{"id":326721,"date":"2025-12-02T21:06:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-02T21:06:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/326721\/"},"modified":"2025-12-02T21:06:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T21:06:10","slug":"the-one-guitarist-geddy-lee-thinks-was-unbeatable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/326721\/","title":{"rendered":"The one guitarist Geddy Lee thinks was unbeatable"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Geddy<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Spotify)<\/p>\n

Tue 2 December 2025 19:54, UK <\/p>\n

Geddy Lee<\/a> 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\u2019t always top priority for those looking to grab the spotlight. <\/p>\n

\u201cBack in my day, nobody chose to be the bass player,\u201d Lee says. \u201cYou were always a guitarist, and somebody said, \u2018Well, we need a bass player,\u2019 so they had a vote and you became the bass player. That\u2019s how I became a bass player: I was voted in,\u201d recalls Lee, negating any ideas of a love story with his own instrument. \u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lee then, is just like the rest of us, and a true fan of the guitar. He\u00a0has 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 Bj\u00f6rk and Radiohead. While he is revered as one of the greatest bass players of all time, the Canadian musician\u2019s scope extends far beyond the realm of the four-string.<\/p>\n

An enlightening voice on all things rock music, when speaking to Rolling Stone<\/a> in 2020, Lee revealed that English psychedelic pioneers, Cream \u2013 comprised of Jack Bruce, Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker \u2013 were his \u201cfavourite\u201d band when honing his skills. <\/p>\n

He recalled: \u201c(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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Geddy<\/a>Geddy Lee on the bass. (Credits: Far Out \/ Matt Becker)<\/p>\n

Lee continued: \u201cCream was such an influence on early Rush and me as a bass player. We would do our own version of \u2018Spoonful.\u2019 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\u2019s playing for me.\u201d <\/p>\n

Despite Geddy Lee effusing about Cream<\/a> 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. <\/p>\n

During an interview with Guitar World<\/a> in 2009, Lee made the revelation. Asked to list the tracks that shaped Rush\u2019s sound, at one point, he named Beck\u2019s cover of Willie Dixon\u2019s \u2018I Ain\u2019t Superstitious\u2019. The Rush frontman explained: \u201cIf 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?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think this was the first great Jeff Beck \u2018moment.\u2019 The first time when you\u2019d hear something and know that it couldn\u2019t be anybody but him,\u201d Lee continued. \u201cHe 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\u201d.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere in the conversation, Lee picked the 1966 hit \u2018Over Under Sideways Down\u2019 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, \u201cmade the song\u201d.<\/p>\n

Geddy Lee said of Beck\u2019s playing on this influential song: \u201cJeff Beck again, playing one of the most unique guitar lines ever. It\u2019s really hard to play that thing \u2013 it manages to grab something essential from the Eastern quarter-tone style without just being imitative of Indian music.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd it\u2019s the hook to a pop song \u2013 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,\u201d he concluded. \u201cThey 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Spotify) Tue 2 December 2025 19:54, UK Geddy Lee has always been pretty vocal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":326722,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[88,117966,166357,216],"class_list":{"0":"post-326721","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-geddy-lee","10":"tag-jeff-beck","11":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326721\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/326722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}