The Rush song Geddy Lee gave up trying to sing
In a band like Rush where everyone was always at the top of their game, Geddy Lee was bound to be the ex-factor every time they played.
It’s one thing to have a bad night onstage and be able to recover by going on autopilot; it’s a lot more difficult when someone is relying on their voice not to give out on every other song. And given the keys that Le put those early songs in, he would have been lucky to have a half-decent chance of singing the right notes by the time they wrapped things up.
Granted, Lee was never going to let a little bit of throat pain slow him down. Rush were the ultimate road dogs wherever they went, and while they did have some songs that were too hard even by their standards, it was easy for Lee to just scream over the top of the tune and let the chips fall where they may when making an album like 2112. He was the biggest fan of Robert Plant, but learning to play his bass and sing at the same time was yet another challenge that he had to face whenever they got onstage.
It was no problem for him to assault any four-string he came in contact with, but being able to sing at the same time is like trying to learn all of those intricate parts while blindfolded. And let’s not forget his role as the keyboardist as well, which led to him playing bass pedals with his feet and playing the piano all with his bass strapped to his back and him only relying on his nose to push the mic in the right direction.
If we’re being completely honest here, though, it’s not like Lee’s voice has aged gracefully over the years. He might not have had that many fans back in the day, but when trying to reach for those high notes in the modern age, Lee usually knows when to take a few liberties with the melody, either going for a lower harmony whenever he had the chance or throwing in the occasional moment for the crowd to help him along.
There’s no shame in having a few limitations as you get older, but that also means that a few songs are permanently gone from the band’s catalogue. But whereas ‘Freewill’ might seem like one of the single hardest songs in their body of work, a couple of high notes on that tune doesn’t even compare to what they did on A Farewell to Kings. That was their first opportunity to run wild in the studio, and the title track brought Lee’s voice out in full force.
Not every note needed to be belted, but since Lee stays in that high range through most of the song, he was comfortable permanently retiring that tune from their set, saying, “There are moments of Hemispheres that are pretty high. We tried to rehearse ‘A Farewell To Kings’ on the last tour and I couldn’t successfully sing that without hurting myself, so we gave up. So yeah, there are moments of the past I cannot sing anymore.”
Which begs the question: why don’t they just lower the key of the song? ‘2112’ sounds fine when Lee sings it a semitone down, but asking him to remain that high for the entire length of a song simply isn’t worth the risk. It was bad enough to hear what he could do in the final seconds of ‘Cygnus X1’, so asking him to go anywhere near that range would have sidelined him for an entire tour if he even attempted it.
It might have been against the prog rock code to cut corners in any song, this is the one time where it seems to make the most sense. Lee was one of the gods of bass playing, but he was still human, and if he was still willing to play up until he was old and grey, the fans could at least spare his voice a little bit.
