Geddy Lee

Rush… Still Going Strong After Nearly 40 Years

Okay… So I just watched three guys in their mid-to-late 50’s pull off Rush’s entire “Moving Pictures” album, along with a whole lot of other great songs, absolutely flawless. I’m not sure it was actually Rush…. If it was, they’re not human.

It’s never a happy thing to see your heroes decline. It’s most common with athletes, naturally, when they play for a while after their skills begin to deteriorate with age. Nobody likes to think about Michael Jordan’s couple of years with the Washington Wizards, because he wasn’t the Michael Jordan that won six championships with the Bulls. Musicians go through it too. It’s a lot of pressure to put on three past-middle-aged guys to pull off something they did in their 20’s and 30’s… aside from the fact that it’s stuff that most musicians at any age would have a hard time doing.

Apparently, we don’t have to worry about that happening to Rush anytime soon…. and to make this clear, I don’t want to make this about age. There’s no reason why, at nearly 60 years old, they shouldn’t be able to play that way. They all look very healthy, and by the looks of it, they might be able to pull this off into their 70’s if they wanted to. They seem to be having more fun as they go on as well… beginning “Working Man” with a reggae intro, and even a polka intro for the classic “La Villa Strangiato.”

As someone who has been completely over-loading on Rush over the few months in anticipation for the show at the MGM Grand that night, my ear is pretty well tuned to the level of performance I see in the various videos and recordings I’ve been burying myself in. So it was with a somewhat knowledgeable ear that I listened with throughout their performance, and I wasn’t disappointed. It’s not that I was looking for them to slip up… it just didn’t happen. Flawless… period.

Alex, Neil, and Geddy

 

Geddy Lee’s playing and singing were both sharp… and I don’t mean that in a musical sense of being out of key… I mean sharp…like a razor. There were only a few times where he may have sung in a lower register as opposed to the higher range of his youth, but it all sounded awesome, and his bass chops are as great as ever. He was even bouncing around the stage like a 20 year old, as he always has.

Alex Lifeson made me feel like a fool for overlooking him as an influence in my early years of playing guitar. I’m ashamed to have to admit it… I always loved listening to Rush, as with Led Zeppelin and many other bands, but like some other guitarists in the late-70’s and early-80’s, I never sat and learned a lot of Rush because my influences for playing came from Randy Rhoads, Michael Schenker, Yngwie, Steve Vai, etc. Alex didn’t have quite the flair or technique that a lot of the other players had, so it didn’t grab my attention that much.

How blind I was in my youth… and that’s something I’ve come to realize in later years as I matured as a player, and something I greatly appreciate more and more every time I listen to him. His sense of melody, taste, and feeling are incredible, not to mention the structure of his solos and the chord progressions he uses in the songs. He’s the perfect example that you don’t have to do amazing sweeping arpeggios to be a great guitarist. If you took two young guitarists and had one listen to nothing but Alex and the other whatever he wanted, I would bet on the former being a better player in the long run. He’ll be a very well-rounded guitarist with a lot of musical knowledge. That’s worth a lot more than a 32nd note run with an arpeggio at the end of it (although that’s always fun to do!!). =)

Alex’s performance Saturday night was brilliant, as it always is. Rarely have I seen ovations like I saw that night for nearly every solo he did… during the songs. They must have extended his solo in “Working Man” at least an extra eight bars, and he completely ripped it to pieces. He also switched guitars for nearly every song, usually one of several gorgeous Gibson Les Paul’s or his white Gibson 335, which he played through the entire encore. He also fit in his black PRS and yellow Telecaster. He has a collection any guitarist worth his strings would die for!

As for Neil Peart… okay, first of all… this guy is my favorite musician on the planet, regardless of what instrument I play personally, but I will try to remain objective. I sit here quite often riveted to videos of his solos from various tours, and although I can’t play drums very well, I’m what you might call a drum aficionado… or connoisseur. I love watching a good drum solo… or just a good drummer. I know my good friend and past band-mate, Kevin Tutaj, was at the show somewhere, just as riveted to Neil as I was. I remember watching Kevin playing to Moving Pictures when we were 17 years old, perfectly… and that’s all I really need to say about him. In light of that, what else could I say… he’s good?? We texted each other a few times during the show, expressing our disbelief of what we were watching. Not because of age…. just the musical brilliance of it.

Some of Neil’s solos over the years, like “The Rhythm Method,” as well as “Der Trommler,” “De Slagwerker,” and “O Batterista,” (all various ways of saying “The Drummer” in different languages, often depending on where it’s recorded), feature many similar parts rearranged with various other improvisations to change them up. This solo was completely different, with very little recognizable material from other solos. In fact, the only similarity to past solos was the familiar 3/4 pattern he does with his feet of kick, high-hat, high-hat, over which he plays a variety of patterns in numerous time signatures over that 3/4 pattern. For non-musicians, that requires two different brains. I’m not sure where Neil keeps that extra brain, but it works well.

He began with the acoustic set, and then switched to the electric side as expected. His riser rotated to reveal his Roland V-Drum set with which he used a multitude of various percussion sounds. I’m not educated enough in the art of percussion to explain what was going on here… suffice it to say I was completely blown away. Kevin would be much more qualified to explain the various techniques and concepts Neil was doing.

At the end, of course, his riser spun back around and he went back to his roots of playing a Buddy Rich style Big Band song…this one titled “Love for Sale,” written by Cole Porter (recently informed of this by Facebooker, Steven Rask). Neil used sequenced triggers to advance the melodic progression as he played. Again, I say this from an objective viewpoint, and I’ve watched a lot of drum solos by my favorite drummers… a lot of them young guys with a lot of talent… and this was hands down the best solo I’ve ever seen. The previous “Best Solo I’ve Ever Seen” was from the Snakes and Arrows tour… only a couple years ago. Again… this man is nearly 60 years old… and he still keeps getting better!

One of the reasons that Neil Peart has become one of my biggest inspirations is the fact that in 1994… already recognized as “one of the best drummers on the planet,” he went to jazz percussion instructor, Freddie Gruber, to completely revamp his playing. Keep in mind the status that Neil had already established in the world of drumming, and he only wanted to get better! Learning this changed my own approach to playing guitar, and the reason I constantly practice and have enlisted the coaching of Matt Hennager, the guitar instructor at Sam Ash where I work… a brilliant guitarist and teacher who graduated GIT in Hollywood and has credits to lengthy to list here, although I certainly will at another time.

There was almost a surreal sense to me watching Neil Peart last night, having watched so much of him lately and also having recently read two of his books, “Roadshow” and “Traveling Music,” and currently beginning the third, “Ghost Rider.” A brilliant author as well as musician, Neil Peart is normally a very shy individual, and uncomfortable with the attention he attracts and the sometimes crazy lengths people go to meet him.  Many of those lengths turned into upsettling and bad situations that people create just for the sake of having a brief encounter with him. They never realize the effect it actually has on Neil. If you admire someone so much… why would you want to upset him?

In spite of his shyness in the public eye, he opens up quite a bit in his books, giving an intimate look into his life away from the stage. It’s funny to have a sense of “knowing” someone when you really don’t, especially when you actually know what his habits and routines are on a typical tour day.

For example, I don’t know if he’s traveling my motorcycle on this tour as he has for the last couple decades… but if so, he and his riding partner, (likely Brutus or the band’s security director, Mike), would ride into town shortly before sound check sometime in the late afternoon. Time permitting, and if necessary, Neil might crawl under his bike and change his oil right there next to the tour bus that arrived earlier, after taking a more direct route from the previous show, (Neil would often take back roads and ride through small towns, occasionally running into unexpected and sometimes scary circumstances). After sound check, he will get together with whatever friends and family he may have at the show, often his wife, Carrie, but he would not do the public meet-and-greets that Geddy and Alex thrive in. After the terrible tragedies Neil suffered in 1997 involving his previous wife and daughter, the band decided to excuse Neil from public meet-and-greets and interviews, where the questions may often dig up painful memories. Thankfully, Neil has remarried and seems to be quite happy.

About a half hour before show time, Neil will go to what they call the “Bubba Gump” room… a small room attached to one of their trailers where he has a small practice drum set, and begin warming up (named for a sticker on the door, and his apparent resemblance to Tom Hanks). After the show, he would usually run straight for the bus, where the driver would already have a glass of The Macallan (Scottish Whiskey) waiting for him, and they would immediately take off. After waving at the crowd and jumping off the riser, he won’t see Alex and Geddy until the next sound check. This certainly has nothing to do with not wanting to hang out with his band mates… they do plenty of that… but Alex and Geddy prefer to travel by the comfort of a private jet… where Neil prefers the rough and sometimes treacherous road on his trusty BMW motorcycle.

So seeing Neil this time around was almost like seeing an old friend…. in a way…

I went with my real friends, Anthony and Paul, and hooked up with a couple other friends there, Brian and Wayne. We decided to abandon the seats we had in the very crowded courtside section and went to the top of the balcony where we actually had a great view of the stage along with the entire packed Grand Garden Arena. It was amazing.

I thought about my daughter, Nora (or Elizabeth, her first name, as she may prefer to be called now). She has also become a great classical musician, and would surely appreciate the talent being displayed on that stage this particular night. So beautiful and inspirational to me, I’ve never been able to build a relationship with her as I would like, and a great musical adventure may be the perfect starting point. However, she’s currently in Iowa, the state of her birth, visiting family. Maybe someday in the future I can share this type of experience with her.

In that respect, Rush also performed a couple songs from their forthcoming album, which means that they will likely be back… very good news for any Rush fan. They were simply one of my favorite bands for a very long time. Now they ARE my favorite, and I hope they don’t decide to hang it up anytime soon. There’s something very special to see a band that has been around most of your life, especially when very few of them are left. There are some that have replacement members for those who have retired or died, so they’re not the original lineups, but Rush remains intact.

Rush wrote much of the soundtrack to my life…especially songs like “Subdivisions,” “YYZ,” and “Tom Sawyer.” I may never meet them, and I’m certainly not the type to force myself on them and create many of the situations that Neil has written about, but I’ll be happy as long as I can continue listening to the music and seeing them perform it every so often. So, ’till we meet again…

About the Author

Jack Hoover is a freelance writer working toward a BA in Journalism with an emphasis on sports.  He is also an accomplished guitarist and martial artist.

Jack recently moved to Costa Mesa, California after growing up in Las Vegas, Nevada.  He has traveled extensively as a touring musician and has a particular affection for Sweden.  Among his goals is to take advantage of the nearby beaches and learn how to surf.

He is of Seneca Indian and Scottish ancestry.

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