“Gave me hope”: The one band that restored Geddy Lee’s faith in music
As the first waves of progressive music started, no one was more complex than Rush. Even with only three people, the Canadian power trio made a colossal sound on their records that no other band could come close to. Although Geddy Lee could play the bass like no one else in the rock scene, he admitted to feeling less creative as the years passed.
Once the band started out, though, modern music was heading towards a major genre shift. Since most fans were tired of listening to the likes of Emerson, Lake and Palmer on the radio, the punk generation helped bring everything back to square one, with artists that could only play the basics writing fantastic songs.
While Rush may not have fit the traditional punk mould, they were happy to work in influences of new wave into their sound throughout the 1980s. Across albums like Moving Pictures, Lee was known to spend as much time on the keyboard as he did on the bass, creating a new sonic texture that would define their sound going forward.
Once the 1990s rolled around, though, it was clear that Rush’s next phase was beginning to grow old. After albums like Presto, the group hit a low point for their usual creativity, making songs that sounded outdated before they had even hit store shelves. Once they started returning to basics with albums like Counterparts and Test For Echo, the rock world was ready for another significant change with the rise of grunge.
Although Lee could respect most of the sounds coming from artists like Soundgarden and Nirvana, the death of Kurt Cobain cast a dark shadow on the rest of the scene. Coming towards the end of the 1990s, Lee had started to lose faith in where modern music could go…until he listened to one band from England.
In the wake of Nirvana’s fall, Radiohead picked up where they left off on OK Computer, creating a brilliant mix of alternative flair, classic rock songwriting, and some of the most outlandish musical detours the decade had ever seen. While Lee wasn’t paying attention to most new music then, he had a renewed faith in the next generation of rock when hearing them for the first time.
It’s easy to pigeonhole Radiohead as the thinking man’s favourite rock band. And, truth be told, there’s a lot of weight to that argument. The group have never been one to rely on pop sensibilities or big hooky choruses to sell their records. Instead, they’ve used a cunning technique of never standing still to make sure they keep the pace of creation flowing and the looming boredom of becoming stale far from the recording studio, it’s part of what made them such an attractive prospect for Lee.
When talking about hearing the band for the first time, Lee was immediately taken back to the early days of prog, telling The Quietus, “To me, Radiohead carried on the tradition of bands like Yes. They are always adventurous and challenging, and yet they have remained ahead of the game, really. I love the way they blend old and new, including contemporary beats and instrumentation”.
Even though Lee admires the band’s experimental side, it’s never at the expense of the song, either, explaining, “They still have great songs at the heart of it. Especially on OK Computer, which completely fired me up and gave me hope for the future. Great music in every sense of the word”.
They still kept the post-modern affluence of Britpop in OK Computer but they threaded it with third-person narrative and a detachment that only Radiohead can truly pull off. They invited science-fiction into the action movie world and came up trumps. Thanks to the speculative narrative structure, we have Yorke possibly at his peak lyrically, using his storytelling skills to invite the audience to be a part of the sci-fi frolics. As well as hits like ‘Paranoid Android’ the album truly relies on the duality of marrying both their rock roots and their evolutionary ethos. The album is a masterpiece.
Like Rush, Radiohead have never wanted to rest on their laurels, stripping things down on Kid A before transitioning back to the big guitars on albums like In Rainbows. Although Radiohead might not identify themselves as a traditional prog-rock outfit, the spirit of their music is the perfect example of musical progression at its finest.
