“He would go, ‘What riff?’” Geddy Lee says he had to record all of Rush’s songwriting sessions because Alex Lifeson would forget “great” riffs just minutes after playing them
Geddy Lee has opened up about the chaotic way he and Alex Lifeson wrote music in Rush – and why capturing ideas with the “spontaneous genius” guitarist often meant keeping a cassette recorder running at all times.
Speaking in a recent interview with Rick Beato, Lee reflects on the band’s long-running creative dynamic, where ideas were often born, lost, and rediscovered in the space of a single jam session.
READ MORE: Alex Lifeson is taking a Kirk Hammett Greeny on the road with Rush: “The relic’ing is just spectacular”
“Al and I lived always in the same town. So, usually he would come over to my place, and we would bang out songs together, and we would jam. Then, he would go sit on the couch behind me and fall asleep,” says the bassist [via Ultimate Guitar].
“And I would methodically go through every inch of our jam, and cut and paste until I had assembled something really nonsensical, or something that he thought was a great riff and [had] a great feel, and then I would start adding beats and removing beats, and make it impossible to play and learn and remember.”
Once those ideas were shaped into something usable, the pair would pass them on to drummer Neil Peart for feedback.
“Once we got those things sorted out, we would send it to Neil, and then he would give his opinion, and we would go on from there,” says Lee.
While such a “methodical” approach worked well for him, Lee says it sometimes came at the expense of the raw, in-the-room energy of the band.
“You kind of miss the three guys in a room bashing away and those spontaneous ideas that come up,” he explains. “So, it gets a little too methodical, which is probably why I like those programs so much because I’m methodical. [Lifeson’s] the opposite of methodical. He’s spontaneously brilliant.”
That spontaneity, however, also meant Lifeson would often forget what he had just played. Lee says that’s why a cassette recorder became essential in early writing sessions.
“I learned really early on, working with him, that I have to have a cassette player. I always have the cassette on when we’re writing. In those earliest days, there was nothing more than literally a little beatbox.”
“I would just turn it on, and Al would play something great, and we would be jamming, and then I’d go, ‘Hey, Al, let’s go back to that riff,’ and he would go, ‘What riff?’ and I’d go, ‘You know, that fucking riff that was just so awesome that you played five minutes ago!?’”
The musician adds that Lifeson would often have already moved on by the time he tried to revisit an idea.
“And he had no recollection,” Lee says, “and so I’d wind the tape back, play it for him, and then he’d have to try to figure it out; he’d already moved past it into some other brilliant riff. And he had the patience to listen to me when I found something that excited me, and he would go, ‘Okay, I think he liked that,’ so he would indulge me, and that’s a lot of times how songs got written with us.”
Watch the full interview below.
The post “He would go, ‘What riff?’” Geddy Lee says he had to record all of Rush’s songwriting sessions because Alex Lifeson would forget “great” riffs just minutes after playing them appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Source: www.guitar-bass.net
