Between Sun and Moon: Background

“The song is co-written with Max Webster lyricist Pye Dubois, who had written a poem, ‘There is a Lake Between Sun and Moon.’ Lakes are important Egyptian symbols as they represent the occult (water was considered between life and death, formal informal) and the lake always symbolizes self-revelation in its reflective qualities. Phrasing inspired by the T.S. Eliot poem ‘The Hollow Men’ and music inspired by The Who.”—Robert Telleria, Merely Players

“‘Tom Sawyer’ of course was cowritten with Pye (Dubois), and ‘Force 10’ on Hold Your Fire was too, and I really like his style of writing. It’s inscrutable to me, sometimes, as I think it is to other people, but at the same time it has a certain power in his images and writing. And also, there was some strange symbiosis that seemed to affect the songs; when Pye was involved in ‘Tom Sawyer’ and in ‘Force 10,’ it made them somehow a little different musically, you know, his percolation through me. I would get his ideas and then I would add mine to them and structure it as a Rush song, and then pass it along to the other guys. Even through that chain of events, somehow there was some outside influence that was good, so we’ve always kind of kept the open door to Pye’s ideas. Anytime he had anything to submit he would send it along to me, usually scrawled in an exercise book. And in this case that was one that we all responded to, so, again, I went to work on it, shaped it up into the kind of structure that we like to work with, and then added some of my own images and angles on it. And so it went.” (Radio Special)—Neil in Songfacts

“Pete Townshend can make an acoustic sound so heavy and powerful. I’ve always admired that. On ‘Between Sun and Moon’ there’s a musical bridge before the solo that’s very Who-ish. I even throw Keith Richards in there. The song is really a tribute to the ’60s.” (Guitar Player, 1993)—Alex in Merely Players

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