Saturday, December 13, 2008

Alex Lifeson Talks About the Past and Future of Rush In Upcoming Interview

As I mentioned in a previous posting, Rush has been all over the news lately. The last couple of weeks has seen a number of Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee interviews to promote the DVD Snakes and Arrows Live, which I believe I have sitting under the Christmas tree as we speak. (Oh please, Santa).

I bought the live CD of the same tour and ran a long review here. It was a great tour and the band kicked serious ass, doling out the tried and true songs as well as rarely heard gems like Digital Man, Entre Nous, Passage to Bangkok and Circumstances. Even 80s fare like Mission benefit ted from the new energy and heaviness that the band put forth live on that tour.

Word is that this DVD focuses on the musicianship of the band, with many close ups of blazing fretboards and flying drumsticks. That is my flipping dream come true!

Flash to last week, when Alex Lifeson sat down for a long interview with Modern Guitars magazine. RushIsABand.com posted numerous sneak preview excerpts this week but pulled them all down until the full interview runs on the MG site.

I was lucky enough to read the excerpts while they were up and the interviewer did an fantastic job, asking all sorts of questions I would want to ask, like which songs have they tried to bring back from the past but for whatever reason didn't (A Farewell to Kings and Camera Eye), are there any pre-1974 tapes of the band (there are), including Neil's first audition with the band (probably not).

They also discuss how the band was bummed about how Vapor Trails was mixed (the levels are too hot, so the overall sounds is compressed and distorted, kind of like the complaints about the new Metallica album), and they might remix the whole thing as a one-off project, to make themselves feel better about it.

It goes on and on. I will be sure to post the link when the whole interview runs. The pieces I saw make me pretty stoked to read the whole thing.

1 comment:

Bar L. said...

Nice. Thanks for the info! I've been reading Neil Pert's book.