Prime Mover

Rush drummer/lyricist Neil Peart is a big Twilight Zone fan. This shares the title with a famous Twilight episode # 57, March 24, 1961. Buddy Ebsen plays Jimbo Cobb, the title character of "The Prime Mover," which was written by Charles Beaumont but based on an unpublished story by George Clayton Johnson. Jimbo, who runs a cafe, has psycho-kinetic powers and when his partner Ace Larsen (Dane Clark) discovers Jimbo's power would allow him to manipulate dice, they head for Las Vegas. The pair win big, but Ace cannot stop gambling, despite the pleas of his girlfriend Kitty (Christine White) and Jimbo, who cares more about his friend than all the money in the world.

Definition: Prime Mover - a self-caused agent that is the cause of all things; "God is the first cause."

Geddy Lee (Bass Player, Nov/Dec 1988): "We obviously have a chordal structure, and a melodic fix or picture of what the part's going to be. Usually I put it down, and between Neil and myself, we get little rhythm patterns going. I play around with the melody, and depending on what the tone center is and what the chord structures are in that area, I just write my part. Then Alex plays different solos around what Neil and I have already put down. He's quite content to work with what we've put down, and in most parts he's around through every stage anyway, so he's quite aware of the direction it's going in. He'll go down and wail, and a lot of times he will surprise us. It's a totally different direction than we had expected it, but it's always within the melodic structure that exists."