Few bands have realized the potential forcreativity in the heavy metal format thatRush has nurtured over the years. BassistGeddy Lee and guitarist Alex Lifesonstarted the group in various basementsaround their hometown of Toronto in thelate sixties emulating the hard rock soundsof the Who and Led Zeppelin. "We camefrom pretty much the same neighborhood,"Lee explains. "We met in eighth grade.Alex used to borrow my amplifier all thetime. We played in coffee shops for chipsand gravy. I worked in my mother's hard­ware store for a while. Alex worked in agas station. We were playing the Englishblues--John Mayall, Cream. Alex wouldpretend he was Eric Clapton, I would pre­tend I was Jack Bruce, and we'd play'Spoonful' for twenty minutes. Then camethe big crunch, heavy metal, and wethought, 'This is it!"~

Lifeson and Lee's dedicated approachwon them an underground followingaround Canada, but the Canadian musicscene wasn't taken as seriously back thenas it is now, so the band's demos were allrejected by the major record companies.Instead of being destroyed by this failure,the band believed enough in itself to formtheir own label, Moon records, to releasetheir debut album, Rush. Without the ben­efits of commercial distribution the recordbecame a regional hit in the midwest whenfans of the group's live concerts demandedthat their local record stores order theIp. The Chicago-based Mercury records

22

could hardly ignore what was happeningright under its nose and signed Rush,re-releasing the first album.

Drummer Neil Peart joined at that point,replacing the original drummer on Rush,and the band hasn't looked back since.

Rush was pretty much built aroundLifeson's extended soloing on subsequentalbums like Fly by Night and Caress ofSteel before Peart started writing the sci­ence fiction concept albums that becamethe heart of the band's identity for most ofthe seventies. Their breakthrough record,2112, developed an epic tale of a futurehero who leads a revolution through music.The album also marked a musical evolu­tion for the group, which produced thekind of space-music associated with bandslike Pink Floyd. After 2112, A Farewell toKings and Hemispheres continued suc­cessfully along the same lines. The group'stremendously popular live shows were builtaround these stories, buttressed byelabo­rate visual correlatives on a giant screenbehind the stage.

It wasn't until the 1980 album PermanentWaves, though, that Rush came up witha sound that led to heavy radio airplayand hit singles. Under the influence ofrock's new wave, the band adapted itsapproach away from many of the excessesassociated with heavy metal. The recordscrapped concept albums in favor ofshorter songs, which allowed for hit sin­gles ("Spirit of the Radio") and better criti­cal response.

BYJOHN SWENSON

,,I

TWASTIMETOSTOPTHECONCEPT

stories," Lee points out. "Whatyou have to say ends up beingvery nebulous, because you're

concerned with this big story. You try tomake the story right, you try to evoke theright moods, and invariably sixteen differ­ent people come up to you and tell yousixteen different things about what you'retrying to say. That's fine, because that'sthe way it really should be, but for us it wastime to come out of the fog for a while andput down something concrete."

With Permanent Waves and the follow­up, Moving Pictures, Rush laid the founda­tion for their current arena success. Thedouble-disc live set Exit . .. Stage Leftprovides awesome testimony to the band'sin-person power. The live album alsomarked a period of creative woodsheddingduring which the band was given theopportunity to develop new ideas. "Thelast time we had a creative hiatus to do alive album," recalls Peart, "it gave us somuch time to prepare ourselves that itgave us a dynamic leap in progression."

The band's most recent album, Signals,exhibits just such a conceptual leap.Geddy Lee has began to rely more heavilyon electronic keyboards for writing andarranging the group's material. "One ofthe changes that it's gone through," saysLifeson, "is that in the past Ged and Iwould sit down with a couple of guitars orGed with his bass and me with guitar andstart working on ideas. Now that he's

May, 1984/Guitar World

playing a lot of keyboards, he will worksomething out on them and then I'll justget the chords from the keyboards so thatwe'll switch the focus back to the guitar,but using the melody and the chordalmovement from the keyboards."

"Sometimes," Lee adds, "we have tofigure out whether it's best to keep it onkeyboards or transpose it to guitar andhave keyboards support it. That's whatwe're sort of going through now. WithSignals, we left a lot up to the keyboardsand we thought guitar took too much of aback seat. This album we're trying tochange the emphasis a bit using the key­board to write with but at times letting theguitar take over what the keyboard wasgoing to play.

Lifeson points out that this approach"makes the guitar parts more interest-

23

Using keyboards in theirarranging makes the guitarparts better. believes Lileson:"When you play keyboardprogressions on guitar. youend up playing chords oncombinations you neverreally think to play:'

ing. Often when you transpose keyboardchords to guitar you end up playing chordsor combinations you never really think toplay."

Lee agrees that the keyboards enhancethe harmonic structure of his writing."Working with keyboards presents a wholedifferent layout, so when you look at thekeyboard sometimes you can string a setof notes together that you wouldn't havethought to put together on bass or guitar.

"If it's a good part that we like, Leecontinues, "Alex will learn the part fromkeyboards, and with a few.adjustments itwill take on a new dimension, and then I'llplay bass. Then we listen to how the partchanges on guitar, then we see if the partis strong enough on bass. If it needsenhancement then maybe I'll add someother kind of keyboard part until we findout what suits the song best. With 'TheBody Electric' it worked that way, we keptgoing back and forth between guitar andkeyboards. I would rather play bass if at allpossible. It still feels most comfortable."

RUSH IS A CLASSIC POWER TRIO, AND

as such the role of bass guitaris extremely important. Lifesonpoints out that he feels the bass

is necessary for his guitar to sound well."Generally, Iprefer playing with the bass,"he says, "with keyboard enchancement.Just even a sympathetic note under every­thing allows me that much freedom to dodifferent things chordally or doing a combi­nation of notes with chords when you havethe bass providing other melodies or har­monic content to what Iplay. In that respectit's a lot nicer to play to the bass than to akeyboard."

Though Lee has traditionally playeda Rickenbacker bass, he recently addeda snub-nosed Steinberger to his arsenal."I like the Steinberger a lot," he says,"I started using it just before the Signalstour, somebody said 'try this' and it soundedgreat. It's got quite a different sound frommy other bass-the bottom end is reallyrich, deep, it almost has a synthesizedbottom end. It doesn't sound like it shouldsound going by the theory that big-bodiedbasses have a deep, resonant sound. Thishas got a little plastic body with a battery inthe back and the bottom end sounds richas hell. It doesn't sound natural, but itsounds real interesting. On some of thenew songs I like the punch of the Stein­berger but on some of the older things like'Digital Man' I still use the Rickenbacker. Istill love the Rickenbacker and I'm actu­ally more comfortable on it. I sort of feelobligated in a way to represent its soundon the songs that were written around it.It's kind of nice to switch back and forth."

Lifeson uses several guitars, includingone that looks a bit like a Schecter but isactually a heavily-customized Fender. "Itstarted out as a Strat," Lifeson explains,"but I made a couple of changes on it. Ithas a Shark neck, which is a company inOttowa that makes the necks, no finish on

24

it at all, it's just bare wood. It's a rosewoodneck, a little flatter than a Fender, a BillLawrence 0500 and a custom plate. Soreally the only Fender thing left on it is thebody, the actual body and the two Fenderpickups.

"I've been using the same guitars forseveral years, a Howard Roberts and a355, but I'm not going to change guitarsjust for the sake of changing a guitar. Idon't find the sound differential that greatand of the three I think the Fender soundsthe best. It's got the warmth and fullnessof a Gibson but it's got that top end clarityand brilliance of a Fender so it's reallyachieving what both guitars would do."

WITH THE BAND INCORPORATING

keyboard synthesizers intoits approach you might thinkthat Lifeson was also working

on guitar-triggered synthesizer effects, buthe doesn't really like them. "We used one

on Hemispheres," he recalls. "It was justsuch a headache. It was still new, had lotsof problems, and we ended up droppingthat song anyway. It was the first genera­tion of guitar synthesizers, the Roland,and if you were in a hall that had a lot of RFinterference the unit would pick it up; if ithappened to be cold and damp the unitwould pick it up. The s~nsitivity on thetrigger one day would be okay and thenext day would be bad. The tuning wasbad.

"Apparently," Lee interjects, "the newunits are a lot better. A guy brought in areal interesting unit today-it was a proto­type, shaped like a guitar. It had thesetouch bars where the strings would be andthere was this touch sensitive fretboardgoing into a digital synthesizer. You putyour finger on the fret and you touch thebar that represented the string and it wou Idmake a sound."

"It takes a whole different technique to

May, 1984/Guilar World

play an instrument like that," Lifesonagrees, "but it's definitely innovative. Ithas a future. You get some great soundson .it, and with the whole movement todigital on the synthesizers it's going toopen up a lot of doors. I could seeexperimenting with an instrument like that.I'm pretty traditional in what I like sound­wise, though. I like some basic effects like

echo and chorus, phasing ..."Lifeson's solos are definitely high points

in the band's sets, and a couple of thesolos feature arranged effects. "The BodyElectric" is particularly interesting. "That'sthe harmonizer set at just delay," explainsLifeson. "I think the delay is ten or twentymilliseconds, with the envelope reallycranked up so that as the note drifts itdecays gradually. If you playa number ofnotes in quick sequence you won't getthat but as soon as you hold a note itdrops down. That and some echo andsome chorus. It's pretty bizarre."

Another great moment comes on "TheWeapon." "Outside of the atmosphericsat the beginning, I'm using an octavedivider, a flanger, and echo with Chorus.It's really in three parts, the middle partwould be with the octave divider and theflanger. The last part is just some straightguitar with some chorus."

~ During the nearly fifteen years Lifeson:; and Lee have been playing together~ they've seen musical trends change from~ hard rock to fusion to punk rock and

beyond. The approach to guitar playingthat has accompanied each of these shiftshas affected Lifeson in such a way as tosubtly alter the group's sound. "Over theyears I certainly was affected by a lot ofguitarists," he says, "more in an open way,a sort of stylistic change to ... not copy,but get the same kind of feel as a lot ofguitarists. Steve Hackett at the time wewere doing Caress of Steel was a big

influence on me. On that record there area couple of solos that are very reminiscentof his style of playing with Genesis aroundthat time. Later on I got into Allan Holds­worth, I got the whammy bar on the Stratand it was getting a little bit too close tothat. Now I think I'm a little more influ­enced by guitarists like Edge in U2, theguitarist in Simple Minds, the way theyapproach playing guitar in the contextof a band. I think I'm moving more inthat direction, trying to incorporate morechordal changes, not just a flurry of notes."

Obviously, Lifeson feels that the heavymetal image attached to Rush is inappro­priate. "I don't think we ever really consid­ered ourselves a heavy metal band," heinsists. "I think we thought more of our­selves as a hard rock band. We left a fewdoors open, although I certainly can't seeaconnection between us and renaissanceheavy metal bands like Saxon. Our musichas the power associated with heavy metalbut that's only a part of it."

Perhaps the best explanation of theband's attitude towards heavy metal came,finally, from Lee. "I used to like the heavymetal bands," he recalls, "the first timethat sound came around. I just think it'sreally pathetic this time around, andbesides, our tastes are changing as weget older."

Rush, then, is the thinking person'sheavy metal, a snifter of brandy for theveteran rocker who's outgrown the moreshriekier sounds. •

2042 PORTSMOUTH HOUSTON, TEXAS 77098 (713)520-1150

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