Geddy Lee - Off the Record for Presto
Off The Record with Mary Turner, week of December 25, 1989, radio program transcribed by Anonymotron42
Announcer: Westwood One presents Rush: Off the Record with Mary Turner. Brought to you by K-Mart, where you'll always find the quality you need at the price you want. Rush: Off the Record.
["YYZ" begins and fades into the background]
Mary Turner: Anyone who doubts the intelligence of musicians, turn up your radio. Rush is here. Three gentlemen from Canada, who can quote European philosophers, Zen farmers, and French raccoons: true Renaissance men. Ready for an enlightening hour? I'm Mary Turner, and I'll be talking with Geddy Lee, Rush: Off the Record.
["The Analog Kid" plays]
Neil Peart, drummer and lyricist for Rush, says this about his band: Rush is not so much a mirror, but a satellite dish moving down the road, soaking up different styles, methods, and designs. When the time comes to work on new songs, you turn on the satellite descrambler, unfilter your lenses, activate the manure detector, check the rearview mirror, and try desperately to unmix your metaphors. And that's exactly what they did when they started working on Presto. Geddy Lee:
Geddy Lee: We were talking about having a more kind of focused rock sound on this album, a bit more aggressive style of writing again. And, we wanted to kind of react against, I think, all those years of intense kind of computer arrangements, and synthesizers, and all that. And wanted to put that...and I wanted to put that to the background a bit, and get back to being more a three-piece style of writing and, you know, less of a production extravaganza from a keyboard point of view. Really try to use those as a backdrop, and focusing on the three of us as a three-piece band again, a little more hard-edged. I think, what it boils down to, is we wanted to make very definitely a rock album.
["Show Don't Tell" plays]
"Show Don't Tell" was the first song written for the album. It was the song that really kind of set the tone for the rest of the record, because so many things came together. You know, having talked about what kind of record you wanna make, and then it all comes together before your eyes, and it was a real kind of positive affirmation now. "Yeah, this is what we wanna do, let's keep going in this direction." So it really kicked the record off well, I think.
["War Paint" plays]
Rush did something different before making their latest album. They took a vacation. Did six months apart bring anything new to the trio?
The word we keep using is organic.
That must have something to do with that Zen farmer Neil Peart was talking about. Well, we'll find out right after this, off the record. I'm Mary Turner.
[Commercial break]
Hi, this is Geddy Lee, and you're listening to the Westwood One Radio Network.
I'm Mary Turner back with Rush: Off the Record. Ready for another Neil Peart quote? The Zen farmer says: "life is like the scissors, paper, stone game. None of the answers is always right, but each one is sometimes."
["Hand over Fist" plays]
How do you keep the music interesting through seventeen albums? Rush went back to the beginning to come up with the future, Presto!
The word we keep using is organic. It sounds so highfalutin, but back-to-the-basics kind of a thing, you know? I mean, sure we used keyboards, and we used synthies, and we embellished certain things. Sometimes you just can't avoid it. And sometimes you're hurting yourself by resisting, just for the sake of resisting. Sometimes you need that little flourish. So you go to it, and you do it. But as a rule to try to think of other things, and to try to put the pressure on the guitar to be the dynamic thing. If you can come up with an enhancement that Alex can do, why go to a synthie if he can do it? It worked out that way, and it sure fired Alex up. And he was a lot more, I guess, enthused and prepared and really, really looking forward, because he knew the pressure was on him a bit more on this record.
[The title track "Presto" plays]
You know, I think when we all decided to be more a three-piece, you know, I think that was something that every guitar player loves, because they know how important their role is in that three-piece scenario. And, you know, I think it really lit him up. It really got him thinking about all the possibilities. He was up for the challenge. In the vocal area, there was quite a lot of different things we were doing, and the whole style of writing was more considerate of vocals this time. Well, Neil and I had talked early on, when we were discussing the kind of songs we wanted to write, about how to treat the vocals, and trimming it back so that I can make more of those words, and I could use more voice as opposed to more words.
["Chain Lightning" plays]
Alex Lifeson, Neil Peart, and Geddy Lee: Rush - they're back in the limelight with Presto, and I'll be back with more of their music right after this, off the record. I'm Mary Turner.
[Commercial break]
The whole process of waiting for the lights to go out fires you up. Standing backstage, waiting for the house lights to go up, and hearing all those kids roar...your blood starts pumping, your heart starts beating, and you get out there and it's a genuine excitement.
I'm Mary Turner, talking with Geddy Lee, Rush: Off the Record.
["The Big Money" live version plays]
Neil, Alex, and Geddy: party animals from the frozen North. More food fights than Van Halen. More groupies than Bon Jovi. Not exactly, but Rush did use The Three Stooges theme to open every concert on the last tour.
Well, you slip into kind of a bit more of a stage persona I think, but I think the longer I've been around, the more and more I just try to remain myself on stage. I think it's possible to do that, and I feel much more comfortable just being myself, not having to pretend I'm somebody else. I think it's a lot more fun, too, when you can just remain in the same headspace all the time. And that is probably one of the great challenges of life that we all go through, you know, to remain the same person, regardless of the situation. We all have a tendency to adapt ourselves, I guess, a bit, or be intimidated by the situation, or whatever. I think you just try to remain calm and remain yourself, and usually have the best time when you do that. Obviously, you're a bit more pumped up, and you're a bit more hyped up version of what you are when you go on stage. I mean, you're sitting in a twenty thousand seat building; you gotta project, there's no question, and you've gotta exaggerate your movement. You gotta get out there and rock, and I don't think that's quite the same as becoming somebody different. You know, that's going out there and that's doing your shtick, doing your job, and also you get really into it. I mean, when you're playing, it's really hard to play some of that music and just stand still. So you wanna get up and rock, and you wanna get the kids going, and you wanna have a good time at it. And that's kind of an expression in itself. I don't think you're ever too old to do that, as the Rolling Stones are proving as we speak.
["Limelight" plays]
I remember a gig we did in England, once, in Leeds, which is probably my worst nightmare ever as a performance. And I remember going up there to sing "Closer to the Heart," and it was well into that tour, and I just walked up to the mic, and had a complete blank out. And it just...nothing would come. And I look at the kids in the front row, and they were singing it. I was like "okay, help me out here!" Eventually I regained consciousness, kind of thing, and it all came back. That was a really lousy feeling at the time, but it seems kind of funny now, looking back at it. There's a kind of level of concentration that you have to achieve, and sometimes you can't. It's like when you know the show too well, sometimes it's the worst thing. Because when there's no struggle, you kind of...certain automatic things happen. And half of the struggle of a night to me is finding that frame of mind, that kind of Zen attitude of where you're not really thinking about what you're doing, but you're being what you're doing, but you are concentrating but not concentrating. It's really a hard space to find; it's like a slot. It's kinda like sailing, there's all this wind pulling one way and the other way, and you're just trying to steer the ship until you find that slot where you just glide right through the night. It's really a lot like that. It's weird.
["Closer to the Heart" live version plays]
Richard the raccoon: that's who kept score during Rush's midnight volleyball games. I knew these guys were party animals at heart. Geddy Lee has all the dirt, right after this, off the record.
[Commercial break]
Don't let the rabbits on their album cover confuse you. Rush has a raccoon for a mascot. I'm Mary Turner talking with Geddy Lee, off the record.
["Red Tide" plays]
Richard the raccoon: is that an animal Neil made up, or will he be on the next album?
It's just this raccoon that lived under the house, where we were recording in Morin-Heights. We'd have these volleyball games after the sessions every night, well into the wee hours. It was just a young raccoon; they're quite tame when they're young. You can feed them, and they come out and take the food right out of your hand, stuff like that. He was quite fascinated by this game we were playing every night, so he would come out and watch. [Laughs] This raccoon would just sit there and watch us play, and the ball would come to him and he would run away. And then, after a while he realized the ball wasn't gonna hurt him so he would just kinda look at it. Pretty cool little guy. Anyway, I took him home, and had him for a dinner one night, and we went to a show. It was good; he's a good driver.
["Freewill" plays]
You know, we have this kind of unified goal every time around. I don't know why, but we just seem to think on the same lines. We all agreed that we wanted to do these things, so we just went ahead and did them. That's probably why, forty-five years later we're still [chuckles] still playing with each other. Partly there's a personal chemistry that is right, and the other part is that vision of the kind of music we like to play; it's very similar. Not to say that we live a charmed life either. I mean, there's moments where we all have our crabby...there's the bitchy side that comes out, but when it comes down to the important things, we usually are fairly civil about it. I think there are a lot of times where we just enjoy each other. An awful lot of laughing goes on, and that's really healthy.
["Time Stand Still" live version plays]
Announcer: Rush: Off the Record with Mary Turner has been brought to you by K-Mart, where you'll always find the quality you need at the price you want. This program was written and produced by Marsha Richardson. Production and engineering by Fred Lindgren. Off the Record with Mary Tuner is a presentation of the Westwood One Radio Network. Executive producer: Norm Pattiz.