The prog-rock band Geddy Lee said were out of his league: “How rare”
The entire school of bass playing was rewritten the minute that most musicians got to hear what Geddy Lee could do.
There had certainly been virtuosos before Rush had come along, but compared to the other technicians like John Paul Jones or Jack Bruce, Lee was always making those left-field choices that left most people awestruck when they made it through any of his records. He was playing lead guitar on bass half the time, but there was never a moment when it didn’t serve the song as it should have.
As much as Rush had the credentials of a typical prog-rock machine, it’s not like they didn’t have any sense of self-awareness. They knew when they could crawl up their own ass from time to time, but even if Hemispheres remained one of the most technically challenging things that they had ever made, they only came from them listening to some of the wildest songs that any prog band had ever attempted.
A song like ‘2112’ probably wouldn’t have happened if not for King Crimson or Genesis coming to the forefront first, but a lot of Lee’s playing had more bite to it than normal. He was clearly a student of Bruce’s upfront bass playing, but with John Entwistle’s sense of attack, most of their songs had a progressive mentality with a Black Sabbath sense of power behind every single note they played.
Then again, a lot of what Lee was doing was an approximation of what Chris Squire did whenever he played with Yes. Whereas King Crimson were about creating musical movements on every one of their songs, hearing a song like ‘Roundabout’ took all of the technical knowledge of rock and roll and moulded it with hooks that might have a shot on the radio if they cut down the songs to three minutes.
The prototype for Rush was already there in Squire’s vicious attack, but Lee was the first one to say that there was no way that he could play like him, saying, “If I could play on any song, it would be ‘Roundabout’ by Yes. How rare it is to find a song that’s a big hit single that is that complicated and driven by the bass part. For me, that’s one of the greatest bass parts ever written for a rock song. Did I think I could play with them? Fuck no, but I would love to give it a shot.”
If we’re being completely honest here, though, Lee has actually managed to go beyond a lot of what Squire did on a lot of Yes’s records. Sure, Squire may have had the ingenuity when it came to modifying his basses on his records, but the fact that Lee is holding nearly every Rush song together with only his fingers is still one of the most superhuman feats to come out of the glory days of prog rock.
And when Lee did eventually play ‘Roundabout’ with the band at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, it seemed like he hardly broke a sweat. Most people would have been shaking in their boots playing a song that complicated, but when listening to Lee’s bass tone, he sounds as nasty playing with his fingers as Squire did on his trusty Rickenbacker back at the band’s peak.
So, really, seeing Lee take over for one of his heroes was almost like a torch-passing moment in many respects, and while most people had shied away from giving Rush their flowers back in the day, when all the dust had settled, each of them was capable of performing alongside their prog-rock brethren and even giving them a run for their money any day of the week.
