We bet you haven't run around on your roof naked since we last dropped the hint that Rush were getting together to record a new album. Get ready to do it again. This isn't the new Rush album, but it's the next best thing. For Geddy Lee's wail will be heard once again--on his forthcoming solo debut. According to Atlantic Records, Lee completed work on the record last week, and it's set for release on October 24.
"I have been doing a lot of writing over the last couple of years with various people," Lee revealed back in January. "I have got quite an accumulation of material together. We have gathered some material together that is... interesting."
At the time, Lee said he was collaborating with Ben Mink, who last worked with Rush when he played electric violin on their 1982 album, Signals. Mink has since graduated to the guitar and can be heard playing on the as-yet-untitled record. Mink previously collaborated with k.d. lang on six albums, including co-writing her breakthrough single "Constant Craving."
"We have been friends for many, many years," Lee said. "We have always talked about writing together. We started this a couple of years ago, a series of writing sessions in Vancouver and Toronto... It is all over the place."
Lee is also joined on the album by producer Dave Leonard, who has mixed records by artists as diverse as Ace of Base, Toto, and Dwight Yoakam. Matt Cameron, a former drummer with Soundgarden and currently working with Pearl Jam, shares rhythm duties with Our Lady Peace's Jeremy Taggart.
The rumors flying around the album could put Madonna to shame. According to Jam! Music, one Web site suggested Lee would team up on the album with Welsh band the Stereophonics. A spokesperson for the band's label, V2, denied any knowledge of the plan, but conceded, "They are huge Rush fans."
After several Web sites reported that the album would be released on October 24, Atlantic Records confirmed the date to MTV News.
In January Lee expressed doubts about whether he could ever be a solo artist. "The problem for me is I love writing, I love making music," he said. "But I am not really driven by the kind of ambition to feature myself on a solo album. I would love to see this material I have been working on to see the light of day. Inevitably [a solo album] will be the direction I may have to take to get it exposed."
Rush have been on an indefinite hiatus since finishing their Test for Echo tour in 1997. In August of that same year, drummer Neil Peart's daughter died in a car crash. The next year, Peart lost his wife, Jacqueline, to cancer.
Since then, anticipation for a new Rush record has grown. Guitarist Alex Lifeson forecast to Mackietone News that Rush would return to the studio in October. Lee told Jam! Music that Rush's future would depend on when or if Peart would return to making music after his period of mourning.
In the meantime, Lifeson has kept himself busy with producing 3 Doors Down, playing with a bar band in Toronto, and writing the theme music for the forthcoming TV series Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda.
Now please get off the roof and put your clothes back on.