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7'-1 IY 0 1,,1 '"°7' '-'Bob: The 'Hold Your Fire' album is doing really well for the band. Itseems you guys put a lot of thought into this album before you put it outMaybe you can enlighten us - how much time did it take from start tofinish, before you got it into the record stores?Geddy: Well, we spent six months making it from conception to finale. Ithink when your spending that amount of time on a project, and when you'reas industrious as we are, you end up spending a lot of time thinking abouta lot of different aspects. When you're writing a song, you sort of see itin a very basic way at first: you write in a very skeletal way, but whenyou spend as much time as we do through every stage of the recording, youend up thinking about every stage very carefully until the final thing,which is very well thought out! So if it happens to be something that'sgood, you're happy you spent so much time thinking about it; if it turnsout not so good - then maybe you over-thought about it. There's always thedanger of taking the spontaneity out of the record by spending too muchtime on it to, but you've got to be able to perceive that while you'remaking it.Bob: One of the stand out songs on the record is 'Time Stand Still', whichfeatures Aimee Mann. How was she chosen to work with you guys on thisparticular project?Geddy: We were looking for a female singer for that track 'Time Stand St~ll'We listened to a lot of different singers, and talked about a lot ofdifferent kinds of voices: We heard her last record and in particular asong called 'What About Love', and we thought her voice was just fantastic,so we just phoned her up and asked if she wanted to do it, and she did.Bob: Well I think it was an excellent choice on the track 'Time Stand Still'and I was wondering if you might be working with her some more in thefuture?Geddy: I don't know - It's always a possibility. We really enjoyed workingtogether and it was a great addition to the song, and personality-wise Ithink we got along well too. So you never know - it could happen again.1st Call: Does the picture on the inner sleeve of 'Hold Your Fire'represent all 12 of your studio albums?Geddy: Right. Well the picture is a street scene at night after rain, andthe central figure is a gentleman juggling three balls of fire that arein the same geometric position that the three red balls on the front coverare. It doesn't really represent our albums past - our twelve albums. Eek!No, it doesn't really do that. Anything you're getting out of it in thatway is a little coincidental.Bob: There's a building on the sleeve here off to the right, and thereflection in the window seems to be that of the statue of liberty.Geddy: Yes, it's true.78