In Part 1 of Gibson's two-part interview, RUSH's Alex Lifeson discussed his beginnings as a Serbian kid in ’60s Toronto, switching from viola to guitar and pairing up with what would become the most popular rock band in Canadian history. In Part 2 of their interview, conducted recently at Gibson’s Custom Shop, Lifeson talks about the guitars that accompanied him on the biggest stages in the world. Check out the interview here. Excerpts are below:

Gibson: You have announced that you’re doing Moving Pictures, in its entirety, on this tour. What is it about this album that you think makes it such a key album for fans? Even fans outside the core Rush fan base, that’s an album that probably reached out and grabbed more people than any you’ve ever done. What is it about that record that speaks to people?

Lifeson: "It’s probably a lot of things. From our point of view, that record was really fun to make. We were coming out of a period of writing longer pieces, thematic pieces, and actually with Permanent Waves, it was probably the first time we got into a more economical style of writing and putting more punch into a four-minute or five-minute song than a nine- or ten-minute song. There was great positive energy in the studio when we made Moving Pictures. The songs, I think, are among our strongest songs. There’s great variety in character in the songs. They don’t have a “same-iness” like some of our stuff does from an album. I think you can’t help that. At least our experience is, you get very comfortable working in a particular key, or sound, or style; and of course, then the whole record - like, for example, Grace Under Pressure to me, when I listen to that, it really does sound like it was all recorded at that time in that studio with that amp. It has a same-ness to everything about it. I mean, I love that about that record, but with Moving Pictures, you remember 'Tom Sawyer', 'Limelight', 'Vital Signs' - I mean they were all quite different. So I guess it was - I’m trying to think back to the last 30 years - probably a time where we were realizing a lot of these goals in our songwriting and it was a fresh start, and a change at least, not so much a fresh start but a change in where we were going. We arrived in the ’80s and everything was kind of changing at that time."

Gibson: You guys seemed to make the transition from the ’70s to the ’80s a lot more successfully than a lot of guitar bands from the ’70s. You seemed to hit the ground running, and not just change for the sake of change, but you had something to say in your music.

Lifeson: "Yeah, we kind of had that in the ’70s, too, because punk was really taking over when we were starting to pick up some more notoriety. Maybe not so much here as it was in Europe, but yeah, we managed to transition okay. And I think a lot of that has to do with our fan base. When you’ve got fans like we have, it just gives you so much more freedom to follow your path. And it made those transitions much easier than it has been for other bands."

Gibson: So to bring it back to the new material you’re working on, is this more guitar-oriented stuff? What kind of feel does it have?

Lifeson: "Oh yeah, it’s in-your-face guitar stuff. It’s awesome, great. In fact, I’m really pleased with the way it’s turned out. Everybody’s playing really well. There’s great energy and there’s great rhythmic funk-ability going on there and some really cool stuff and I am really, really pleased with it."