The only other band Geddy Lee would join in a heartbeat: “One of my heroes is no longer with us”
There was a certain brotherhood that Geddy Lee had with the two other members of Rush throughout his career.
He never felt comfortable trying to replace any member of the group, and even though Neil Peart was one of the greatest drummers of all time, the fact that he was ‘the new guy’ after decades in the group was still enough for Lee to hold him in the highest regard all the way up to his passing. But after years of playing the most complex music imaginable, Lee felt that there were some bands that he could see himself blending in with perfectly every single time he played.
Then again, there are always going to be those few artists who are practically unbeatable in their field. Lee knew that there was no way that he would be able to completely take over for what Chris Squire did in Yes, and he would have been foolish to even try to touch what Jaco Pastorius had done with the four-string, but it was much easier for him to look on in awe at what they could do more than anything.
When Rush were hashing out their first riffs, though, their common language had a lot more to do with hard rock than anything else. A lot of their common ground didn’t need to be Yes or Genesis just yet, and when you listen to the way that Lee sings on a lot of their records, it’s clear that he’s listened to more than a few of Led Zeppelin’s greatest hits when he reaches into the stratosphere.
But all of Lee’s musical personality tends to be in his fingers more than anything. Anyone can talk about how they don’t like his voice or that he’s the reason why the band isn’t necessarily the most popular prog rock band in the world, but when you listen to the way that he hits the strings of his bass, half of the time it sounds like he’s trying to assault the instrument every single time he smacks against the pickups.
And that all came from listening to what someone like John Entwistle did in The Who. Pete Townshend was practically the rhythmic instrument in the band half the time they played, and Entwistle was usually free to fly up and down the neck whenever he got the chance, whether he threw in a bass solo on ‘My Generation’ or managed to throw his fingers across the bass on ‘The Real Me’.
‘The Ox’ may have long since departed this world, but Lee said in the past that he would have loved to have tried his hand at playing some of those songs with Townshend and Roger Daltrey, saying, “I would be in The Who and I would play bass because one of my heroes is no longer with us. [The one song I wish I wrote] was ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ by The Who.” But it’s about more than just the aggression of Entwistle whenever he played.
In any other group, Entwistle would have been considered a prog musician for how many twists and turns he put into every one of their songs, and even when making something as straightforward as ‘My Wife’, you could hear him throwing in the kind of strange chords that no one else would have thought of putting into the average pop song.
The bassist tends to get painted as the George Harrison figure in The Who that kept to himself and only occasionally played a song, but Lee knew that the quiet ones were always the ones to watch out for. Because when no one was looking, they could come out with the kind of song that could leave you absolutely stunned by what they could do.
