Five isolated guitar tracks to prove Rush’s Alex Lifeson is a genius
There aren’t many prog-rock enthusiasts who will avoid telling you about the positives of Rush. The Canadian band flew into the mainstream consciousness with a run of sensational records that capped off the return of rock and roll. While the 1960s had seen gigantic acts rise to the fore, the 1970s had, so far, rarely produced its own megastars, instead preferring to lift those from the previous decade ever higher. However, while one half of the rock world dove headfirst into the raw beauty of punk, the other half went wild with imagery, maniacal with musical intent and simply potty for prog-rock.
Time has passed, and Rush fans have, quite surprisingly, grown over the years. The band’s name may well be known across a certain section of the internet, and we imagine real life, but he is still a vastly overlooked contributor to one of the biggest rock bands of the 20th century, Rush. In the isolated guitar tracks below, we’re paying closer attention to the band’s guitarist Alex Lifeson.
While Neil Peart, the band’s mercurial drummer, was often considered the greatest of all time, and Geddy Lee, the group’s juggernaut bassist with a penchant for punchy lines, may take the public plaudits for their rise to prominence, it is Alex Lifeson’s incredible guitar playing that truly set the band apart from the rest.
The rhythm section of any group is always essential, but where Lee and Peart provided a foundation from which to build on, Lifeson set about creating sonic structures to make Gaudi blush. Lifeson has remained largely out of the spotlight as a lead guitarist, but that only speaks more highly of his supreme skill, that he was able to front the band while remaining publicly quiet. However, below, we’re taking a closer look at his skills.
Below are five isolated guitar tracks to prove Alex Lifeson is a genius.
Five isolated guitar tracks of Alex Lifeson:
‘Spirit of the Radio’
Starting with Alex Lifeson’s most instantly recognisable riff, it remained a crucial part of Rush’s live shows until they split in 2018. Lifeson told Classic Rock of the riff in 2006: “I just wanted to give it something that gave it a sense of static – radio waves bouncing around, very electric. We had that sequence going underneath, and it was just really to try and get something that was sitting on top of it, that gave it that movement.”
Whilst Lee and Peart shine on the song, it is Lifeson who steals the show. Listening to the isolated guitar track, you really get a measure of just how brilliant his part is. Drenched in chorus and phase, the opening riff is made even more mindblowing by the absence of the other instruments. That lick he does before it moves into the main riff is also a thing of beauty, echoing the swagger of Hendrix and Page as he slides up.
‘Red Barchetta’
The Moving Pictures track is deeply rooted in the literature of Peart’s friend Richard Foster who had written a story in Road and Track Magazine, which Peart was keen to turn into his own. Peart was always pleased with the results, “It’s probably one of our best in that sense being a short movie, and every section is a cinematic accompaniment to the lyrics.”
One of Peart and the rest of the band’s cinematic techniques to promote the picturesque vision of the song was the guitar of Alex Lifeson. Within the confines of the song, he is allowed to let his talent run wild, and his skills provide the audience with a succinct and searing vision.
‘Tom Sawyer’
One of the band’s most iconic tracks was also born in the most natural ways, its conception almost immaculate. After Peart had worked with Pye Dubois and Max Webster on the lyrics, next was the drumbeat, which Peart, along with the rest of the band, improvised by providing a keen vision of the band Rush had become. Lifeson takes on further credence when isolating his magnetic guitar work.
The song resembles a change of pace for Rush. They had been creating sprawling tracks for so long that keeping this one under six minutes was a feat. ‘Tom Sawyer’ would become a defining anthem of the band, helped in no small part by Lifeson’s wondrous performance.
‘Limelight’
It may well be one of Peart’s more personal songs, but there is no doubt that the best moment of the track comes from Alex Lifeson and his amazing solo, it’s a piece which Lifeson enjoyed immensely too. “It’s funny,” he recalled, “After all these years, the solo to ‘Limelight’ is my favourite to play live. There’s something very sad and lonely about it; it exists in its own little world. And I think, in its own way, it reflects the nature of the song’s lyrics—feeling isolated amidst chaos and adulation.”
Lifeson manages to achieve this sound with his hallowed ‘Hentor Sportscaster’, a Frankenstein guitar — a modified Fender Strat with a Floyd Rose vibrato arm — to create his archetypal tone. It is this performance that critics point to when asked to define the sound of Rush. While Lee and Peart are critical to the band’s success, overlooking Alex Lifeson’s contribution is a gigantic mistake.
‘YYZ’
Perhaps most famous for Neil Peart’s contribution to the track, it also sees Lifeson deliver his iconic style. The track would feature on their 1981 album Moving Pictures, and it wouldn’t take long before the track became a real live favourite among the band’s avid fanbase. In a 2012 interview in which Peart went through the seminal album track-by-track and said this on the monster ‘YYZ’: “Talk about an organic release, that came when we were flying in one time and hearing from the cockpit this morse code rhythm, and I said wouldn’t that be a neat introduction.”
He then continued: “This song is an instrumental, but it’s about YYZ airport, it’s about airports so we have these exotic moods shifting around and then the gigantic emotional crescendo of people being reunited and being separated, so it was very consciously a cinematic twist on an airport.”
