“I’m behaving like a losing dog”: Geddy Lee’s brief dalliance with cocaine
Elton John spoke recently about the legalisation of marijuana, saying that he doesn’t think it was a good move as he considers it a gateway drug. John is undoubtedly someone who has the authority to speak on this matter, as a large amount of his career was spent high, wrestling with addiction and doing cocaine and various other substances every day.
“Legalising marijuana in America and Canada is one of the greatest mistakes of all time,” he said when asked for his opinion on the matter, “I maintain that it’s addictive. It leads to other drugs. And when you’re stoned – and I’ve been stoned – you don’t think normally.”
Naturally, this is a relatively controversial subject, as whether or not consuming marijuana is enough to get people to do harder drugs is difficult to determine. However, something which does seem to unify people is the harmful nature of harder drugs. Both rockstars and music lovers alike have had plenty of run-ins with drugs, and there are few who overindulge and come away with positive stories.
When Geddy Lee and Rush began to make it big, they started supporting a few different bands on the road, and they had to adapt quickly and learn how to live a life on the road. This meant not just being okay with spending a long time with the song people but also understanding how you travel and perform so much while still making things fun.
“We were so green and new to it all. We were pretty naïve, really. Our first couple of shows were opening up for Uriah Heep and Manfred Mann’s Earth Band. They were just at the end of their tour, and they were pretty wild and burnt out,” he said, “We played the last four shows of that tour with them, and on the last show, they were throwing pies in each other’s faces, which I suppose is the kind of thing you do at the end of a tour. But we had just started, and we thought it was crazy.”
Of course, Rush have had a very long and successful career, so their time on the road has extended much further than those four dates playing relatively small venues. In the ‘70s and ’80s, Lee might have taken the fun times a bit too far when he found himself on the struggling end of a cocaine addiction. While it wasn’t crippling, it did begin to take over his life for a period.
“In the cocaine years, coke was everywhere, like, during the drum solo, you do a line,” he said, “I really didn’t do any coke before a gig because I could feel it in my throat, and that was hard on my voice. Occasionally, maybe after sound check, you might do a bump and then you get on with your day, but it was mostly towards the end of the night when you felt like you had earned a bit of a reward, so you’d get high.
Lee continued, “It was very dangerous, and it took me a while before I realised the trap I’d slipped into. Thankfully, I was well brought-up by my mom. I realised, ‘I’m behaving like a losing dog here. I have to stop.”
