Rush explain the origins of ‘YYZ’
Few songs show off the instrumental prowess of Canadian progressive rock gods Rush quite like ‘YYZ’. While there are other songs in their canon that are longer and more complex, Rush fit in every last element of expert musicianship that they can muster in the relatively short instrumental Moving Pictures track. From the mind-bending 10/8 time signature to solo spotlights for each member of the band, ‘YYZ’ is the pinnacle of Rush as masters of their craft.
While sitting down with Classic Albums to discuss both Moving Pictures and 2112, the members of Rush discussed the origins behind ‘YYZ’. Both the name of the song and the iconic rhythm that makes up the main riff came from the same source: The Toronto International Airport.
“It’s interesting. We were coming back from Le Studio when we were making the record just for a break back home and a friend of mine – he was actually my flight instructor – he came and picked us up in a small plane from the little airline that flew out of the small airport,” Alex Lifeson remembers. “And on the way back, they tuned in the identifier for Toronto airport, which is YYZ.”
“The rhythm stuck in my head and I said, ‘Guys!’,” Neil Peart recalled. “So then, thematically we said, ‘We’ll let’s use that airport – so much a part of our lives in those days and after – let’s use that as a metaphor in a sense. Again, in a playful way. There was no sense of ‘Okay, this part is this part’ and all that. But there is a sense of bustling and coming and going and the grand emotion of that middle section of what airports can be.”
“In our lives, airports were rich with symbolism. Departures and comings and goings; departures and arrivals. Separations and meetings. That was kind of woven into the song. The exotic nature of travel, too, and Alex’s guitar solo for sure too. He wove in that kind of eastern mode.”
Peart observed that, when you strip away the “modern-day tedium”, airports could be considered fairly romantic places. While Peart saw the exoticism and uncertainty of travel in ‘YYZ’, Geddy Lee saw a heartwarming sense of comfort in returning back to Canada.
“[‘YYZ’] pretty much is about coming home,” Lee observed. “It’s that call to home. Being a band that spent so much time on the road, whenever we would check in for that flight home and we would see that YYZ ticket on our bag, it was always really exciting. It was like, ‘We’re coming home.’ So basically we wanted to put a song together about that, and even though it’s instrumental, it’s about our town and about kind of where we came from.”
Check out ‘YYZ’ down below.
