The musician Geddy Lee said no one could replace: “A huge hero to me”
There aren’t many pieces of rock and roll that could ever be considered too challenging for Geddy Lee.
Throughout Rush’s career, he practically wrote the book on what a virtuoso bass player is supposed to sound like, and even with his love of all things prog, there’s hardly anyone who can manage to reach the expertise unless they were named John Entwistle or Jaco Pastorius. Still, Lee was forever humbled in front of his heroes, and he would be the first person to say when he felt completely outmatched by some of the greatest artists to ever work on the low end.
But a lot of what Lee does on bass doesn’t really feel like the standard practice of a bassist. Most of his lines almost feel like lead guitar riffs that got transposed to the guitar half the time, and even when looking at the “simple” songs in Rush’s catalogue, ‘Closer to the Heart’ is much harder than anyone would ever think a standard acoustic ditty should be. But if there’s one rule that tied all periods of Rush together, it’s that nothing was off the table.
They could throw everything, but the kitchen sink, into a song if they wanted to, but Lee knew that there was a perfect balance between finesse and restraint whenever he played. Some may say that he’s nothing but a show-off when making tunes like ‘Red Barchetta’ or ‘YYZ’, but the way he weaves his lines together with Alex Lifeson’s guitar parts is the work of a genius who knows when to step and when to fade into the background.
Which isn’t something that you see that often in prog rock. The name of the game was trying to make the most adventurous music anyone had ever come up with, and when you look at Lee’s greatest influences, it’s not like any of them were trying to be subtle. Entwistle’s ‘Ox’ tone made him one of the most forceful bassists in the world, and if you look at a band like Cream, Jack Bruce’s definition of progressive rock was trying to match what Eric Clapton was doing whenever he performed.
In terms of bass legends, though, few could manage to match what Chris Squire was doing in Yes. While there were more than a few wilderness periods where the band would bring in people like Tony Levin to play with them, Squire’s biting tone on tunes like ‘Roundabout’ was one of the reasons why Lee got so interested in bass playing. And while he was more than happy to live out his childhood dream of playing with Yes at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, there was no way he was thinking of being there on a permanent basis.
As far as he could tell, what Squire did was untouchable, and it would have been wrong for him to step into that role so easily, saying, “I really did love playing that song with them. It was bittersweet for me, because Chris Squire was such a huge hero to me. The fact that he wasn’t there was a vacuum that no one can fill properly. I felt for his family, because I know that’s all that was on their mind that day. (So) I felt a real weight to pull it off.”
If you think about how Lee and Squire both approach the instrument, it’s almost impossible to think of him doing justice to his bass hero. Squire was never afraid about playing the bass with a pick, but the fact that Lee could get the same kind of percussive attack all done with his fingers is the work of someone that has studied every single piece of Squire’s tone to get it exactly right.
Although Yes and Rush are almost too progressive for the average listener, Lee’s performance was never about trying to showboat like he would when playing his own bass solos. He knew that the performance needed to be right, and even if he played everything right on the money and got the standing ovation that he deserved, there’s always going to be an asterisk next to a version of Yes without ‘The Fish’.
