During a look back at Rush's 1981 breakthrough album, Moving Pictures, surviving members Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson discussed the album's breakout classic — “Tom Sawyer.”
Geddy Lee told Classic Rock, “I mean, when we were working on 'Tom Sawyer,' actually for the longest time it was the worst song on the record. We had more trouble with that song than almost any other song. I had real doubt about whether the song was working at all. I remember when we came to do the solo, and we’re having a lot of trouble getting a sound that (to Alex Lifeson) you were happy with. All of a sudden, (album engineer) Paul Northfield kind of jumped into action and came up with this idea of mic-ing the stereo speakers and doing your solo in a stereo spread. Then it gave it that kind of tubular sound. And then it finally came to life.”
He went on to recall, “But when we finished and were even mixing the song, we’d had problems with the computer that was running the mix, so we all had our hands on different parts of the console, operating it manually because we didn’t trust the f***ing thing. . . Then when we heard it back in full, it was like: 'Holy f***!' when those bass pedals came in. It was like: ‘Okay, this works.’ But up until that point there was a lot of doubt about that song.”