Influence: Rush

I first heard Rush in late 1982. They had just released their ninth studio album, Signals, and I remember being captivated by the power of their sound and the precision of their playing. I’d grown up mainly on AM radio, listening to whatever happened to be on the pop charts at any given moment. I had a few old Beatles records that I enjoyed, but for the most part, my musical tastes were pretty unrefined.

I was 13 years old at the time. Songs like “Subdivisions” and “Analog Kid,” with their hard-driving rhythms and themes of isolation and restlessness spoke to me. I soon discovered Rush’s earlier material, which featured long songs with complicated arrangements in crazy time signatures. I didn’t know or care about the technical details back then; I just knew their music was unlike anything I’d heard to that point.

Looking back, a lot of the stuff Rush put out in the ’70s seems needlessly complex to me. The focus is more on the playing of intricate individual parts than on the creation of a well-conceived and -executed statement. The musicians were young, trying to prove themselves through their technical ability. Yes, having an instrumental introduction of more than 5 minutes leading into “Xanadu” probably is a bit excessive. But there is still something about that song, and others of the era, that reaches me in ways I have trouble defining.

As Rush grew more confident over the years, their musicianship improved and they started tightening up their songs. It began in the ’80s, with Permanent Waves and Moving Pictures. It continued through albums like Power Windows and Hold Your Fire. I’m not a great fan of the thin guitar sound Alex Lifeson was getting during that period, but the structure of Rush’s songs became much less grandiose and more accessible. Songs like “Mystic Rhythms,” “Mission,” and “Time Stand Still” felt more like complete works than assembled parts.

This trend continued into the ’90s, with Counterparts and Test for Echo, and into the 21st century with the fantastic Vapor Trails. The songwriting chops that had emerged in the ’80s stuck with the band, who returned to a more aggressive sound characteristic of their earliest work. Emphasis shifted from keyboards and sequencers back to guitar, bass, and drums. Geddy Lee began singing in a lower register and introduced vocal harmonies to add depth to the songs.

The chops that the band had been showcasing some 30 years earlier hadn’t been abandoned. Neil Peart still pounded away at his drum kit, but the fills that once had called attention to his techincal mastery of the instrument now served a greater purpose, the song itself. Lee and Lifeson used counterpoint in ways unfamiliar to most rock bands. Generally in a rock setting, the bass player mimicks the guitarist, simply providing low end. But in Rush, the two players frequently work different melodies to great effect. It’s a more sophisticated technique that doesn’t sound as flashy as playing a million notes a second but which makes the band seem larger than it actually is. The sounds they are able to get out of three musicians in songs like “Leave That Thing Alone,” “Time and Motion,” “Resist,” “Ceiling Unlimited,” and the transcendent “Earthsine” defy probability. This is rock music with a jazz approach. Flat out, these cats can play.

From a guitar standpoint, there are a few aspects of Lifeson’s playing that fascinate me.

1. He has a very aggressive attack. I seem to recall him mentioning in an interview somewhere that the the guitar is a percussion instrument (and according to the Wikipedia definition, he’s right). This blew my mind at the time, because all the guitar heroes back then were mainly known for their ability to blow through scales at insanely fast speeds. “Shredders,” they were called. The idea that a successful rock guitarist could envision his instrument as something more than a vehicle for playing scales was mind-boggling to me and opened up a whole new world. Things like varied pick angles, artificial and pinched harmonics, and fret-hand muting had never seemed like techniques worthy of serious consideration to that point. But I’d realized early on in my guitar playing days that I would never have the dedication or desire to build up enough hand speed to become the next Yngwie Malmsteen. So I began to focus on other ways to make a guitar sound interesting. Double- and triple-stops. Bending and vibrato. Legato phrasing (a trick learned from Lifeson–listen to the end of his guitar solo in “YYZ”). Alternating between fast and slow passages. Dynamics and nuance.
2. He has a keen sense of harmony. I really get into interesting and unusual chord voicings (hence my love of jazz great Joe Pass), and Lifeson pulls off some stuff that’s pretty “out there” for a rock player. This goes back to his and Lee’s skills as musicians. The guitar and bass don’t necessarily just mirror each other. There is interplay between the two that again leads to a richer and fuller sound. Lifeson also incorporates open strings in his voicings that give more body to the chords he’s playing. Guitarists are taught very early on a few basic “shapes” that they will use well into the future. Shapes are great, but a more interesting approach is to work with intervals and to build chords based on the individual notes within them, regardless of where they happen to fall on the fretboard. Jazz players do this all the time. Most rock players do not. That is why some of the chords Lifeson strikes sound “weird” to folks accustomed to hearing AC/DC or Green Day.
3. He is able to switch effortlessly between lead and rhythm parts within a song. My favorite example of this is his solo in “Freewill,” where he repeatedly alternates between a few bars of blistering lead and a few bars of sliding chord shapes. It sounds great on record but it’s truly amazing to watch live. His playing is so melodic and forceful, and he doesn’t miss a beat switching between the single lines and the chords. His timing is impeccable.

But probably what I like most about Lifeson is the fact that he isn’t a guitar god. He doesn’t play a zillion notes a minute, he doesn’t “shred.” He just plays tasty parts that sound good on their own and which work well in the context of the song. It is hard to imagine, for example, any solo other than the one he employs in “Limelight.” The melody is simple, the playing of it anything but. An idea well conceived and well executed, with extra marks for technical difficulty. In short, every time I listen to something Lifeson plays, I hear something new. And that is why Rush’s music still engages me so many years later and continues to influence my own playing and compositional ideas.

Related Info

• Rush Gear & Gizmos: Alex Lifeson
  (rusharchives.com)
• Alex Lifeson - The one and only (epinions.com)
• Alex Lifeson Of Rush Talks About His New Masterbilt EF-500R (epiphone.com)
• Alex Lifeson (dinosaurrockguitar.com)
• Alex Lifeson’s Attitude Adjustment
  (cavemanproductions.com)

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