• 10 months ago
Interview with Geddy Lee, Canadian musician, best known as the lead vocalist, bassist, and keyboardist for the rock group Rush.
Transcript
00:00 So it's the 40th anniversary of 2112, made by young, well let's not beat about the
00:08 bush here, the album that saved your career, I think it's fair to say.
00:12 Fair to say.
00:13 A great statement, a really defiant statement as well, as you've said before, you know,
00:16 if we're going to go to the flames, they were our flames.
00:18 Did it really feel that defiant when you did it, when you made the album?
00:22 No, we didn't feel defiant making it, we just figured it was kind of going to be our
00:28 last hurrah.
00:31 And we didn't really have any instinctive sense that it would do any better than Crest
00:37 of Steel had done before it.
00:40 Of course, every record you make you think is better than the one before, but you're
00:46 easily fooled by yourself, because you can't really be that objective.
00:50 But I think we had the feeling that it was a good record, and we were proud that we were
00:55 going out on a good record, but we had no idea that it would connect with people the
01:00 way it did.
01:01 Why do you think it did connect?
01:02 Do you have any idea, or you never tell your music, because your music just goes out into
01:04 the world and it does what it does.
01:06 Yeah, I mean it's hard to really know, because you can't be on both sides of the thing, but
01:13 my sense is that there was a lot of passion in that record, there was a lot of ferocity
01:18 in that record, and it cut through.
01:21 And it had a sound that was really pretty different than anything else going on at that
01:27 time.
01:29 And I think it just cut through, you know, cut through the static of all the music that
01:37 was out there, and it reached people.
01:40 I think especially to our kind of fans, they heard a sound that seemed like a new sound
01:47 for them.
01:48 I've had a lot of people, some accomplished musicians come up to me many times since then
01:55 and say, "That record really reached me, there was something about it that was so different
02:01 about it."
02:02 It's quite visceral, wasn't it, as well?
02:03 In terms of rock music, it's quite intellectual, and there's a lot of thought there, a lot
02:04 of process.
02:05 I mean, I know you wrote a lot about acoustic guitars, which now is mental and dazzling
02:06 that you actually listen to it.
02:07 It was actually an interesting thing to do, because I was listening to a lot of the stuff
02:08 that was out there, and I was listening to a lot of the stuff that was out there, and
02:09 I was listening to a lot of the stuff that was out there, and I was listening to a lot
02:10 of the stuff that was out there, and I was listening to a lot of the stuff that was out
02:11 there, and I was listening to a lot of the stuff that was out there, and I was listening
02:38 to a lot of the stuff that was out there, and I was listening to a lot of the stuff
03:07 that was out there, and I was listening to a lot of the stuff that was out there, and
03:35 I was listening to a lot of the stuff that was out there, and I was listening to a lot
04:01 of the stuff that was out there, and I was listening to a lot of the stuff that was out
04:29 there, and I was listening to a lot of the stuff that was out there, and I was listening
04:59 just became a thing that we were going to do every three or four records, was make a live album.
05:04 And of course now DVDs are the other thing. Do you remember it changing you as a band in
05:10 terms of like you actually had some money in your pocket and stuff. Because obviously up until then
05:13 you must have been in debt, weren't you? Yeah, we were still in debt, but we were paying it off.
05:18 Yeah and 2112 was helping us pay it off. How long did that take on them? A couple of years?
05:25 Yeah, it was a couple of years. A lot of shows. Do you look back on it, because obviously you
05:30 didn't get to play it fully live, did you, in its entirety until many years later? Yeah, we played a
05:35 big chunk of it originally and then we revisited it in various forms through the years. I don't
05:44 think we've, well we did, yeah I guess we did play it on the R30 tour in its entirety. So I've got
05:52 to ask you, this is quite an important question to me to go on that album. When they asked you to do
05:55 the photo shoot, who suggested you all wear kimonos? Ah, kimonos, that's what they were.
06:02 They were, they were special. You know, people kept, management people kept saying you needed an
06:10 image. We were not very image oriented. So I remember we were in San Francisco and we were
06:19 staying at the Miyako Hotel, which is in the Japanese part of San Francisco. And we said,
06:28 okay let's go buy some stage clothes and get an image happening. And we just walked around the
06:35 Chinese area and we found these kind of colorful robes and said, okay let's try this. And that's
06:43 what we did. But nobody told Alex to bring that hat with him. That was all his idea. I think he
06:53 liked it, I think he was going to shoot it. Yeah, yeah. It's a good look. I mean, and then,
06:58 sort of going back to my job. It's not a good look. No, it's not a terrible look. It's not a
07:00 good look. But I still enjoy those photos. There's quite a bit of booze going on as well.
07:04 Especially on Alex. Was it difficult to record? Because you recorded short bursts as well,
07:11 especially there. No, it wasn't really difficult to record. It just kind of happened, that record.
07:17 Does that happen often? Have you got another album that's compatible? Or was that the one
07:21 that really sold? No, I don't remember it being much of a struggle. I remember it coming,
07:28 being a pretty positive experience. I think we'd actually spent the most time we'd ever had to
07:35 make a record, which is almost four weeks, I think, to make that record. Permanent Waves was
07:43 like that. It was a kind of a record that just happened, just flew out. Will there be another
07:51 Gush album? I don't know. I hope so. I don't see why not. But I can't really say. I know that
08:00 Alex and I have talked about getting together to write. Whether that will become a Rush album,
08:06 or whether it will become something else, I don't know. That's kind of up to Neil, I guess.
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