has a knowing smile. We’re sitting in the lavish surrounds of a room at one of London’s more exclusive hotels. And the subject that’s come up is how Rush are continuing to influence succeeding generations of metal bands.
“It’s nice to know there are young musicians who like what we’ve done,” says the bassist/vocalist. “It’s flattering that these people are taking what we once did and developing it for the modern age.” When it comes to the birth of progressive metal, Rush have strong claims to be seen as the true pioneers of a style of music that has been taken by Dream Theater, , Cynic and Tesseract, to name but a handful.
“I can’t say I’m familiar with the new crop of bands coming through, but all I can hope is that they enjoy the sort of career we’ve had. And stick to what they believe in as much as we’ve always done.” For Rush, it all started rather unpromisingly in Toronto during August 1968.
Guitarist Alex Lifeson put together the first lineup with bassist/vocalist Jeff Jones and drummer John Rutsey. Within a few weeks, Jeff was replaced by Geddy. “I was a school pal of Alex’s and he asked me to come into the band,” explains Geddy.
“But it wasn’t plain sailing back then. We went through a lot of different lineups over the next couple of years, with people coming and going. I don’t think we quite knew what we were doing.
In our minds, we were the Canadian Led Zeppelin. In reality, we were probably seen as a bit sad. But at least.