Rush singer and bassist Geddy Lee once considered leaving ‘Tom Sawyer’ off the band’s 1981 album Moving Pictures because its recording and mixing process had become intensely frustrating. The decision would have removed what later became Rush’s most popular song, illustrating the technical difficulty behind the band’s tightly constructed progressive rock sound.

Lee said every stage of making the track was affected by problems, leaving him “so sick” of it by the end of the sessions. Its challenges included coordinating shifting musical parts, keyboard passages and bass lines, yet the finished song endured as a defining Rush track and remains widely recognised.