I have been a big fan of the progressive rock group Rush since the early ’80s when “The Spirit of Radio” was all over the radio. In fact, Permanent Waves is probably my favorite Rush album. I also enjoy reading musicians’ autobiographies and getting a “behind the scenes” look at how their music is created.
That said, Geddy Lee’s autobiography, My Effin’ Life, is somewhat of a disappointment. Lee is the bassist and vocalist of Rush; he and guitarist (and lifelong best friend) Alex Lifeson wrote almost all of the music to their vast catalog. Drummer Neil Peart was their lyricist. My Effin’ Life weighs in at a hefty 536 pages (the draft was allegedly 1200 pages!), and I was hoping to learn about the genesis of such classic songs as “Natural Science”, “Tom Sawyer”, and “The Big Money” among many others. Lee comes up short on the working details of how they composed their songs, but he doesn’t stint on describing how much and how often they all consumed drugs!
Beginning with smoking pot in his early teens, Lee was soon experimenting with psychedelics and hash. He dropped out of high school to pursue his dream of being in a successful rock band, and I have to give him credit for being true to that dream. He sacrificed everything and worked his butt off to reach it. Their touring schedule for the first couple of decades of their career was brutal. It’s not surprising that they chose to alleviate the grind of being constantly on the road by using all kinds of drugs, but Lee never seems to outgrow them.
One of the best chapters in the book is the third one, where he documents how his parents survived the Nazi Holocaust and were able to emigrate to Canada. It truly was miraculous that his mother and father were able to meet and survive the horrors of living in various Nazi concentration camps. His mother would tell Geddy and his sister and brother all the terrible things she endured before the British army liberated her and her mother. Her experience had a huge influence on young Geddy. His father died young of a heart attack, because of damage he sustained in the slave labor camps. He was incarcerated in seven different camps, and he managed to survive them and find Geddy’s mother, whom he had met early in the war. They were married at Bergen-Belsen soon after liberation. In the ’90s, Geddy, his siblings, and his mother went to Europe to revisit the camps and her hometown in Poland. Apparently, it was an uplifting experience for her, as she was able to put to rest some of the demons that had haunted her.
The rest of the book is about Geddy’s career in music. In junior high, he met Alex Lifeson, and they were inseparable. They definitely paid their dues, playing in real dives all over Canada. They recorded their debut album, which was going nowhere until WMMS in Cleveland started playing “Working Man”. The song was getting tons of requests, and they managed to get a real record deal with Mercury Records. The rest, as they say, is history. With some ups and downs along the way, they toured constantly and steadily grew their audience, until they became one of the most popular bands in the world.
To his credit, Lee married his high school sweetheart, and, despite some understandable rough patches, has stayed married to her. Alex as well has stayed married to his wife. Lee shares lots of very funny stories of life on the road with various bands like Kiss, UFO, and Styx. He also includes many photos from early childhood through to the present. It’s actually quite impressive he is able to remember so many details of his career given the amount to drugs and alcohol he consumed!
The last couple of chapters are the most difficult, as Lee relates the tragedy of Neil Peart losing his daughter in a car accident and his wife to cancer just ten months later. Even though Lee, Lifeson, and Peart worked together for decades, it’s fairly clear that Peart was never as close to Lee and Lifeson as they are to each other. He was a voracious reader, using all of his downtime during touring to read sci fi, fantasy, and philosophy. Whatever he read ended up influencing his lyrics.
And, of course, Lee shares how they dealt with Neil’s final three years, after he found out he had a brain tumor. He and Alex visited him as much as they could and kept his spirits up.
For those three years, Lerxst [Lifeson] and I stayed in regular contact and visited whenever possible, sometimes on our own and sometimes together, the latter being the best option as the three of us automatically fell into our nonsensical ways. Our job was to tell Neil stories and make him laugh; that’s all that mattered. (Page 493)
Through all the partying and single-minded drive to succeed, Lee comes across as a genuinely nice guy. He devotes several pages explaining how he tries to be open and gracious to fans when they approach him for autographs. He goes out of his way to let the road crew know how much he appreciates their work. He must be telling the truth, because quite a few of the crew stay with Rush for decades. He’s also humble, never quite believing he’s earned all the adulation he’s gotten. He’s one of the greatest bassists in the history of rock music, but he would never put himself on a par with Paul McCartney or John Entwhistle.
I wish Lee spent some time discussing the band’s relationship to their long-time album cover artist, Hugh Syme. He came up with some of the most eye-catching and interesting album covers back when vinyl LPs provided a fairly large canvas. Surprisingly, there is no mention of Syme’s collaboration with them.
A Selection of Hugh Syme Artwork for Rush
Overall, though, My Effin’ Life is a good read, as rock biographies go. Lee is literate, entertaining, and has a good memory. If you’re a Rush fan, you’ll want to get it. If you’re not, then there’s not much reason to spend any time on it. Kind of like their music!
FracTad's Bookshelf 