The prog-rock bassist Geddy Lee said was a cut above the rest: “Without question”
Rush frontman Geddy Lee isn’t just the band’s singer. Like his bandmates, Alex Lifeson and the late Neil Peart, Lee is a virtuoso. His instrument of mastery being the bass.
Developing a unique one-finger plucking style, he combined driving rock intensity with remarkable technical precision, two vital elements that helped shape Rush’s influential approach to progressive rock.
In Lee’s view, the group were liberated by their own limitations. “The freedom of the trio,” he explained to Bass Player, “is that you’re allowed to be as busy as the thing can take. Obviously you have to use taste and discretion where and when you’re being busy.”
Adding, with a great degree of self-awareness, “But the thing that appealed to me about bass players all along were bass players that played more than they were supposed to play, or more than the conventional bass player would play.”
Like every musician of note, Lee succeeded in pulling aspects from his range of influences to establish his style. A long-time adherent of Paul McCartney’s melodic basslines in The Beatles, the soulful expression of Motown’s James Jamerson and the explosive technique of The Who’s John Entwistle, just the mention of these three players displays Lee’s love of great bass-playing in all its forms, and how he aimed to form a stylistically dynamic sound.
As there were only three members of Rush and they made technically complex music, there was more impetus than is usual in a band for Lee to be their glue, as there was no room to hide and no safety net if they messed it up. He emphatically succeeded in this, too, with his bass lines central to all of their finest work, whether it be hits such as the grooving ‘Tom Sawyer’ or the out-there prog instrumental of ‘La Villa Strangiato’.
Prog’s greatest bassist?
Not only did Lee succeed in forming his unique style, but, like his heroes, he never refrained from using the bass as the cement of Rush’s foundations. One player who had a classy, defining impact on this philosophy was Chris Squire, the bassist of prog innovators Yes. They were the group that bridged psychedelia and its progressive offshoot of the early 1970s.
His Conspiracy bandmate, Steve Stevens, even said his scope eclipsed prog alone, proclaiming, “In my opinion, Chris was the greatest rock bass player that ever lived.” Lee wasn’t far behind that when it came to his own lofty praise for the notoriously footloose four-string master.
Laying down classic basslines such as ‘Roundabout’ and their earlier effort ‘No Opportunity Necessary, No Experience Needed’, these two songs inspired Lee to make the four-string an essential component of his band, not a background instrument. From the moment he first heard the opener of 1970’s Time and a Word, ‘No Opportunity Necessary, No Experience Needed’, when he flunked school to listen to the record, he was hooked on Squire’s locomoting lines.
What has always astounded Lee about that song is how Squire managed to segue it from the classical-inflected introduction into a strange funk groove in the verses. In some ways, the engaged nature of Squire’s work reminded him of Entwistle’s jaunts across the fretboard. However, it was also utterly different from anything else he’d ever heard due to the scope of his imagination and the refreshing routes he would take his notation in.
When speaking to uDiscover Music in 2019, Lee was asked to name the best bassist of all time. As a lifelong student of the instrument, he maintained that it’s “really about the context of that bass player”. How can you compare heroes like James Jamerson, Paul McCartney, and John Paul Jones?
However, regarding his beloved prog-rock, he said: “If I was to pick the greatest progressive rock bassist of all time, it would have to be Chris Squire, without question.”
As well as stating that Squire is the best prog bassist, he also heavily intimated he was the greatest to ever pick up the instrument: “If you look at Flea’s playing, for his style of music, I mean it’s fantastic, he’s an amazing player, I have great respect for his bass playing. But how can you compare that to what Chris Squire did, because it’s a whole different genre.”
Context or not, it’s clear that Geddy Lee’s style and Rush’s take on progressive rock is greatly indebted to the work of Chris Squire. Without him, there is no chance they would have moved in the direction they did with 1975’s Caress of Steel. The sky was the limit for the renegade trio once they heard what Squire was cooking up with creative oblivion.
