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Geddy Lee
discusses Feedback, the 30th Anniversary tour and
more!

Rush is on the road this
summer, and they have a new covers EP, Feedback,
available now!
Plus, the first four Atlantic albums
have been remastered by Adam Ayan at Bob Ludwig's
Gateway Mastering Studios in Portland, ME. They arrive
8/24! Pre-order them today!

As Rush neared it's 30th
Anniversary, a tour began to take shape that
would help celebrate the band and their music.
The band members, a little concerned about the
idea of hitting the road without an album to
support, ventured into an area most fans would
have never thought; a covers
EP.

Comprised of eight tracks that
inspired vocalist and bass player Geddy Lee,
guitarist Alex Lifeson and drummer Neil Peart as
young musicians, the EP shows a different side
to the band. Raw and dripping with a controlled
abandon, the Canadian trio tear through classics
from Cream, The Who, Love, The Yardbirds and
Buffalo Springfield. While paying homage to the
songs that inspired them, they also bring new
twists and indulge themselves by making their
versions unique and with a distinctive Rush
flavor.

An EP, a 30th Anniversary tour,
and a live DVD released last fall prove that
they're hardly resting on their laurels. fye.com
spoke with Geddy Lee before soundcheck in
Mountain View, CA in early July to discuss the
new EP, the tour, the future, and the importance
of good footwear.

Rush - Celebrating
30 Years
live photos and text by Brad
Parmerter

Page 1: Geddy Lee
Interview
Page
2: Interview continued
Page 3: r30 tour
section [coming soon]

Rush features on
fye.com:

Rush
in Rio - An In-Depth Look: Andrew
MacNaughtan (documentary director) interview,
Howard Ungerleider, Jim Ellis & fan comments
on Brazil, photos, plus more

Vapor
Trails Tour Feature: Ungerleider, Ellis
& Greg Hermanovic interviews, photos,
video footage and more

Bp: How was the seed for Feedback
planted?

GL: A very good friend of mine,
one of my closest friends, suggested it to me.
It was the kind of thing that came about very
slowly. He suggested it to me, and I thought
about it for a while, and I thought 'y'know
what, maybe it would be a fun idea,' and I ran
it by the other guys. They both responded
positively rather quickly, and we approached the
whole idea in a kind of 'nothing ventured
nothing lost' way. We thought, 'well, we'll just
play around with these songs, and if they turn
out great fine and if not, then fine too, we
don't have to release them. We can throw them
away.' Because nobody knew it was coming, there
was nothing expected from us. We took a very
casual approach to it.

Bp: Did you primarily select songs
that you'd played in different bands prior to
Rush?

GL: Yeah, that's true for the most
part. They were either songs that we played, or
songs that we used to listen to, or songs that
we wished we could play. That was the
criteria.

Bp: I know that Vapor Trails was
very meticulously pieced together and took a
long time. Was Feedback recorded in a more
relaxed setting? I heard that you'd recorded
together for the first time in a long
time.

GL: It was very different than
Vapor Trails. We all set up in one room
basically and played live. It was really very
relaxed, and very spontaneous. The bed tracks
came together incredibly quickly. The songs are
much easier than they seemed 30 years ago. It
was actually very different than Vapor Trials.
The whole thing took three weeks.

Bp: As opposed to 14 months [for
Vapor Trails].

GL: Exactly.

Bp: Vocally on Feedback there are
a number of different arrangements to that of
the originals. Was that to fit your range or to
put your own stamp on the songs or a
combination?

GL: It's kind of a bit of
everything. You can't go in with the idea of
just copying a song directly, although "The
Seeker" is really not that different, there are
a few changes, a few different dynamics and a
few different harmonies floating around there.
You need to make the songs your own in one way
or another otherwise you can't really sing them
convincingly. Once we put the initial
arrangement together, I played around with what
suited me in terms of singing that
song.

Bp: You're playing about half of
them in the live set - how is that going
over?

GL: They're a blast to play. I
love playing them. I wish we could play them
all, but there's a fine line, in my view, with
what Rush fans want to hear and what we want to
play. To lose four songs that people have been
waiting to hear from our previous albums, in
favor of four cover songs, is a jump enough. To
do four more would start boring them. People are
digging them. I think they're kind of a breath
of fresh air in the set to be honest.

Bp: Do the last two, in the
encore, sort of fill the role that "In the Mood"
used to play; to lighten things up a bit and
break up the intensity a bit?

GL: Yeah, it has an intensity of
its own, but it definitely feels like party
time.

Bp: How did the instrumental
medley from the first six albums that starts the
show come about? Whose idea was that?

GL: That was an idea that Neil
had. He suggested that maybe we could pay
tribute to those songs in some way other
than….obviously we can't play as many songs as
we'd like to, we're already well over 3 hours.
So in rehearsals, actually quite late in
rehearsals, we decided to throw a bunch of them
together and see if we could make some sort of
overture. So we came up with this "R30 Overture"
idea and worked on it. It came together quite
quickly actually. I think it's a nice way to
open the show. It's really easy to pull songs
together if you don't have to sing them. It's
like a walk in the park.

Feedback
CD:
$11.99
Add To Cart

Test
for Echo [remaster]
CD: $8.96
Add To Cart

Counterparts
[remaster]
CD: $8.96

Add To Cart

Roll
the Bones [remaster]
CD: $9.96
Add To Cart

Presto
[remaster]
CD: $9.96

Add To Cart

Bp: "Between the Wheels" hasn't
been played since the Grace Under Pressure tour
20 years ago - whose idea was it to bring that
one back out?

GL: That was my idea. I put a list
together of songs that we could play that had
disappeared from view for quite a while, and
that was one that everybody gravitated to pretty
quickly. Once we played it once live we knew it
was gonna be perfect for a concert situation.
It's a real highlight of the show for
me.

Bp: The production is pretty
intense for that track as well, with lights
being lowered from the trusses and the stunning
video presentation.

GL: Yes, it is. It's really a cool
moment in the show.

Bp: On the Vapor Trails tour you
had a revolving set list. Do you foresee any
additions or modifications to the set list as
the tour progresses?

GL: Well, we worked long and hard
at perfecting these two sets, and at this stage
we're reluctant to do any changes, but as the
tour goes on it's possible we might flip things
around, once we start getting bored.

Bp: "Resist" was a highlight for
me and the emotion that came over the crowd in
Hartford on opening night of the Vapor Trails
tour was palpable after Neil's solo. To have
that emotion then carry into the stunning
acoustic version of "Resist" was just amazing. I
know that "Nobody's Hero" was tested for that
tour, but you went with "Resist" as the acoustic
piece. I was wondering if there were other
tracks that were discussed or even tried for the
acoustic portion of the show.

GL: No, we talked about things.
There was talk about doing "Second Nature" as an
acoustic song - I think that would be a good
treatment for a song like that. Again, it's a
question of time. I'd love to extend the
acoustic thing to be half-an-hour long, but I
don't know if we could justify that in the
context of all our material.

Bp: You've mentioned in the recent
past that a box set might be in the works. Is
that still in the near future?

GL: Not really. We keep getting
distracted with these other projects. Certain
things, like the DVD of Rio came out, and a lot
of that contained things that we would have put
in a box set too, like the documentary and the
easter eggs and things like that. So it's hard
for me to visualize exactly what that box set
would be, but I still have some ideas cooking.
We'll put something together one day.

Bp: I spoke with Andrew
MacNaughtan before the Rio DVD was released and
he told me that he'd bugged you guys for years
about doing a documentary/behind-the-scenes
piece with you, but that you guys didn't think
you were interesting enough. Then the Brazil
trip was a perfect opportunity to document the
tour and the once in a lifetime trip to South
America. What were your impressions of Andrew's
documentary after you saw it the first
time?

GL: It's a bit long for me, but in
general it was pretty fun. It showed a lot of
what life is like on the road, and certainly
there was something about that tour that had a
unique flavor about it, and I think he captured
that pretty well.

Bp: It was a treat for fans to see
a bit of behind-the-scenes as well as to help
understand how special that trip was for the
band.

GL: And I think it's important
that fans understand how important my running
shoes are to me.

Bp: Speaking of running shoes, it
seems as though the Chuck Taylor Converse
sneakers that have been a staple of your
on-stage gear have been replaced by Puma's on
this tour.

GL: Well, I kind of change them
up. I don't wear the exact same ones every
night. But I found a pair of Puma's that are
perfect for using on pedals. It's really all
about the pedals. They have to be pretty slim,
and they have to have hard bottoms, so that they
can trigger the pedals without breaking my
foot.

Rush
in Rio
2DVD: $27.99

Add To Cart

Rush
in Rio
3-CD: $24.99

Add To Cart

Vapor
Trails
CD: $14.99

Add To Cart

Different
Stages
3-CD: $24.99

Add To Cart

My
Favorite Headache
Geddy Lee
CD: $14.99
Add To Cart

Bp: You've always played a key
role in the production aspect of the tours. How
did the current design evolve?

GL: Well, we started having
meetings about six months before the tour. It
was last December that we started our early
production meetings, just gathering the team
together. The first step is putting a team
together, and finding the right creative people
and artists, and then we brainstorm…we meet once
a week for a couple of months and start throwing
visual ideas together - films, concepts - and we
experiment with storyboarding different things
out to see how it will work. At the same time
I'm trying to keep all of that in mind while
we're shaping the set so they kind of work hand
in hand. Certain songs I know we'll be playing
that we can get working on right away. Sometimes
you're shooting in the dark, you don't know if
that song will end up in the set or not.
Sometimes you develop visuals for a song, and
then you throw the song out, and then you have
these visuals that you try to apply somewhere
else. Sometimes that doesn't work, but that's
really the nature of the beast itself. It takes
a long time to coordinate everybody and
everything, but at the same time it's really a
lot of fun.

Bp: I've seen numerous shows in my
day and the production that you and Howard and
the rest of team puts together is one of the
finest. Each tour just gets better and better in
terms of combining the lights, video and live
video feed together for a brilliant
presentation.

GL: Thanks. We take pride, and we
spare no expense at trying to put something
across that's gonna make people smile, and at
the same time include an aspect of it that is as
beautiful as we can make it.

Bp: Do you ever have a chance to
watch the show back either during rehearsals or
during the tour to see the full production in
action?

GL: I see [the elements] as
they're coming together. I don't really get to
see them once they're put together in their
final form, because that would require filming
the show and playing it back to me. So I see it
in snippets but I don't really see it in
totality.

continued...

Lee at the last North American show of
2002 in Manchester.
[click image to
enlarge]

continued
on page
2