The Rush album Alex Lifeson felt the most “emotional ups and down”
By all accounts, Rush seemed to be in a much better place as the 1990s came around. After a full decade of experimentation with synthesisers and attempts to make their sound more contemporary, the Canadian progressive rock trio had started to move back toward a guitar-focused style with 1989’s Presto. 1991’s Roll the Bones took inspiration from newer bands like Primus, but the pop-focused production of producer Rupert Hine was still in the air.
1993 album Counterparts was going to be different, even though the sessions didn’t get off to a strong start. Guitarist Alex Lifeson entered production envisioning no keyboard instruments being used at all, but when bassist Geddy Lee arrived with his full arsenal of synthesisers, conflicts arose immediately.
“He must have said 10,000 times that he didn’t want any keyboards on the album, so when I brought my keyboards into the studio there was an immediate atmosphere,” Lee told Raw Magazine in 1993. “He kept looking at them like they were really threatening. Now, we wrote all the last album on bass, guitar and drums and added the keys at the end to embellish. That was the only reason the keys were there – or maybe to help me express myself when I was painted into a musical corner – but Alex was making assumptions that I wanted keyboards all over the place. It was a very volatile situation.”
“I was very uncomfortable with the recording for the first few days. I didn’t feel that I could get the kind of performance I wanted to, only because I had so much trouble monitoring what I was playing to,” Lifeson admitted to M.E.A.T. that same year. “But once I settled in and had certain things right – the bass drums and snare, for instance, were up really loud, and I’d gotten a very strange kind of balance, but a good working balance – then I got right into it. And it was very inspirational. The fact that you feel the guitar vibrating against your body makes you feel that you’re really connected to it.”
As lifelong friends and co-founding members of the band (Rush initially played a small number of gigs with future Red Rider bassist Jeff Jones before Lee joined permanently), Lifeson and Lee had decades of personal feelings tied up with Rush. Counterparts proved to be the record that brought their grievances to the fore, with the duo constantly disagreeing throughout the initial stages of the album’s production.
“There were certainly a lot more fights during these sessions,” Lee claimed. “Almost every Monday morning Alex and I would have a full-blown, in-your-face argument. It was probably a good thing”.
“You could see it coming on the last tour,” he added. “Both Alex and I would have our moments, but our fights have always been very brotherly. When you spend more time apart you develop a stronger sense of what you like and what you don’t like. Our musical vision certainly isn’t as similar as it was, so we’d end up questioning each other more. When ideas come up that you’re not comfortable with, it either leads to an agreement or an argument. The more confident you get as a human being, the more likely you are to stand your ground.”
“I think Ged and I had probably greater emotional ups and downs writing this record than any other record that we’ve done,” Lifeson confirmed. “There were certainly external pressures at the time – personal things, not even to do with each other. In terms of songwriting, we were pretty unified in terms of direction. There is always a little bit of pushing and pulling when you work in this kind of situation, but I think the result shows that we got over any hurdles that we may have felt I don’t think without a little bit of that roller coaster ride that you can’t really come out with music that is emotional.”
Check out ‘Animate’ from Counterparts down below.
