My Effin' Life

by Geddy Lee

Alex put an end to his days of having to spell out his long and foreign name, choosing a direct translation from Serbian to English: “Živojinović” literally means “son of life,” and so he became “Alex Lifeson.”

Since by now Rush was starting to be reviewed in the music and mainstream press, this is probably a good moment to acknowledge one of the more controversial aspects of Rush’s sound: my voice. (Oh, must we?) John Griffin wrote in the Montreal Gazette that I sounded like “a guinea pig with an amphetamine habit”; in Circus, Dan Nooger said, “If Lee’s voice were any higher and raspier, his audience would consist exclusively of dogs and extra-terrestrials.”

Over the next two months we opened a bunch of shows for KISS, and could not have been treated better. We got to know Gene and Paul and Peter and Ace a bit, hanging out in their dressing room as they put on their makeup and costumes. There was little in their music that we wanted to emulate, but we learned a hell of a lot about the importance of professionalism from them. We were impressed by how they gave it their all every night, and learned a ton about the use of pyrotechnics and other effects, which we’d deploy once we started headlining our own shows. We’d often convoy with their road crew and learned lasting lessons from them about going the extra mile for a show.

I became a huge John Wyndham fan. I’d never dug The Chrysalids when forced to read it in school but taking in The Midwich Cuckoos and The Day of the Triffids for pleasure was a whole nother world. Among my favourites were Robert A. Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, a benchmark book in the realm of sci-fi and fantasy; Mervyn Peake’s deliciously dark epic, the Gormenghast trilogy; the work of Lord Dunsany, aka Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, the 18th Baron of Dunsany, one of the founders of the high fantasy genre (who wrote more than ninety books) and Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea novels. I never quite got into his most esteemed author, Samuel Delany, but thanks to Neil there was suddenly a library full of escapes from the rigors and drudgery of the road. Then, fatefully as it would turn out for Rush, he introduced us to Ayn Rand’s Anthem, which made sense for us to read since we already happened to be writing a song called “Anthem,”

from A Farewell to Kings onward, every song would be divided equally amongst the three of us, all for one and one for all, a working democracy. For the rest of our career we would never have to talk about that crap again. And to a great degree it was one of the secrets of our longevity.

(Speaking on songwriting credits)

There will always be pressure on you to compromise, pressure to sell your dreams short, and there will always be people who want you to be something that you’re not, but none of those things can happen without your permission. My most urgent advice to aspiring artists is always “Be true to yourself and just say no.”

Fans often point to Alex’s acoustic playing on AFTK as evidence of his versatility, so this seems like a good moment to reflect on the man’s talent. I know I’m biased, but I do think he’s the most underrated guitarist in the rock pantheon. Rush fans appreciate him, naturally, but I don’t believe he’s gotten his due from the mainstream or critical rock world. Neil and I used to call him our musical scientist, for he is surely one of the great chord inventors, constantly creating his own inversions and unusual intricacies of arpeggiation; he’s a fluid and dexterous riffologist, one of rock’s most original soloists, a confident and emotive blues-rock guitarist at only eighteen who went on to develop his own blend of heavy rock, blues, classical and more. His genius is one of spontaneity, his best ideas mostly coming in flashes and sparks that you have to grab in the heat of the moment; get too methodical with him and he’ll lose interest. From our earliest days writing together I’d keep a tape machine beside me, even just a cassette player, because so often without even thinking he’d play a figure that was just brilliant, and if I said, “Whoa! Let’s build a song around that,” he’d often have to listen back, painstakingly learning the very thing he’d only just played off the cuff. Knowing that about him, whenever we worked with a new producer or engineer I’d sit right there in the control room during Alex’s warmups and make sure the RECORD button was on lest they miss any happy...

We were still very much of a mind that we wouldn’t put anything on a record that we couldn’t reproduce live.

I love it when an artist approaches songwriting and arrangements with this attitude. There's an element of honesty and authenticity in the craft that is lost with much of the music that can't properly be reproduced live.

Still haunted by the hellish stories of my parents’ Holocaust experiences, I reflexively thought of Deutschland as the epicenter of evil.

IDK why, but when I first read this, I read it as "the sphincter of evil" - LOL.

The launch of MTV in 1981 had already revolutionized the music industry. Doing videos was now de rigueur and every band, even ours, was urged to produce a breakthrough one. Budgets and production values were rising, at times exceeding some bands’ recording budgets! Think about that for a moment. Record companies were willing to spend more money on the video than the record itself. That insane concept gives you an idea of the power MTV had back then.

As Robert Fripp has put it so profoundly, “Listening is a craft. Hearing is an art.” I find that a major reason for the failure of many couples is they don’t really hear what’s being said—not just the words, but the subtext.

It’s a tough way to live, way tougher than people realize. Certainly not as glamorous as it’s cracked up to be.

Geddy is speaking of the touring lifestyle here, which he describes in detail rather accurately. He's right. It's tougher than most know.

To nail the spirit of “Bravado,” Neil had in mind the line “going for it regardless of the outcome” from John Barth’s Tidewater Tales,* but seldom have I sung a line from any song that rings so true to me in my own personal experience as “We will pay the price / But we will not count the cost.” Being so determined to be a musician and breaking my mother’s heart in the process; the damage I’d done to my family life and my most important relationships . . . In all these instances I naïvely thought I was prepared to pay the price, but I didn’t really know what that was until it was tallied up and presented to me. Anytime you follow a dream, there is a hidden cost. If you’re lucky, it just won’t be too dear.

(As I’ve said before, for years we weren’t really suitable for any format, not until “Classic Rock” came into being. We had to hang around a long time to qualify for that!)

During intermission in later years, here’s what thrilling things would happen: first we’d fight for the bathroom. Then Neil would have a cigarette, I’d check the baseball scores to see how my fantasy team was doing and Alex would dive into his iPad. That’s how exciting it was backstage with us. The last thing we needed was to see people.

John Hamburg, the director/writer of I Love You, Man, was a Rush fan who felt that we—or more to the point, our extremely dedicated followers—should anchor the bromance backstory of the film;

Never saw this film, but now I think I want to look it up!