“Awesome”: the band Geddy Lee said introduced Rush to rock and roll
When it comes to musical influences, there is only one band that Geddy Lee harks back to.
“Cream sort of changed my life,” he said, referring to one of his favourite bands. “They blew my mind and I remember they were coming to Toronto. I couldn’t get any of my friends interested to go see them; they were playing at Massey Hall, and I went down and bought a ticket, and I went by myself.”
Cream was a huge part of Lee’s life, as they inspired him to start playing music and was one of his first major influences when it came to making music. Some of Rush’s first-ever gigs were playing Cream covers in dive bars. It’s safe to say that they likely wouldn’t have ended up the same without them.
However, there is a difference between a band that makes you want to be a rockstar and a band that teaches you how to be a rock star. When Rush graduated from dive bars, and people in the music industry began to see the three-piece’s potential, it wasn’t long before they were asked to go on tour with other bands.
Touring can be the downfall of many. When Jimmy Page initially went on tour with Neil Christian and the Crusaders, the late nights, pressure, and poor conditions caused him to collapse before a show in Sheffield. Life on the road can also lead to frailty within a band as members fall out and don’t want to work together. Music is an art, but so is being so constantly close to it that you can make a career out of it.
When Rush started touring, the bands they were supporting helped them adjust to life on the road, keeping making and playing music fun even when it became the dominating factor in their lives. “We were so green and new to it all. We were pretty naïve, really,” Geddy Lee recalled. “Our first couple of shows were opening up for Uriah Heep and Manfred Mann’s Earth Band. They were just at the end of their tour, and they were pretty wild and burnt out.”
Lee also spoke about how they opened the band’s eyes to life on the road and what comes with being in a rock and roll band. “They had quite a following of hangers-on with them, and we were just mind blown by the goings on that we saw,” he said. “We played the last four shows of that tour with them, and on the last show, they were throwing pies in each other’s faces, which I suppose is the kind of thing you do at the end of a tour. But we had just started, and we thought it was crazy.”
These early tours were enough to give the band a glimpse of rock ‘n’ roll, but it wasn’t until they went on some longer stints that they were truly introduced to life on tour. This only makes sense, as the band they ended up supporting are considered kings of live performance.
“Then we went on a couple of really long tours with Kiss, who treated us really well, and that was our awesome introduction into the world of rock ‘n’ roll,” Lee concluded.
