The most underrated bass player in rock, according to Geddy Lee
There aren’t many aspects of the bass guitar that Geddy Lee hasn’t explored, conquered and relabelled under his own moniker. Lee is one of the defining performers of his generation, but he didn’t do it all.
From the first time he pressed his fingers to the strings in Rush, Lee became one of the biggest virtuosos the rock world had ever seen, taking his cues from artists like Chris Squire and John Entwistle and putting his own unique spin on them. The two men would help to infuse Lee with a certain calibre of performance, but they weren’t the only ones, with James Jamerson and Paul McCartney also considered icons.
For Lee, one factor always confirmed whether he loved a bassist or not: the melody. “One common denominator for me was always the ability to play melodically, and to enhance the song on a subterranean level,” he says. Usually, the bass guitar is best used when providing steady ground for the other instruments to build off of, but Lee cherishes those players who take things up a notch and become a part of, if not lead, the melody.
“So I’ve always gravitated towards bass players that not only locked in with the rhythm section and helped moved the song, but also added some other level of musical interest that may not be as obvious. Usually, that comes out on secondary, tertiary and repeated listenings.” Despite his penchant for writing bulletproof hooks on the low end, Lee thought that one classic rock bass player flew under the radar throughout history.
Before Lee helped break down the doors of the bass guitar, though, the instrument was still considered the lesser version of the six-string. Although artists like Paul McCartney and Jack Bruce could fill out the bottom of the record with immaculate basslines, it took artists like Lee to reshape what the bass player’s role was supposed to be when working in a trio environment.
Considering how much sonic space he had to take up, Lee would often find himself playing different lines than one would expect out of a lead guitar. Outside of Alex Lifeson’s excellent lead breaks across every Rush album, it was becoming clear that Lee could hold his own next to any guitar player on the four-string, culminating in massive prog exercises like ‘La Villa Strangiato’.
Before Lee had started playing bass, he was already starting to listen to the harsher side of rock and roll. After absorbing the sounds of blues acts like The Yardbirds, Lee was starting to get influenced by the sounds of other American artists from the psychedelic scene, including one of the kings of the movement, Jefferson Airplane.
Born out of the Haight/Ashbury scene, Grace Slick led the group through some of the biggest successes of the Summer of Love, bringing a darker edge to rock on songs like ‘White Rabbit’. While Slick was usually the main attraction every time the band played live, Lee was dialled into what Jack Casady was doing on the low end.
When talking to Music Radar, Lee thought Casady was often overlooked as one of the greatest bass players of the 1960s, saying, “I always found Jack Casady from Jefferson Airplane to be very underrated. Listen to his playing from the early days or the live album Bless Its Pointed Little Head… He had this heavy tone that pushed the band along. Jefferson Airplane went through a million configurations in their history, but Jack made those early versions of this band stand out for me”.
When listening to the band live, it’s easy to hear that growl that Lee was talking about. While working on the local scene, Casady always had a particular sound that made the band sound far more feral than they were, often creating distorted sounds that rivalled the guitar.
Although other heavy acts like Blue Cheer were emerging on the scene, Lee would take those tonal lessons to heart, dialling in a sound that pushed the bass forward rather than have it fade into the background. Lee may be the musical son of progressive rock legends, but had Casady not changed the way that the bass could sound, chances are Rush may have had a completely different tone.
