(Credits: Far Out / Spotify)
Tue 2 December 2025 19:54, UK
Geddy Lee has always been pretty vocal about the world of bass guitars. The Rush man has often noted that while it is an essential piece of any rock band, playing at the lower end of proceedings isn’t always top priority for those looking to grab the spotlight.
“Back in my day, nobody chose to be the bass player,” Lee says. “You were always a guitarist, and somebody said, ‘Well, we need a bass player,’ so they had a vote and you became the bass player. That’s how I became a bass player: I was voted in,” recalls Lee, negating any ideas of a love story with his own instrument. “I think that was pretty common for the period, because everybody wanted to be Jimi Hendrix; everybody wanted to be Eric Clapton; everybody wanted to be Jimmy Page.”
Lee then, is just like the rest of us, and a true fan of the guitar. He has made it clear in his time that he is a fan of a wide range of music, from classic rock bands such as Cream and Led Zeppelin to modern boundary-pushers like Björk and Radiohead. While he is revered as one of the greatest bass players of all time, the Canadian musician’s scope extends far beyond the realm of the four-string.
An enlightening voice on all things rock music, when speaking to Rolling Stone in 2020, Lee revealed that English psychedelic pioneers, Cream – comprised of Jack Bruce, Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker – were his “favourite” band when honing his skills.
He recalled: “(Cream) were far and away my favourite band when I got old enough to appreciate rock music, and I was getting more and more into rock.”
Geddy Lee on the bass. (Credits: Far Out / Matt Becker)
Lee continued: “Cream was such an influence on early Rush and me as a bass player. We would do our own version of ‘Spoonful.’ We would play in the coffeehouses and the high school dances and all that stuff. We really tried to emulate Cream in the earliest days of Rush, so there was a real bond to Jack Bruce’s playing for me.”
Despite Geddy Lee effusing about Cream on many occasions, Eric Clapton is not his favourite guitarist of all time. Interestingly, it is his friend and successor in The Yardbirds, Jeff Beck, who he bestows the title to.
During an interview with Guitar World in 2009, Lee made the revelation. Asked to list the tracks that shaped Rush’s sound, at one point, he named Beck’s cover of Willie Dixon’s ‘I Ain’t Superstitious’. The Rush frontman explained: “If I had to pick a favourite guitarist of all time, it would probably be Jeff Beck. I mean, was there a better guitar sound ever?”
“I think this was the first great Jeff Beck ‘moment.’ The first time when you’d hear something and know that it couldn’t be anybody but him,” Lee continued. “He was such an amazing pioneer. Just an incredible stylist. The notes he squeezes out of that thing with a whammy bar, a volume control knob and his fingers are simply incredible”.
Elsewhere in the conversation, Lee picked the 1966 hit ‘Over Under Sideways Down’ by The Yardbirds as another song that significantly impacted Rush. A groundbreaking number in the psychedelic rock genre, it is credited to all group members, but Beck had a definitive role in writing it by conceiving the introduction. The Yardbirds drummer Jim McCarty said this, “made the song”.
Geddy Lee said of Beck’s playing on this influential song: “Jeff Beck again, playing one of the most unique guitar lines ever. It’s really hard to play that thing – it manages to grab something essential from the Eastern quarter-tone style without just being imitative of Indian music.”
“And it’s the hook to a pop song – back when pop, particularly in England, could be a platform for experimentation and innovation. Beck, Page, Clapton and some other Brits really discovered a totally new sound,” he concluded. “They figured out how to get a pop angle on the blues by electrifying it, and it became a profound way for guitarists to speak through music.”
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