Limelight: Rush in the ’80s

Rush Across the Decades, Book 2

By: Martin Popoff

Narrated by: Michael Butler Murray

Length: 9 hrs and 50 mins

Publisher's summary

Part two of the definitive biography of the rock 'n' roll kings of the North - covering Rush's most iconic and popular albums, Moving Pictures and Power Windows

In the follow-up to Anthem: Rush in the '70s, Martin Popoff brings together canon analysis, cultural context, and extensive firsthand interviews to celebrate Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, and Neil Peart at the peak of their persuasive power. Rush was one of the most celebrated hard rock acts of the '80s, and the second book of Popoff's staggeringly comprehensive three-part series takes listeners from Permanent Waves to Presto, while bringing new insight to Moving Pictures, their crowning glory. Limelight: Rush in the '80s is a celebration of fame, of the pushback against that fame, of fortunes made - and spent....

In the latter half of the decade, as Rush adopts keyboard technology and gets pert and poppy, there's an uproar amongst diehards, but the band finds a whole new crop of listeners. Limelight charts a dizzying period in the band's career, built of explosive excitement but also exhaustion, a state that would lead, as the '90s dawned, to the band questioning everything they previously believed, and each member eying the oncoming decade with trepidation and suspicion.

©2020 Martin Popoff (P)2021 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

I thought I knew everything about Rush!

This was amazing! He goes through every album, tour and almost every song! I recommend it! Rush has been my favorite for 35 years. I knew a lot that was told in this book, but I also learned knew things that just blew me away!!

Always RUSH

Very insightful,entertaining and informative.
Look forward to the Driven.
I’m sure it will be as enjoyable.

Loved this

80s Rush is my favorite (Signals, Grace Under Pressure) so I really enjoyed the stories behind the albums and tours. A must - listen for any fan.

For Rush Newcomers Only

If you are among the under informed when it comes to Rush, then by all means give it a listen. I don’t think this will offer much to life long fans like myself; it was likely produced simply because of the new-found popularity after Neil Pearts death.
The VO was also not very impressive: doing slight British accents for certain people or raising your voice when reading Geddy Lee’s dialogue is just lame.

I learned a lot, and I thought I knew a lot!

it goes without saying that a lot of material went into, Martin Popoff definitely worth a crush memorabilia and had access to unaccounted interviews and tapes and magazine artists that frankly it's a wonder survive. as a musician, who was once in a rush cover band, I really appreciate it all the behind the board information about engineering and about recording at about a particularities that went into producing, playing and recording each album. I wish I did it when I first started listening but eventually I just got my iPod listen to each song and then went back to the description to kind of hear a little bit more about what he's talking about particular riff.
as I said I learned an awful lot, but the biggest Revelation was how Alex built the solos for the songs. I'll just leave it at that, you can hear it for yourself, but I was pretty surprised!!
if your Rush fan this is a must if you're in a band, any band, you can really gain a lot by listening to this. in more ways than possibly imagine

A moment in time with Rush

I absolutely loved hearing about Rush in the 80’s as it was a definite change for the band. Great stories.

Rehash

This is an anthology of existing interviews combined to make a book with some odd occasional editorializing by the author. It's enjoyable enough but as a magazine publisher I have to say this book was lazily edited. We don't need 3-4 people retelling the same stories. Let one person tell the set up and then give us each person's unique take on the event rather that re-quoting each person re-setting up the setting. Feels like Groundhog Day. But note I listed to the first and now the second, so clearly I kept listening even with the first book having the same problems.