Limelight

The phrase "In the limelight" means the center of attention. In the early days of theater, a limelight was a device used to brightly illuminate the front of a stage, which put the main performer in a spotlight. The light was made by focusing a flame at a cylinder filled with lime that was projected through a lens - lighting technicians had to be creative before electricity. Invented by the Scottish engineer Drummond in 1816, he used a core of limestone (calcium) that was heated to a glow by burning a mixture of oxygen and hydrogen which created a brilliant light that could be focused. The Limelight was first used in the theatre in 1855 and then became widely used by the 1860s. The advantage of limelight was its realistic light production, but the limestone had to be turned as it burned and the gases adjusted to keep the light constant.

Drummer and lyricist Neil Peart: "Success puts a strain on the friendship and it puts the strains on your day-to-day relationship, and it's something that we did go through, you know, we're not immune to it. But we were able to overcome it just through our closeness and we were able to help each other with difficulties like that and then we could deal with the pressures and things and that."

Lead singer and bass player Geddy Lee: "Limelight was probably more of Neil's song than a lot of the songs on that album in the sense that his feelings about being in the limelight and his difficulty with coming to grips with fame and autograph seekers and a sudden lack of privacy and sudden demands on his time... he was having a very difficult time dealing with. I mean we all were, but I think he was having the most difficulty of the three of us adjusting; in the sense that I think he's more sensitive to more things than Alex and I are, it's harder for him to deal with those interruptions on his personal space and his desire to be alone. Being very much a person who needs that solitude, to have someone coming up to you constantly and asking for your autograph is a major interruption in your own little world. I guess in the one sense that we're a little bit like misfits in the fact that we've chosen this profession that has all this extreme hype and this sort of self-hyping world that we've chosen to live in, and we don't feel comfortable really in that kind of role."