One of the rock groups that came out of the swinging ’60s was Rush. With Geddy Lee on lead vocals, bass, and keyboards, Alex Lifeson on guitar, and Neil Peart on drums, the band was founded in 1968. They are among the most popular bands and still have a devoted following.
Geddy Lee, the band’s frontman, has difficulties singing and playing one specific Rush song. Everyone has issues with different things. It feels like it happens when you try to sing your own music and struggle. When he was interviewed in 1992, he was questioned about the song, which was challenging to execute live. And the singer did not hold back.
The interview consisted of the standard questions, such as “Did you ever dream the band would make it this far? “, and he was also responding to them in his regular manner. When questioned if he had ever composed a piece that he believed would be challenging to sing, the answer caught everybody’s interest.
He answered:
“Many times. Even ‘Roll the Bones’ has accents that totally go against the vocal part, although the bass line isn’t complicated. That’s one of the most difficult songs for me to do because it’s hard to get into those bass-and-drum punches and keep the vocal line from getting her-jerky.”
He also recalled how his bandmates advised him to relax because it was a burden. He found the song’s bass chords to be extremely challenging, and his bandmates urged him to go slowly.
Adding:
“The tendency is to want the vocal to push with the bass, so I try to shim the vocal a little on either side so that it works. Again, the guys have given me a lot of encouragement rather than letting me settle for a bass line that maybe isn’t so interesting. They’ve always encouraged me to go further, even though they know I’m going to have a headache at rehearsal.”
He found the bass line to be challenging. He had to sing along with it on top of that. He had to perform both tasks at once, which was thought to be exceedingly challenging for him. But his pals made it simple for him since they gave him to support each time they had to do it.
Another instance is when he shared a difficult tune that he was having trouble playing and was making mistakes. On January 7, 2020, he discussed the piece “La Villa Strangiato” with Rolling Stone. He recalled the challenging drumming exercises from back then. Lee stated:
“That was really hard to play, that song – when we first wrote it. We couldn’t get through it. We kept f****** it up because there’s so many details, so many rhythmic shifts. Again, we wrote that kind of in sync with each other so I don’t know how to describe that process really. As you’re working on one section you’re intimate with what he’s playing, and then I’m intimate with what I’m playing and we try to make sure we can hear each other and I’ll go to some new place and he’ll go, ‘Oh, I like that. OK, I’ll go there with you.’ And vice versa. And that’s how you sort of build it and then you try to remember that sucker and that’s not so easy.”