How did Rush vocalist Geddy Lee get his name?
The music industry has never run short on artists with pseudonyms. Not everyone is blessed with having a badass name like Prince or Mick Jagger, and there was no way that people like Reginald Dwight or Davey Jones were going to be superstars until they decided to change their names to something more glamorous like Elton John and David Bowie, respectively. For all of the strange names that have come and gone in rock and roll, how did one of the founding voices of progressive rock end up with the name Geddy Lee?
When you think about it, Rush was the last band that were interested in being cool. Up until their renaissance, thanks to movies like I Love You Man, the Canadian power trio were known as the kind of band that any nerd would fall head over heels, so it wasn’t like they were going to be getting the same diverse crowd that Led Zeppelin had around the same time.
But the types of fans they drew never seemed to matter to them. This was the era of playing the most extravagant musical pieces anyone had ever heard, and part of the reason why their music worked so well was having Lee both anchoring the band with his bass and soaring high above it whenever he opened his mouth.
So, what’s the deal with him getting a name that sounds like a glorified cartoon character? No one really sets out to become a rockstar named ‘Geddy’, but looking back on how the whole thing originated, it’s almost wholesome knowing that Lee got his moniker from his grandmother’s thick accent.
He was given the full name ‘Gary Lee Weinrib’, but his first name morphed into ‘Geddy’ due to how his grandmother pronounced it, which ended up sticking. We shouldn’t really expect anything less from a band who named themselves after being in a hurry to decide on a name before their first show, but Lee’s voice has always mattered far more than his atypical name.
But what about the voice of Geddy Lee?
Although Lee has been ridiculed by every media outlet since Rush’s inception for his voice, it does have its fair share of unique qualities. While hearing people describe him as everything from a hamster in overdrive to Mickey Mouse on helium, his soaring voice isn’t all that different from what Robert Plant was doing with Led Zeppelin. And when he interpreted Neil Peart’s lyrics, everything seemed to fit.
A lot of what Peart was writing about when he joined the group was based around mythical tales and fierce battles, and when listening to a song like ‘Hemispheres’, Lee makes the listener feel like they’re travelling through the cosmos over 20 minutes. Lee even says that he thought of his role in Rush as a lyrical editor, often coming back to Peart if a line doesn’t sound right or doesn’t have the musicality to it that he would like.
Beyond his voice, Lee also had his hands full whenever he went onstage, often operating the bass guitar, vocals, keyboards, and bass pedals with his feet. Rush may have been considered a bit much for even the most devoted progressive rock fans, but over time, Geddy Lee went from a name to get a mild chuckle out of to one that demands a level of respect from anyone who wants to take their instrument seriously.
