Geddy Lee
Geddy Lee
Geddy Lee Weinrib, OC, known professionally as Geddy Lee, is a Canadian musician, singer and songwriter best known as the lead vocalist, bassist, and keyboardist for the Canadian rock group Rush. Lee joined what would become Rush in September 1968, at the request of his childhood friend Alex Lifeson, replacing original bassist and frontman Jeff Jones. Lee's first solo effort, My Favourite Headache, was released in 2000...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionRock Singer
Date of Birth29 July 1953
CityToronto, Canada
CountryCanada
The first song that made me interested in music was 'Oh, Pretty Woman' by Roy Orbison. It was the guitar intro, that riff, that I really liked and made me listen in a different way.
Sometimes it's nice to have a song that can be taken more then one way, so it can be interpreted differently.
Then, once I have lyrics, being able to shape them around a song is nothing new for me, I've been doing that for 25 years. The soul searching part of it, the spontaneous part of it, that was, and remains, a really terrific process.
I feel safe and comfortable to do that once I know that the song structure around the bass part is very interesting and it satisfies me in a compositional sense.
I can't remember the first song I learned to play on bass, but the first song I learned to play on guitar was 'For Your Love' by the Yardbirds. That kind of was the beginning for me. I thought it was a great song and I loved the open chord progression at the beginning of that song.
I am moved more by melodies, song structure, and evocative textures.
For me, how I feel about what I wrote down turns into a song.
That is what intrigues me; songwriting and song structure and expression.
Well, I've been lucky. I've never gotten a voice polyp. I've never gotten nodes. But I do get sick, usually every tour, and to varying degrees. Sometimes it's a sinusitis.
I worry about my voice 24/7 when I'm on tour. It's like a pitcher and his arm. It's constantly the thing that my whole life revolves around.
Live records of mine are very painful to listen to because you always think you can do it better. I don't think I have a single favorite one.
I think jamming is the way we begin to communicate. In the old days, people actually wrote notes on paper and sent them to each other. I guess that's how they jammed.
My diet, my regime, the whole life I have on the road has always got that little bit of stress because I'm always afraid I'm going to get a cold. And it's just such a nightmare when you got a cold or an irritation and you have to do a show.
Music turned to digital, and suddenly you had the possibility to make things louder than loudest, which boggles the mind but it's true, and what you have are all kinds of different ways of distorting your music.