‘The Camera Eye’: The song Rush avoided playing for years
It takes a strong musical mind to even attempt to play any moderate Rush tune. The entire band was made up of three virtuoso players, and even when paired next to the massive orchestral stylings of prog giants like Emerson, Lake and Palmer or Yes, the Canadian icons were making the kind of songs that felt like it took a master’s thesis in music theory to be able to put together. Even gods have to admit that they screw up sometimes, and when filling out their setlist later in life, guitarist Alex Lifeson remembered intentionally trying to avoid ‘The Camera Eye’ on the live stage.
But getting mad at Rush songs for being too long is like getting mad at Van Halen songs for having too many guitar solos. In this case, the fans are more than happy to be a little bit patient, and throughout their greatest albums, the more episodic tunes in their catalogue are what sent them up to stardom, whether that was the story of a man discovering a guitar in ‘2112’ or wandering through medieval grounds in ‘Xanadu’.
That’s all well and good, but even the prog set of rock fans need a breather every now and then, and Rush were burned out after Hemispheres. Despite them moving towards mainstream tunes and even having multiple classics off of Moving Pictures, ‘The Camera Eye’ feels like a bit of a one-off on the record.
Since the album has a running theme of travelling and relating to people as a wandering musician, ‘The Camera Eye’ is a bold look at Neil Peart’s journeys through New York and London, respectively. Running over ten minutes, the track feels like the hustle and bustle of touching down in a new land and not knowing what to expect when you’re out and about.
Despite coming from their most celebrated “pop” album, this was a bit of a goodbye to that period of their sound. From that point on, no other tracks would break the ten-minute mark, and the following albums would only feature straightforward tunes, whether heavy on Test For Echo or goofy on Hold Your Fire.
When celebrating the anniversary of Moving Pictures, Lifeson remembered just how little the group wanted to play the tune live at first, saying, “We avoided playing that live until we did the Moving Pictures thing. And that ended up being our favourite song to play. Never mind if it went over well or not, we loved playing it every night.”
While including a ten-minute exercise may have meant throwing out a few of their live favourites, it is a bit of a workout for anyone to go through. Lifeson already has his hands full with the different guitar parts, but Geddy Lee is managing both bass and keyboard duties, all while Peart is making it his personal mission to hit every piece of percussion on his kit.
Even though ‘The Camera Eye’ isn’t really on the same level as ‘2112’ or ‘La Villa Strangiato’ in terms of difficulty, it probably does the best job at setting up a scene in the listener’s mind. Before anyone even steps foot on the plane, the central lick already brings to mind the thought of exploring different frontiers.
