The album Geddy Lee called “famously disappointing”
While Geddy Lee has expressed his love for a wide range of music, from The Beatles to Björk, he remains deeply rooted in the world of prog rock. After all, as the frontman of Rush, Lee helped the band become one of the genre’s defining forces. It was progressive rock that guided them out of the blues rock doldrums, leading them ever closer to the distinctive sound that now defines them.
By the time Rush chose to explore a more expansive, fantastical direction with their 1975 album Caress of Steel, progressive rock was already in full swing. Despite the album’s critical failure, the trio responded to the backlash with renewed determination, refining their vision on the 1976 follow-up, 2112. Far from sealing their fate, this album proved to be a turning point, revitalising their career. Rush took a genre that was showing signs of decline, made it uniquely their own, and rejuvenated it for a new era.
While Lee was a big fan of the 1960s’ most influential rock acts, including Led Zeppelin, The Who, and Cream, British prog pioneers Yes were particularly resonant for him. Their in-house bass whizz Chris Squire opened his eyes to just how central the bass could be in a rock band, going one step further than the lead lines of Paul McCartney and John Entwistle’s explosive twists.
A full-blown virtuoso, Squire’s efforts on prog classics such as ‘Roundabout’ and ‘No Opportunity Necessary, No Experience Needed’, confirmed to Lee that he didn’t have to take a backseat role with the four-string and explicitly confirmed that he must use his imagination when conceiving his driving but complex rhythmic parts. This lesson helped him become the bassist he is, and through this evolution, afforded Rush one of their most vital cogs, helping them become prog titans.
There is no way Rush would have become the band that enjoyed immense creative and commercial success in the late 1970s and beyond if it wasn’t for the lessons that the early prog progenitors taught them. They would have remained just another blues rock act and most likely have faded in the memory unless they took this bold tact and doubled down on their prog approach in the aftermath of Caress of Steel.
However, just like they would fearlessly put their own spin on the genre and move further away from the caped, keyboard-heavy suites of Yes and the pure oddity of Jethro Tull, the band would also come to realise just how outdated some of the genre’s aspects were. Despite being hated for their sound, they would agree with the hip thought in the late 1970s that most prog pioneers were becoming obsolete.
While they were hated by punks and those aligned with their desire to overthrow the musical status quo, Rush were in no doubt that prog had become a parody of itself. Punk’s simplicity might have “legitimised” Rush’s technical brilliance during this era and made them seem like Beethoven in comparison to the likes of the Sex Pistols, but the Canadian trio were in agreement that they were different from the genre’s founding fathers in that they weren’t resting on their laurels, and continued to push themselves to new heights.
The same could not be said for Emerson, Lake and Palmer (ELP), one of the quintessential prog pioneering groups founded by former members of The Nice, King Crimson, and Atomic Rooster. While they had scored immense commercial success with their extensive, convoluted compositions and bombastic live shows, they had come to represent everything people hated about the genre and its general pomposity.
The group might have secured widespread success at the dawn of the 1970s, but by the time they took an extended hiatus in 1974, the writing was on the wall. When they eventually returned and recorded 1978’s seventh album, Love Beach, while tax exiles in the Bahamas alongside King Crimson lyricist Peter Sinfield, making one last contractual and pop-oriented album for Atlantic Records, they failed miserably, which hastened their 1979 split.
He might have been a longtime fan of ELP, but just like most people, Lee was in no doubt that Love Beach was terrible. Speaking to Prog in 2023, he called the record a let down and recalled being angered by its quality. He said: “Emerson, Lake & Palmer had a famously disappointing album, Love Beach. I was a huge ELP fan, but that one really furrowed my brow.”
Despite being put out by what was the last ELP record until 1992, their demise with Love Beach left Rush as the only prog group of note standing, with them free to take the genre in whatever direction they wanted, remaining with their imaginations and the inspiration of the genre in its earliest, most unadulterated form. Because of them, it lives on.
