The one bandmate Geddy Lee always needed in Rush: “Just as important”
It almost feels like anyone would need to go through a serious music course before even jamming with Geddy Lee.
Anything that Rush ever played came back to playing the most complicated songs ever made, and when you listen to the way that he and Alex Lifeson constructed a lot of their melodies, it was hard enough trying to figure out what they were doing. But it was always about the three of them working together to create something spectacular whenever they made a new record.
Getting all three of those musical minds in one place was never going to be easy, though. Every one of them were best friends – whenever they got together, but the idea of Neil Peart writing these novella-like lyrics was going to be a learning curve for Lee. He had only known about writing the dumb ‘sex, drugs, and rock and roll’ lyrics for the longest time, so being able to sing every line of a song like ‘Beneath Between and Behind’ wasn’t going to be too easy for him to fit in one breath.
But all good partnerships refine themselves over time, and Peart practically looked at Lee as his editor half the time that he wrote lyrics. Something might speak to Lee at a certain moment in time, and sometimes only a handful of lines end up speaking to him, and Peart was always great at mixing up his styles accordingly. Everything seemed to be going to plan, but watching Peart walk away from the fold wasn’t going to be easy.
Then again, no one would have blamed Peart if he didn’t want to come anywhere close to a drum kit after losing his family. After his wife and daughter passed away within only a few months of each other, Peart figured the only way to calm himself was to keep moving. So that’s exactly what he did, riding on his motorcycle throughout every piece of land that he could find across the Canadian border and down through to Mexico.
Lee and Lifeson both knew that he needed some time to calm his soul, but the thought of any band activity happening pretty much ended that day. There was no chance of them having the same kind of fun without Peart, and even with them reuniting with new drummer Annika Nilles, Lee remembered in Beyond the Lighted Stage that continuing on without Peart wouldn’t have felt right.
Even though the band formed with original drummer John Rutsey, Lee couldn’t imagine them making any new music if they didn’t have Peart in the fold, saying, “Me and Alex would talk about it every now and again, but I don’t want to play in Rush without those two guys. There’s no replacing anybody in this band. It is the band, the three of us. Even though [Peart’s] the new guy, he’s just as important.”
And that mentality has carried them through their reunion as well. There was no sense in them trying to put someone in direct competition with Peart, but when listening to Nilles play all of those classic songs, you can tell that there isn’t a soul in the crowd that’s looking at her as ‘the new drummer for Rush’ whenever she plays the fills to songs like ‘Tom Sawyer’.
All it’s about is celebrating the kind of music that Peart gave us throughout his life, and the best that the rest of the guys can hope to do is do the songs justice. Because if there was one thing that Peart wanted more than anything, it was to perform songs that would last, and Lee still has the same vigour that he had when working on their reunion tours as he did when ‘The Professor’ was behind the kit.
