If we are talking about cities - as we have been, then I have always returned to the song 'The Camera Eye' by Rush. It comes from their best album 'Moving Pictures'.
Here's the back of the LP cover.
The song moves between London and New York; two cities known to lyricist Neil Peart.
Here's the performance of the song from the Time Machine Tour - the last time I saw them playing live.
The lyrics and the structure of the song are very well crafted. I also love the music, plenty of Oberheim and bass pedals...
This podcast suggest some of the meanings behind the song - the longest one they had recorded for a while and the last time they recorded a song that long.
Neil had read the work of John Dos Pasos, in particular his “USA Trilogy”. And in those books, Dos Pasos uses a literary device he calls “the camera eye”. That’s where Neil got the title from. One of the books in the USA trilogy is called “The Big Money”. Neil would later write a song based on that, too.
“The Camera Eye” opens with the sound of a city. It’s a city street scene. According to Geddy Lee, when they were putting together that pastiche of sound effects, one of the clips they used was a bit of audio from “Superman”, the 1978 movie with Christopher Reeve.
We start in New York:
“Grim faced and forbidding, their faces closed tight.
An angular mass of New Yorkers
pacing in rhythm race the oncoming night
they chase through the streets of Manhattan.”
And then comes the rain that will connect the two cities together.
In London:
“Pavements may teem with intense energy,
but the city is calm in this violent sea.”
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