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The story of Rush's song about physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer who the movie Oppenheimer is based on. The song was called 'Manhattan Project' from their 1985 record 'Power Windows' SIGN UP for 10 of the Craziest Stories in Rock N' Roll [Secret Playlist]: Check out our Top 25 Favourite Albums Here Have a video request or a topic you'd like to see us cover? Fill out our google form! -----CONNECT ON SOCIAL----- Instagram: Facebook: Twitter: Blog: #rush #neilpeart #oppenheimer #manhattanrpoject I cite my sources and they may differ than other people's accounts, so I don't guarantee the actual accuracy of my videos. With the movie Oppenheimer coming out this week I thought this was a really fitting story. Before we get started let me know in the comments section whether you guys are going to watch Oppenheimer or not. I saw the trailer, it piqued my interest, it’s got an allstar cast and Christopher Nolan directed it so what more could you ask for. The movie Oppenheimer is a biographical film about Robert J Oppenheimer, a physicist who was instrumental in developing the first nuclear bomb as part of the manhattan project. His work would lead to America developing the atomic bombs that were dropped on Japan effectively ending world war 2. While the war would be over, the world would soon wake up to the horrors of nuclear weapons. Years before Oppenheimer was set to be released,the manhattan project has been highlighted in pop culture by Hollywood and novelists and even video games. I remember being a kid and playing the computer game civilization 1 and that was the first time I ever heard of the manhattan project. Nearly 3 decades prior Canadian band Rush would pen a song about Robert J. Oppenheimer and that’s what were going to explore in today’s video. By November of 1984 Rush had finished their tour to support their 10th album Grace Under Pressure. Following a short break, the band regrouped in early 1985 to begin work on their follow up album Power Windows. According to guitarist Alex Lifeson the band had attempted to take the best elements of their last two records and creative a more cohesive effort with Power Windows. By this point in their career Rush were a hugely successful studio and touring act having released a series of platinum records. Guitarist Alex Lifeson would talk to Kerrang Magazine in 1985 revealing the theme of Power Windows stating “Here we are dealing with different aspects of power, from the power of science and how we use it ('Manhattan Project') through to the power that we have over each other in our day-to-day relationships ('Emotion Detector'). It covers a broad spectrum of things, but power is the theme which runs throughout.“ The band had already ventured into the realms of Science fiction with their fourth studio album, 1976’s 2112. The album’s lyrical content like much of their albums was the brainchild of drummer Neil Peart who was a big fan of science fiction. Ahead of the band recording Power Windows, Peart would reveal he had read up to ten books on the Manhattan project. He wanted to have a thorough understanding of the subject matter before penning the lyrics. The song’s lyrics contain four verses that are written from a factual point of view that cover four series of events leading to the bombs being dropped A time, during the era of World War II, A researcher, representing Oppenheimer and other scientists around the world who were developing nuclear weapons in a race against each other. The Los Alamos research facility in New Mexico at which American scientists carried out their work, The pilot Paul Tibbets, who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. Writing the song wasn’t easy for the band though. Bassist and frontman Geddy lee had to work pretty hard to articulate Peart’s vision with th e drummer telling Bruce Pollock “I wanted the delivery to be like punctuation, and the chorus had to be more passionate and more rhythmically active,”. “It was hard to express exactly how I wanted it. The first time we worked on the music, they had phrased the lyrics in a very slow manner and I had to protest.” “The phrasing of the line was two short lines and then a long line and two short lines and then a long line,”. “There were internal rhymes and internal relationships among the words and within the delivery that had to remain intact for it to make sense at all. It was so carefully crafted that it couldn’t be delivered any old way.” Lifeson would echo these comments telling Kerrang 'Manhattan Project' seems to tie in with this idea of man creating something too big to handle... That was a difficult song to do, actually, we had a lot of trouble with it. Neil especially had problems, because he w\
