“But we were too old to take advantage of it by that point.” Tom Sawyer (1981) Or there’d be a sign in the back: ‘Mythbusters: Girls who love Rush.’” Lee sighs, and laughs. A lot of ugly boys.’ When things started changing – and they did – we noticed: ‘There’s girls in the front row’. “There’s no getting around that,” Lee says. Rush’s commitment to noodling made them the dream band for an audience that was overwhelmingly male. Yes, it is an indulgence, but it seemed to be a pivotal moment for us in creating a fanbase that wanted us to be that way.” They just love it when we go into that crazy mode. I included it here because it surprised me how popular that song was among our fans. “We thought: ‘We’re going to write this long piece and then we’ll just record it live off the floor and boom!’ But it was really difficult. “That was a song where I would have to say our ideas exceeded our ability to play them,” Lee says of the nine-and-a-half-minute, 12-part instrumental suite that set new standards for bands hoping to go widdly woo on their instruments at great length. Photograph: Fin Costello/Redferns La Villa Strangiato (An Exercise in Self Indulgence) (1978) ‘Fans love it when we go into that crazy mode’ … Neil Peart, Alex Lifeson and Lee. When that whole thing came out in the press it seemed to take an odd political bent to it, which wasn’t really where we were at.” The whole idea of that time in our lives was that we were trying to write original material and we didn’t want to compromise. “We were influenced by Ayn Rand, yes, but to me The Fountainhead was an artistic manifesto. “We were very, very surprised,” Lee says. It was inspired by Ayn Rand, which led to accusations that Rush were rightwing propagandists. Incredibly, 2112 was the making of the band, with fans flocking to its title track, a sidelong suite about (deep breath) how the priests of the Temples of Syrinx control life in the Solar Federation, and the struggle of the protagonist to express his individuality after discovering a guitar. We were prepared to go down with the ship, and we almost did.” The album 2112 was a last roll of the dice for Rush with their label, Mercury: “They really wanted us to be Bad Company 2 and we had loftier aspirations, so we stayed away from that and insisted on our own way of doing things. Even better, he was happy to write the lyrics. Peart suited Lee and Lifeson’s desire to make more complex music. As far as I was concerned he was hired from the minute he started playing.” Then he sat down behind this kit and pummelled the drums – and us. He comes in, this big goofy guy with a small drumkit, and Alex and I thought he was a hick from the country. He drove up in this little sports car, drums hanging out from every corner. “He was one of the goofiest looking guys I’d ever seen. What transformed Rush from callow Led Zeppelin copyists into prog titans was the replacement of drummer John Rutsey with Neil Peart. Finding My Way became a symbol to me of saving our first album.” 2112 (1976) ‘OK, let’s record that and one other song, and we’ll remix the others,’ he said. When we heard it we were heartbroken.” Terry Brown was brought in to remix, and asked the band for more songs.
They recorded their debut album, Rush, in late-night sessions – after playing five sets a night at a Toronto bar called the Gasworks – only to find the initial mixes were “wimpy and weak. Then again, that’s what people thought about Rush and they ended up filling arenas for 40 years and joined the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, so who knows? The book goes to one side, though, as Lee surveys the career of the only prog band to have had a Hollywood bromance written around them. Without Rush to sing and play bass for, Lee has kept himself busy compiling a coffee table book – Geddy Lee’s Big Beautiful Book of Bass – which sounds like one for a niche audience. And then we started to communicate again.” We didn’t know where the future was going to take us so we didn’t talk a ton then. “The first couple of months, we were emotionally hungover. “Alex and I just flew down to see Neil two weeks ago and hung for a couple of days,” Lee says, surrounded by the detritus of high tea in one of London’s grand but discreet hotels. Three and a half years after the prog band’s final show together, Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson and Neil Peart haven’t gone their separate ways. I t’s nice that the three members of Rush are still friends.
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