Geddy Lee: prog-rock’s bass virtuoso
In rock and roll, the bass guitar is usually treated as the lesser of the two stringed instruments. Although making a four-string work in a rock context is no easy task, many bands have enlisted bass players that are more about playing root notes than delivering anything too flashy. As the genre started to spread out into the 1970s, the prog world gave the genre a virtuoso in Geddy Lee.
Growing up in Canada as the son of Holocaust survivors, Lee started out playing guitar before getting a call to sit in with a high school band featuring a school friend named Alex Lifeson. Being handed the bass, Lee started working from a different sonic space than usual bass players. Influenced by John Entwistle of The Who, Lee favoured the high end of the instrument, playing lines that could easily be lead guitar licks if put into the right context.
As the band played up and down the local circuit under the moniker Rush, Lee quickly adopted the frontman role, with a searing voice that fell between Robert Plant and an operatic wail. Although the group’s debut release was indebted to the sounds of Zeppelin, it wasn’t until their second record and the addition of drummer Neil Peart that things began falling into place.
In Peart, Lee had found his rhythmic partner in crime, always playing licks that offset the hectic drumming style Peart was known for. After the nightmarish development that went into their first album, though, the band convinced Peart to begin writing the lyrics for their songs, turning in the most intelligent pieces of prose in rock history.
Considering Peart’s literacy in the early days, Lee could tell that there had to be adjustments to his usual way of writing, recalling in Beyond the Lighted Stage, “The lyrics were fantastic, but really a mouthful to sing all at once.”
While the band played music inspired by their prog-rock heroes like Yes and Genesis, it wasn’t until their conceptual piece ‘2112’ that fans started to take notice. Across the next few years, Lee wrote the more impressive scale runs alongside Lifeson. Throughout songs like ‘Xanadu’, Lee would often find himself playing in harmony with Lifeson to create a rapid downfall of notes before going back into the main section of the song.
As Lee began incorporating different synths into the mix, he also added to his tour setup, having a synthesiser right alongside the microphone stand onstage. This involved him having many more responsibilities on the live stage, including a few times when he would have to move the microphone stand with his nose.
After the colossal pieces that went into the making of Hemispheres, Lee admitted that things were getting out of hand in terms of the epics, recalling, “[That] was the straw that broke the camel’s back in terms of longer songs. It made us want to run away from that kind of album. So we went from Hemispheres straight into ‘Spirit of Radio’.” Featuring a knock-out chorus melody from Lee, the next single from the album Permanent Waves signalled a move towards pop flavours in the group’s music.
When working on their following album Moving Pictures, the trio had found a way to incorporate each side of themselves onto one album, with Lee and Peart writing the basis of ‘YYZ’ by themselves. As the ‘80s progressed, Lee also enjoyed experimenting with keyboards, which led to a steep divide amongst fans as to where their favourite band was going.
In defence of the newer sounds of the time, Lee thought that the piano gave him a better grasp of melodies. He said: “Synthesisers and technology became a way of sparking your creativity. My need to write melodies is more satisfied on a keyboard. As a songwriter, you’re always looking for a different angle to give you something fresh.”
After getting the synthesiser period out of their system, the band would return to their rock roots throughout the ‘90s, creating streamlined epics on albums like Counterparts. When coming off the Test for Echo tour, Lee and Lifeson were dealt a significant shock from Peart’s camp. Having lost his wife and daughter within months of each other, Peart had no intention of going back to work.
Although Lee would talk to Lifeson about reuniting the band, it wasn’t until the early 2000s that Peart could re-enter the fold. By the time they had completed work and started touring for Vapor Trails, Lee mentioned how tight the camaraderie had gotten, explaining, “I think that was the first time that we ever had a group hug. It wasn’t lost on us, how much it took to get back out there.”
Outside of working with his solo project My Favourite Headache, Lee remained faithful to Rush until their final album Clockwork Angels. By the modern era, Lee had also added more elements to his live set-up, having to play bass, sing, play keyboards, and operate different bass pedals with his feet across one show. After retiring from the road, the band was finally announced to be over once Peart died of cancer in 2020.
While the band have never been known for having their songs talked about on the most prominent TV shows, they have enjoyed much success away from the mainstream. Through appearances in cult classics like I Love You, Man and praise from the creators of South Park and Steven Colbert, Rush kept finding their own specific inroads into the mainstream. This led to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame finally acknowledging them in 2013.
When talking about the legacy that his band left behind, Lee was proud of carving out their unique lane in popular music, explaining, “We had our own stream, and it wasn’t the main one, but it wasn’t too far away from the main one, either. I’d like to think of ourselves as the world’s most popular cult band.”
Although there has been no word on whether Lee or Lifeson will make anything later, Lee has been applauded for his signature way of playing bass. Known for playing without a pick, Lee’s technique came from how hard he was hitting the bass. Picking up cues from other prog bassists like Chris Squire from Yes, Lee’s low-ending was responsible for the signature melodies of their songs, like the bass break in ‘La Villa Strangiato’ or the melodic figure in the middle of ‘Red Barchetta’.
Lee has also become revered amongst modern prog bass players, with artists as diverse as Les Claypool from Primus and Tim Commerford from Rage Against the Machine counting him among their primary influences. His touch on the piano also became a significant turning point for artists like Trent Reznor, recalling, “I was like, ‘Wow, this could do the job of what a guitar would have done’. I’d be hard-pressed to find another band that has done it like that.”
Even after leaving Rush behind, Lee has been an avid fan of the bass and all the gear that comes with it, even releasing a book about the four-string entitled The Big Beautiful Book of Bass, where he interviewed bassists like Bill Wyman of The Rolling Stones about how they achieved their signature sounds. Although Lee may have enough credentials of four different musical legends, he has never stopped being a fan of any music that strikes his fancy.
