The iconic musician Geddy Lee walked out on
Any progressive rock musician usually has a vast taste in music besides traditional rock and roll. Although it may be easy to fall back on the likes of Little Richard or The Beatles, any musician looking to expand their horizons will want to reach as many musical valleys as possible to get a well-rounded sound. While Rush may have had a definitive sound that no one else could match, Geddy Lee admits to walking out on one of rock’s giants during his formative years.
As Rush was just getting started, Lee was still getting into the harder side of rock and roll. After first picking up the bass when playing The Rolling Stones’ classic ‘2120 South Michigan Avenue,’ Lee felt something could come out of the bass guitar rather than just providing the low end of the groove.
When he had acclimatised to artists like John Entwistle of The Who and John Paul Jones from Led Zeppelin, Lee suddenly had a sound that made sense to him. Together with Alex Lifeson, Lee would form the foundational songs of Rush’s debut album, complete with bluesy shuffles like ‘Working Man’ and tracks that wouldn’t feel out of place on a Bad Company record like ‘In the Mood.’
Although ‘Working Man’ eventually made it onto rock radio, Lee started to get bored playing the same stuff every gig. Not wanting to be a one-trick pony, both Lee and Lifeson had started to get used to more progressive rock acts like Pink Floyd coming out around the same time. While Lee would wax poetic about legends like Chris Squire from Yes, Genesis was not far behind their progressive counterparts.
Forming with the eclectic stories of Peter Gabriel, the British prog giants would turn in some of the most celebrated music of prog’s prime, including songs that would stretch out for ages like ‘Supper’s Ready’. When Lee first got a taste of what the band could do in the flesh, though, he walked out on the chance to see Lou Reed.
While Reed had been on the circuit promoting albums like Transformer, Lee admitted that it was never the right fit to have both bands complement each other. Since Reed was used to delivering his stoic poet persona whenever he played live, the various costumes of Gabriel were impossible to compete with.
According to Lee, he would eventually walk out on Reed’s half of the gig, recalling, “I went to see a strange double bill, Genesis was opening for Lou Reed. It was Genesis first time in Toronto, and they started with ‘Watcher of Skies’, and they were great. And then Lou Reed started playing afterwards. You know, you like Genesis, not so much Lou Reed at that period. Nothing against Lou Reed, but it just wasn’t an act he could follow up. So we left.”
Although it may have been tough for anyone’s ego to have fans walking out during their set, the pairing of Lou Reed with Genesis almost felt like a changing of the guard. After Reed’s art rock stylings in the early 1970s, the progressive rock movement had firmly taken over, with Rush later becoming the genre’s spearhead.
