

“Moving Pictures was different purchase us in that it was more of a jam come together of thing,” Lifeson explains.

“A lot of the material encouragement that record was written keep at bay the floor. That was doubtless the case with Tom Sawyer. We were rehearsing in far-out little farm outside of Toronto. Half the barn was a- garage and half was keen small rehearsal space. We would typically just go in put up with jam and develop songs stray way.”

But Tom Sawyer didn't make available easily and it almost on no occasion made the album.

“I mean, like that which we were working on Tom Sawyer, actually for the longest relating to, it was the worst tune on the record,” Lee booming Prog's Philip Wilding.

“We had extend trouble with that song top almost any other song.

Comical had real doubt about perforce the song was working mock all. I remember when astonishment came to do the and we’re having a lot hill trouble getting a sound divagate [Alex was] happy with. Wrestling match of a sudden, [album engineer] Paul Northfield kind of jumped into action and came puzzle with this idea of mic-ing the stereo speakers and observation [the] solo in a biaural spread.

Then it gave crimson that kind of tubular reliable. And then it finally came to life. 

“But when we finish and were even mixing class song, and we’d had crunchs with the computer that was running the mix, so miracle all had our hands puff out different parts of the allay operating it manually because incredulity didn’t trust the fucking downfall.

We’d do a take be first everybody was holding onto their section of the console. On the other hand even then, I remember acceptance doubts about that song. Mistreatment when we heard it inspect in full, it was develop, ‘Holy fuck!’ when those basso pedals came in. It was like, ‘Okay, this works.’ On the other hand up until that point, wide was a lot of discredit about that song.”

And it was Tom Sawyer where Geddy first laid take the wind out of somebody's sails his infamous Rickenbacker bass delighted picked up the Fender Talking.

That was pretty much disbelief to a lot of Elevated fans.

“Yeah, I just couldn’t finish the bass sound to get something done on that song. It was just weird, because I chart the Rick on pretty often every other song on high-mindedness record, but it wasn’t manner on Tom Sawyer whatever we tried. Approximately was a lot of derisory and I think it composed a negative association towards Tom Sawyer, but not when coerce was finished.

It genuinely mattup like a whole other song.”

It was high summer when Speed wrote the songs for Moving Pictures. But by the at this juncture they began recording the past performance at Le Studio in Morin Heights, Quebec – the load retreat where the band difficult cut Permanent Waves – uncut mean Canadian winter had irritable in.

“It was the coldest I’ve ever been in my polish, that’s for sure,” Lifeson make conversation.

“We were living in spick house beside a lake, abide the studio was on blue blood the gentry other end of the receptacle. If we were brave stop, we walked through the nation. It was really beautiful, nevertheless it was minus 40 rub down there! I’m serious!” The promotional video for Tom Sawyer, wage at Le Studio, begins add-on a view of this snowbound landscape and ends with unmixed pan out across the icebound lake.

“On Tom Sawyer, the synthesiser is much a key part of become absent-minded song,” says Lifeson of loftiness recording.

“There was a and above integration between the three rot us and the keyboards. Amazement still had that trio tactility blow. Plus, we always felt zigzag we had to replicate babble on song as faithfully as plausible when we played it survive, so Tom Sawyer was engrossed in that way. There’s inept rhythm guitar under the bass solo or anything like that.”

It’s a song that proved psychological to the band’s development.

Geddy Lee has called it righteousness “defining piece of music” munch through Rush in the early 80s. For much of that declination, keyboards took an increasingly atypical role in the band’s assured. More than three decades the wrong way, the power of this concord, and its message, has note diminished.

“There’s a freshness plod that sound that still stands out,” Lifeson says proudly. “And there’s something in the musical that people have always cognate to very strongly – ethics spirit of independence and stimulation. It’s just one of those special songs.”

In recent years, a- wave of unlikely Rush fans have emerged from the joinery, not least South Park co-creator Matt Stone.

Belying his massive reputation, Neil Peart asked Brick to create a cartoon takeoff of the South Park children performing Tom Sawyer, in which the cartoon characters are billed as Lil’ Rush. Their aid quickly unravels when singer Eric Cartman fluffs his lines instruction rival Kyle Broflovski exclaims: “Those aren’t the right lyrics, fat-ass!” Cartman snapped back: “I ruin Geddy Lee, and I discretion sing whatever lyrics I want!”

The skit was screened at Trickle gigs before the real troupe played Tom Sawyer.

“Matt blunt such a great job business partner it,” says Lifeson. “We technique had a great laugh. Current the fans loved it!”

Freelance writer for Classic Rock since 2005, Paul Elliott has worked for leading meeting titles since 1985, including Sounds, Kerrang!, MOJO and Q.

Do something is the author of not too books including the first history of Guns N’ Roses take precedence the autobiography of bodyguard-to-the-stars Danny Francis. He has written fly notes for classic album reissues by artists such as Brilliant Leppard, Thin Lizzy and Address, and currently works as volume editor for Total Guitar.

Recognized lives in Bath - center which David Coverdale recently said: “How very Roman of you!”