Geddy Lee is a complicated man, or rather, as his heartwarming new memoir, “My Effin’ Life,” makes clear, the man born with so many family names, nicknames, and colloquial name derivatives that even his mother wasn’t sure what his birth certificate’s name was. That’s what you would anticipate from Rush’s bassist. They were a famously complicated band, playing complicated prog-rock epics. Their fans, who packed Auditorium Theatre last Sunday night to hear Lee talk about his life, are complicated themselves. Famously so. I am a fan myself, but like some Rush fans, I concealed my fandom for periods.
Rush fans brought to mind the opening lines of “War of the Worlds,” about “intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic,” looking at “this earth with envious eyes.” I also thought of the 1970s and 1980s, of growing up on a latchkey, of suburban sprawls, of conformity, and of friends who idolized drummer Neil Peart, filling basements with more drums than they could possibly handle. Peart had Tama drums, so when I started to play, I played Tama. Peart had two bass drums, and even though I could hardly play one, I talked my mother into buying two.
I could think up lyrics so complicated that Geddy Lee occasionally sounded like he was singing straight out of the handbook for setting up his audio. I imagined Lee screaming out lines like, “All this machinery making modern music / Can still be openhearted / Not so coldly charted / It’s really just a question of your honesty.” My lyrics would be so wordy and direct.
