How Billy Corgan’s love of Rush blew Geddy Lee’s mind
Many artists don’t really have a gauge on the impact their music has on people. It’s nice to hear that people like it, but the best artists seem to speak to fans’ experiences without ever even meeting them. Rush may have been that outlet for many prog fans, but Geddy Lee didn’t understand that impact until years later.
Because when looking at the kind of ridicule Rush garnered in their prime, it’s not like they were considered the most fashionable band in the world. They were the butt of every single joke that any critic had about progressive music, and when they heard Lee’s voice for the first time, they either considered him a Robert Plant rip-off or one of the most ear-piercing vocalists that ever managed to score a record contract.
But the real fans could look past any of those hangups. They were more interested in the stories they had to tell with their music, and during their progressive prime, albums like Hemispheres and Permanent Waves were perfect gateways for people who wanted something a little bit heavy but weren’t willing to go as far as listening to bands like King Crimson or Yes for too long.
And even when the band had different periods of delving into synthpop in the 1980s, their fans were right alongside them. It should be impossible for the same people who liked a song like ‘Bastille Day’ to cosign something like ‘Afterimage’ or ‘Red Sector A’, but the entire reason why the band bridged those gaps was because they were never insincere about it. They were curious where their music was going, so doing something earned them fans they would have never realised.
The stadiums may have been filled for a reason, but the documentary Beyond the Lighted Stage helped put a lot of things into perspective. Everyone from Tim Commerford of Rage Against the Machine to Kirk Hammett to Trent Reznor had positive things to say about the band, but Le was blown away by how much the band’s music struck a nerve when listening to Billy Corgan.
Corgan held onto music throughout his childhood, and Lee was taken aback that he could have had such an influence on another music legend, saying, “Billy Corgan, he blew my mind. The things he was saying about his relationship with his mother and what ‘Entre Nous’ meant to him – those things meant a lot to me. You don’t start doing this for any other reasons but your own and 40 years later, you never expected that you’d still be doing it. Then to hear other people describe your work in such a serious light makes you feel like you’ve lived a life and that’s such a nice feeling.”
Granted, Corgan’s story is a stand-in for what Rush’s music has done for years. They were never looking to be the cool kids by any stretch, but even if they found themselves in and out of the public consciousness, fans could relate to a bunch of guys playing music because they seriously loved playing together. It was “outsider” music in one sense, but that may as well have been a badge of honour half the time.
Because while Rush wasn’t the kind of band that was going to be plastered on the cover of Rolling Stone every time they came out with a record, they’re always going to be there in the grand story of rock and roll. And Corgan really said it best when describing their music: “They were popular enough that they get namechecked as one of the greatest bands of all time. You can say, ‘This band was marginalised, what was it?’ It doesn’t matter. At some point, they’re there, and somebody has to explain why they’re there.”
