After nearly half a century of envelope-pushing and genre-defying music, the curtain fell on Rush for the final time on August 1, 2015, at the 16,000-capacity Los Angeles Forum.
Speaking to Classic Rock as the band’s final tour rolled into life, Alex Lifeson painted a very different picture of what life in the band’s early days was like, pointing to a show that made them think they’d made it big, before being brought crashing down to Earth.
In June 1974, several months after the band released their self-titled debut album, the Canadian trio were presented with their first big gig, supporting the New York Dolls as the glam-rockers' tour hit Toronto. For Lifeson, still only 19, it felt like a seismic moment.
“It was an old burlesque theater, pretty run down and crappy,” he recalls, “but to us it might as well have been Wembley.”
Rush hadn't waded fully into progressive waters; they were still pushing a very Led Zeppelin–inspired sound. Still, they found it difficult to get themselves before the right audiences, as early shows with Aerosmith, Thin Lizzy and glam rock megastars Kiss attest. The New York Dolls gig, which predated those shows, left the band and audience a little perplexed.
“That crowd was excited to see the New York Dolls; not so much a local heavy metal band,” Lifeson says with a laugh. “But it was exciting being around the Dolls. Watching them backstage, it was all what you would expect. They were all drunk before they got onstage. They had girls back there. It was a whole rock and roll scene. We were typically Canadian and shy and stayed out of their way.”
The high of the performance soon ended in rather humbling fashion for the guitarist.
“After that gig, I was hitch-hiking home with a friend of mine,” he continues. “I had my guitar with me. This couple picked me up, and we were chatting, and they said they’d been to the Dolls show at the Victory and they said ‘Yeah, they were great, but the opening act, God, they sucked.’
“The guy’s girlfriend turned back and saw the guitar, and saw me, and her face just kind of froze. It was silent in the car, and I felt so crestfallen. I said: ‘We’ll get out at the next block, please.’ I got out of the car, and I wanted to throw my guitar away. That was the first really bad review that we got!”
However, Lifeson’s other comments seem to suggest that the moment toughened him up a little and helped the band sharpen their competitive edge.
“You played with so many different bands on these two- or three-act shows. You wanted to blow the other guy off the stage and be that much better,” he says. “I remember we played with Heart once. This was very early, maybe 1975. It was at the Stanley Warner Theatre in Pittsburgh.
“There was so much talk about Heart and the Wilson sisters. We were really looking forward to meeting them. We were backstage, and [Heart guitarist] Roger Fisher said to me, ‘We’re gonna blow you guys off the stage tonight, you just watch.’ And I thought, Wow, what a weird thing to say. But I think I played that much harder that night.”
Several months after that ill-fated New York Dolls show, the soon-to-be prog giants got their first big break, touring their homeland with Rory Gallagher.
“Playing with Rory was a real treat,” Lifeson later reflected. “We were 20 years old — this was our first tour. It was exciting, but we didn't know our place.”
Rubbing shoulders with the Irish bluesman proved an education for Lifeson, who soon lifted one of his prized techniques and dropped it in his own playing.
“He had this way of getting harmonics from a guitar pick by just picking in a certain way and I'd never heard anyone do that ever,” he said. “I heard it all over his stuff, and I thought, Wow, what an effective thing to do. I employ the little trick in all my stuff all the time, and I learned it directly from him.”
Lifeson is keeping busy with life after Rush, having just released his second album with Envy of None. Its writing saw him returning to guitar solos and embracing digital modelling amps for the first time.
“I bloomed on this record,” he told Guitar Player last month. “I just let go, and there was a new confidence and I had a better, clearer picture of what we wanted to create as a band."
