Rush’s Geddy Lee reveals his favourite songwriter
It’s hard to think of any band that wrote the types of songs that Rush created. Although they might have started as a fairly blues-centric rock outfit on their first record, Rush’s journey throughout the decades saw them incorporate everything from synthesisers to progressive rock symphonies, depending on what the lyrical story was called for. Then again, for Geddy Lee, some of those old influences never go away.
Long before Rush had even thought about expanding the limits of what rock and roll could do, Pete Townshend was testing his limits with The Who. Born and bred in the London Mod scene, Townshend envisioned something bigger could come out of rock and roll than a simple melody and a handful of chords. Working with different symphonies and song structures, Townshend’s songwriting across albums like Tommy and Quadrophenia left an indelible mark on Lee’s songwriting.
When speaking about the band years later, Lee mentioned how much of an influence Townshend had on his approach to songwriting, telling Sirius XM: “Pete Townshend still is my absolute favourite Rock songwriter. (Also the) most influential in terms of what a great Rock song should be. I’ve got the chance to see them a couple of times when I was younger. Roger Daltrey aside, that’s a three-piece band really, bass, drums, guitar and vocals”.
Outside of Lee’s songwriting with Rush, he also took a few cues from what John Entwistle was doing behind the bass. Instead of the usual low-ending expected, Entwistle treated his bass like an electric lead guitar, always flying off the handle with some of the greatest rhythmic hooks to push the song forward, like ‘My Generation’ and ‘The Real Me’.
Listening back to Lee’s playing, there’s an obvious influence in his attack on the bass, always propelling the band forward and not taking any prisoners when it comes to solo. When looking at Townshend’s influence on the group, it’s always been about the desire to break free from the confines of pure music.
Across albums like Who’s Next, Townshend offers up tales of escape from the couch-potato life he was observing daily and finding freedom in playing music with his mates. These kinds of underdogs stories also played a huge role in Neil Peart’s lyrics, with the sci-fi resistance at the heart of ‘2112’ having the same defiant attitude as Townshend’s deaf, dumb, and blind kid with an affinity for pinball.
Lee would say that most rock bands out today owe an enormous debt to The Who, breaking down the barriers of rock that most other Mod bands might have been scared to look behind at the time. Rush also adopted a similar role with their three-piece setup, always holding up each other instrumentally and never having to worry about any piece of the puzzle falling apart as long as they kept things together. It might not have been working with only the fundamentals of rock and roll, but thanks to both Rush and The Who, the world of rock and roll has gotten far more expansive than it could have ever imagined.
