The 1966 track Geddy Lee crowned as the first metal song: “Influential”
When Geddy Lee was forming Rush, becoming one of the heaviest prog rock bands wasn’t the first thing on his mind.
The entire concept of heavy metal hadn’t become widespread at that point, and even when looking through their catalogue, the heavy riffs that Alex Lifeson came up with weren’t exactly metal compared to the likes of what Black Sabbath were doing around the same time. But Lee could recognise when he was hearing something that had a bit more weight to it when he was growing up.
He had already gravitated towards songs that had a great riff in them, and when looking through his first records, all of them seemed to have something complex in them. ‘(Oh) Pretty Woman’ by Roy Orbison was what introduced him to songs that were a bit more tricky than usual, and it’s almost impossible to ignore the spectre of Zeppelin that looms large over virtually everything that Rush ever made.
They were clearly indebted to the riffs of Jimmy Page when they got started, but Lee was also keeping his ears open for players half the time. Yes left an indelible impression on him when he heard Chris Squire’s bass tone for the first time, and even when he wasn’t listening to strictly prog, James Jamerson was already clearing a path for any bass player that wanted to play licks that were a little more involved than your average walking bass line.
But even in the 1960s, there weren’t many genres that The Beatles didn’t touch in some form or another. The Fab Four were already becoming one of the more adventurous bands in rock and roll when Rubber Soul came out, but Lee felt that he heard the beginnings of heavy metal when he latched onto the bassline in the middle of ‘Taxman’. Paul McCartney had already stopped playing conventional tunes, but the snarl he got out of his bass was what really turned Lee’s head.
It wasn’t as heavy as what would come later, but Lee felt that Macca made the foundation for metal with that bassline, saying, “Paul McCartney was quite an influential bass player. If you listen to ‘Come Together’, that’s a bold bass part in that song. If you listened to ‘Taxman’, that’s Heavy Metal before there was Heavy Metal.” But, really, the true heaviness was yet to come when Lee was first exposed to a band like Blue Cheer.
The power trio weren’t the most accomplished musicians in the world, but they made up for that with some of the harshest volume that anyone had used up until that point. They were playing everything as loud as they could, and if they could create that kind of feeling out of pure volume and fury whenever they played, Lee figured there was certainly room for him and Lifeson to play songs that had a bit of a heavier twist to them.
Not every one of their tunes needed to be a metal masterpiece, but the nimble fretwork that Lee was doing also wasn’t that different from what McCartney did. He was a bit more involved than what The Beatles had to offer, but if you look at what he was playing on ‘Closer to the Heart’ and compare it to the bassline on ‘Something’, both of them seem to be pulling from the same playbook, each of them playing over the changes in the same way that a lead guitarist might have done.
So while ‘Taxman’ looks tame by today’s standards, it did give Lee an education as to what could be done with the bass. Just because it had fewer strings didn’t mean it had to be easy, and one of the biggest perks of being a bassist was getting to show everyone that you could have legitimate chops while still locking into a groove with the drummer.
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