Alex Lifeson on the most underrated guitarist of all time: “He has such an amazing ability”
There will always be a handful of musicians that never get the recognition they deserve. Even when bands like The Velvet Underground get their just due in the press and among the public, it’s usually long after they have stopped making music, leading to many people seeing their brilliance in hindsight. Although Rush may have been able to stick around to see their legacy solidified, Alex Lifeson admitted that one guitarist was one of the unsung heroes of rock and roll.
Then again, Lifeson already had a few underappreciated gems in his catalogue before Rush received widespread acclaim. Across the band’s prog-rock epics, Lifeson had a way of combining hard rock fury with the mathematical precision of the band, almost sounding like Jimmy Page if he were asked to play with King Crimson.
Across the band’s various eras, Lifeson would also be seen incorporating new sounds into his sonic arsenal. As the band experimented with various keyboard sounds, Lifeson made it a habit to keep his own synthesisers working, creating sonic landscapes with various effects pedals on albums like Hold Your Fire and Power Windows.
While Lifeson was twisting what a rock and roll guitar player could do, Steve Morse was already creating his own voice on the guitar. Arriving on the scene as a member of Dixie Dregs, Morse would be out with his solo band when opening for Rush, where he astounded Lifeson from the moment he heard him.
When discussing his favourite players, Lifeson would consider Morse one of the most overlooked players he had ever heard, telling Music Radar, “He has such an amazing ability. I always thought that he should have been huge in whatever he did. He was definitely successful in whatever bands he worked in, but I don’t think that he ever had the kind of recognition that he so deserved”.
Even though Morse could play circles around most of the aspiring guitar players on the scene, his most high-profile gigs came when performing with Deep Purple. After Ritchie Blackmore departed the band for the second time and Joe Satriani filled in on one tour, Morse was brought in as the replacement and has remained a fixture of the band’s sound for decades, laying down some fantastic licks on albums like 2013’s Now What???.
When listening to his guitar solos, it’s easy to see where Lifeson is coming from. Regardless of which genre he finds himself playing in, Morse knows how to find his lane as a guitar player, either slipping in a nice piece of ear candy to compliment the vocals or going off the rails by playing a monster riff.
Considering where Lifeson took his guitar playing in the back half of Rush’s career, he may have stolen a few tricks from Morse, keeping the audience on their toes across albums like Clockwork Angels and Snakes and Arrows. While many guitarists have a habit of not evolving over the years, Morse helped remind Lifeson that there is always room for improvement at every turn.
