Beyond the Limelight with Alex Lifeson (EPISODE 3-INTERVIEW)

Alex Lifeson has spent decades shaping the soundtrack of millions of lives, but this conversation isn't about reliving the glory days. 

We talk about creativity, staying curious, the evolution of being an artist, and how life changes when the spotlight fades but the passion never does. Alex shares stories from a career unlike any other, reflects on the friendships that have carried him through it all, and reminds us why making music is about so much more than fame. 

Whether you've been listening since the early days of RUSH or you're simply fascinated by the people behind the music, this is an honest, thoughtful conversation with one of rock's most influential guitarists-- and one of its most grounded human beings. 

Pull up a chair. You're about to spend some time with Alex Lifeson. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Today's episode is a special one for me, and honestly, a full circle moment I never imagined I'd get to record. I grew up knowing who Rush was, of course. You can't love music and not know Rush. But my respect for the band deepened in a whole new way after my mom married my stepdad. My stepdad became good friends with the guys from Rush, and by default, I was lucky enough to meet them too. Back in 2010, I was invited to see them play at Verizon Amphitheater in Alpharetta, Georgia, and not just as a fan in the crowd. Alex Lifeson himself gave me a photo pass and welcomed me into their world for a night. I did the meet and greet, hung out and catering with Alex and Getty, and even got to shoot photos from on stage right from Alex's side. It was one of those surreal pinch-me experiences that stays with you forever. Over the years, Alex and I have stayed in touch about music, about life, and about the creative process. He's always been incredibly kind, generous, and down-to-earth, the kind of human you hope your heroes actually are. So today, I'm honored to speak with him again, and I'm even more honored that he agreed to join me here on Starting Rumors to talk about creativity, longevity, storytelling, and the wild ride that is a life in music. Everyone, please welcome the legendary Alex Lifeson. So how have you been?

SPEAKER_00 1:39

I've been pretty good. Um I've it's been nuts, you know, since we announced the tour.

SPEAKER_01 1:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:47

It kind of came out of nowhere. You know, we've been uh we've been sort of discussing this for quite a while, for the last year, really. Um we started rehearsing with uh Annika back in f in uh March the first time. Okay, wow. So we we've been together a few times, we kept it under wraps. I think we did a pretty good job actually. But it's um it's a little overwhelming. There's you know, the dates are expanding all the time, and there's a lot to a lot to do, but it's exciting as well.

SPEAKER_01 2:18

So that is exciting. When I saw that it was announced, I was like, oh wow, okay. So they're doing like a specialty tour where it's gonna be a few cities, and then you guys just kept adding and adding, and I was like, oh my god, I have to go.

SPEAKER_00 2:30

So yeah, the we didn't expect the demand to be as great as it was. Like it it's crazy.

SPEAKER_01 2:38

We didn't expect it, but I just want to say that I appreciate you so much for sitting down to do this with me today. It means a lot. So thank you. All right, so let's get into the questions if you don't mind. Your career spans decades of reinvention. What do you feel most proud of creatively when you look back on it all?

SPEAKER_00 3:00

I don't know. That's uh it's a long time, it's 50 years. Uh I think um the fact that I on a personal note, the fact that I've continued working, uh did the Envy of None albums, uh, recently finished an album with um the Rio Statics, uh all jam-based on the uh uh series on the on the Great Lakes. It's a really fascinating uh project that was. Um worked with great uh musicians and it was all jam-based, so we just played. We did a couple of shows recently and did that, you know, just played. We didn't play any songs from the album. We just got up and played, and it was hugely successful successful. And that's what music's all about. You know, it's the player, it's the playing. And the greater the challenge, the greater the uh unknown is, the the greater the satisfaction is, I think.

SPEAKER_01 3:59

So so many guitarists say that you shape their voice. Who shaped yours?

SPEAKER_00 4:05

When I started playing guitar uh age 12, I i I think my earliest influences were bands like the Beach Boys, believe it or not. You know, the way they used guitars in that band for their music, you know, their very unique California sound, uh, that did something in my ears. It just it uh it fired something off. And then of course the British invasion in the 60s when I was a kid, uh uh the the many guitar players that played at that time. Um and eventually Pete Townsend from The Who, Jimmy Page from Led's Upland and the Yardbirds, big influence, Jeff Beck, Yardbirds, again from the mid-60s, big influence. And later on, people like Steve Hackett, Steve Howe. Uh I I think I draw a little bit from from everybody, and that's uh that's the that is the way it goes. You know, that's what you should be doing.

SPEAKER_01 5:03

So Rush was famous for musicianship and storytelling. What part of the creative process always felt like the most at home for you?

SPEAKER_00 5:14

You know, it changed somewhat over the years. We would set out to make a record when it was time to make a record, and that was usually in between tour stops. So in the early days we played a lot of shows, made two records a year. Uh I would say probably that experience of being in the studio recording, and later on the process changed a little bit where we were prepping uh beforehand, and then we would go into the studio with ideas uh and then start sharing them and you know and developing songs that way. Yeah, it's it is that recording process, I think, that is the most uh creatively enjoyable. Yeah, the structure starts to develop, the the it it rises up from nothing. Yeah, that's the really exciting part of being in the studio. It's great playing live. Uh that has its own place. Um, but there's something about the studio and the kind of buzz you get from writing music and putting it all together. It's it's it is pretty amazing.

SPEAKER_01 6:18

Oh yeah. So fans love the humor and heart in your playing. Do you see humor as part of your musical identity?

SPEAKER_00 6:27

I see humor as part of my identity, period. Uh I don't know. I uh everyone's different, you know, there's things that I process in my brain always have a tinge of humor to it. Uh uh when I'm when I'm happiest, I think I find humor in all things. So uh that that's a good place to be. It certainly makes uh living in this current world a little easier.

SPEAKER_01 6:58

When you look back at touring at the peak of the band, what's the one moment that still feels surreal to you?

SPEAKER_00 7:08

Um, you know, touring at at the peak, when you say peak, I I mean I I take it to mean uh your peak popularity, uh you know, the most tickets sold, uh all of that kind of stuff. It was really earlier than that that we were playing 250 shows a year, uh driving to every show, taking turns, sharing hotel rooms, uh making like uh $125 a week salary with a family at home. I mean, those were the really challenging times, but they were so exciting, and I wouldn't change anything about them. They were grueling, but when you're 21 or 22 years old, you know, nothing's too hard, and you know, you just love it so much and so passionate about it. Um in a lot of ways, I think those early days left more of an impression than the more popular, so so-called popular period. Uh you know, I kind of judge things a little differently. I'm not, you know, um, I'm not caught up, I'm not that caught up in the celebrity and fame of being in a rock band and being known, and we never expected to hang around for 40 years when we started out. Um but here, 10 years after we finished, we're looking at a tour that rivals those early tours. Um but the set uh the sets will be you know three times longer than those days. So uh this is gonna be a big challenge, and uh and we're up for it. I think um it's a new stage, it's a new it's a it's a new time for us, it's gonna be a whole new experience.

SPEAKER_01 8:57

Yeah, I'm sure. And I know it's probably bittersweet, but also exciting to be touring again with Annika because I mean she's such a phenomenal drummer, and I saw a lot back and forth online about oh, you know, that's just the replication. Who are they gonna get? And then when you announced it, I was like, okay, well, that makes total sense. She's incredible, so very, very cool. That's exciting.

SPEAKER_00 9:22

Incredible, she's uh a wonderful person. Um she's um so skilled. Uh you know, it's it for for the for the last five years, we never even thought about doing something like this. Um she has enormous shoes to fill. Uh, and it's not like starting all over again and we're gonna start writing music and and all of that. This is a very different tour. This is a celebration of everything that we've we've accomplished over the last half century. So um having somebody like Annika in there, because she'll be able to play up to that level, uh although you know she's a different drummer, but she'll she'll definitely perform uh at that level. So we're looking forward to that.

SPEAKER_01 10:11

I'm looking forward to seeing it for sure. And because we're kind of talking about the the past and now the present, your partnership with Getty and Neil lasted decades in a way that is almost unheard of in this industry. From your perspective, what were the ingredients that kept that band so strong for so long, both musically and personally?

SPEAKER_00 10:35

Uh a part of it is that we're Canadian. We have a different uh um different quality to our Canadian character. Uh humor was very, very important for us. We all had uh a similar sense of humor, and we laughed 90 pi 90% of the time that we were together. We we just laughed. So we loved being together. You know, it was just such a joy to be together. And then there was the music, there was the work, and we had a unified sense of you know what we wanted to accomplish, where we wanted to go, how hard we wanted to work. We always wanted to be better than we were a minute ago. And that really drove us. Uh, as I said earlier, we never expected to, you know, once we got our American deal in 1974, we thought maybe four years, five years of touring, make a bunch of records, that's a great career. We'd already been together for six years, so that was like a 10-year-plus uh career. So we were quite satisfied with it, never expecting that that was just the beginning of a 40-year career. Uh it is remarkable, and I think we we were just you know sensible about the way we uh viewed the whole thing, how we worked, family was important, all the other stuff that's in the background was really, really important to us. When you came home, you weren't a rock star when you came home. You were a chauffeur, you took the kids to school, you picked up the dry cleaning on the way home, grabbed some groceries, you know, cut the grass, like all the stuff that everybody does. So I think that kept us grounded, you know, and that was a really important part of dealing with this whole uh idea of being a rock star or you know, some sort of celebrity.

SPEAKER_01 12:34

I think that is important, the the grounding part of it, because I obviously have never been on that level in my life, but we played, you know, 150 to 190 shows a year. And after I had my daughter, coming home meant so much more to me because I had something to come home to. And once she started talking, she would celebrate, you know, oh, my mom's going to play shows. And I just thought that was the coolest thing. And now I'm doing this podcast, I'm not touring anymore, and I have two kids, and just being able to spend that time with them that I wouldn't have been able to spend with them if I was still on the road is so crucial to me to be able to watch them grow up. So it's it's been really nice.

SPEAKER_00 13:21

Yeah, absolutely. I I uh you know, I had a couple of grandkids um in uh well, they're 22 years old and 18. And uh my little munchkins are all grown up now. But I'll tell you that their birth was probably the most important thing that happened in my life. I mean, my kids being born, of course, that was important, all of that, but there's something about grandchildren, and I'm sure your dad uh feels exactly the same. I know for a fact he feels the same way because there's something about that generation, you know, twice removed, uh the hope, the the lineage, like so many things reside in that experience, and you treat it in such a different way. Like family, all of those things are way more important than than the other thing, than all the adulation and the awards and you know all that stuff. I mean, it's a career, it's a job. You love it, you're passionate. If you're lucky enough to be to get a job like this, it's it's fantastic. You never have to grow up, you get to write music, play music, and all of that. But the real important stuff is beyond that.

SPEAKER_01 14:43

Okay, so speaking of younger people, what is something that younger musicians misunderstand about longevity in this business?

SPEAKER_00 14:52

Well, I don't know, it's changed so much. Like this music industry, I don't recognize it. I don't I don't feel part of it. I I don't uh I don't really understand how it works. Um I think I know how it works, but it's so different, so alien from what I grew up with. We were really in the I think in the golden years of of the music industry when everybody was playing and there was a unity with you know the promoters and with the record company reps and and all of that. You know, it was I don't know, kind of like a team, and everybody got behind you and worked and all of that. Now it's you know how many uh how many hits you can get and how you know record companies aren't interested in doing anything. They're they're not the same sort of entity that they once were, where they were they were developers, you know, they got interested in a band, they they financed it, they worked, and everybody became successful and made some money and shared in in the success and and all of that stuff. Now you have to do it all yourself. You have to do it all yourself. And uh and you don't have that front-end budget that so many bands really find crucial. You don't have any money. How do you, you know, how do you get your gear? How do you get to the gig? How do you buy gas? You know, it's it's all of those sort of things. It's so much more challenging, it seems, uh, right now to try to get anywhere.

SPEAKER_01 16:27

Yeah, I agree. I mean, even as low down on the wrong as like bands having their merch money taken when they're, you know, they're the ones that design the merch, they print the merch, they set it up, they sell it, and then the venue takes a percentage of it. And it's like, I get it, a lot of these venues are trying to recoup costs after the pandemic and all of that. But at the same time, I'm like, if you want anybody to go see live music, you have to be able to make it worth the musician's while to do it because if they're not making any money, they're just gonna keep doing it in their bedroom and hope that somebody discovers it on the internet somewhere. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:12

What happened to just buying the album and going home and putting it on and just staring at the cover and listening to the music and then putting it over and over and listening? Just listen, that's that was the great part of the whole experience.

SPEAKER_01 17:28

Your style is incredibly textural. What interests you creatively now? Are there any projects or sounds that excite you today?

SPEAKER_00 17:38

Um certainly the Envy of None projects, those two records that we made. I mean, in a lot of ways uh that's such an important part of my career or my life as a guitarist. I mean, I got to do uh things that were totally unexpected. Uh I had an open palette, I could experiment with things, I could think in terms of color uh and tone, um creating atmospherics. Uh I mean I love doing that. I I was I was always into that sort of thing. Um But with Envy of None, I I really had free reign over whatever I wanted to do uh in terms of guitars and the guitar presence. The first record, 80% of the guitar stuff on that record, you can't even recognize it as a guitar. Um more so on the second record. I soloed more, I was a little more traditional in some ways, but our songwriting developed in such a way that that's what was really required uh to serve the songs best. Um so uh I that I do stuff, the the project that I mentioned to you, the sweet uh Great Lakes Suite, I mean that's all improvisational, it's all textural. Uh Hugh uh Marsh, uh violinist, such an incredible musician. He's definitely, I I regard him as uh as my my musical twin. We think very much alike in terms of color and tone. Uh we really feed off each other when we work together. He's he's just so inspirational to work with for me. So he's on this violin and he's creating these sounds that are just out of this world. So it makes it a lot easier to jump into that same thing and develop guitar uh bits that echo what he's doing. Um, you know, I'm here in my little studio. I live in an apartment, and but uh I I just spend hours and hours and hours just fiddling around with that sort of stuff, textures, and uh uh it's it's really a satisfying endeavor for me, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 20:01

I have a a question here that I wasn't going to ask in the main interview, but now that you've talked about it, I am very curious because I've worked with a lot of guitar players, and it seems like the pedal board and the way, because I always hear tone comes from your hands, but the pedal board is like the extra, you know, seasoning on top. So are there any guitar tones or effects that you still love to revisit, whether it's with um Envy of None or with Rush or any other project that you're a part of?

SPEAKER_00 20:36

I have uh, you know, I've got I've been collecting uh petals for 12, 50 years. Um I have uh oh I don't have them out, I just packed them away. But yeah, I have a lot of old stuff from the 70s that I still have. Uh I I can't say that I really use that stuff very much anymore. Occasionally I'll pull it out if it fits what a project that I'm working on does. But more currently, uh I I've become involved with a company called Fractal, and they make amazing gear. They're the quality, I'm looking down at the unit right now. The the quality of their um effects is just unbeatable. Really, really um high res, really excellent, the unlimitless parameters that you can just create the most amazing sounds from the most basic of effects, even. Uh and it's in a nice tight package, you know, it's all together in in one rack mounted piece. Um I've always used effects. Uh it's it's been a main a major part of my sound and how I approach sound. Uh, and I would certainly never uh change that. I I I love that experiment.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

If you could tell your younger self one thing before fame hit, what would it be?

SPEAKER_00 22:07

Uh I would probably say, yeah, it's it's not such a big deal. Yeah, yeah. Keep your feet on the ground. Yeah. Don't let it don't let it affect you. Don't let it make you think that you're something you're not.

SPEAKER_01 22:22

That's good advice. I like that. W what do you hope people remember most about your music and the mark you left on rock?

SPEAKER_00 22:32

Well, uh you know, I think the thing with music, when you're a musician and you're writing music and uh you're selling it to people, um you want to make them happy. You want them to love the music and want them uh to have uh any number of emotional responses to your music, from sadness to happiness to fear. Uh you know, it runs the gamut. Uh, that's the power of the language of music. Um, and to be a part of that world and to leave behind, after I'm long gone, uh evidence of recordings of my music making, our music making, uh, that's a wonderful legacy. Because I'm not gonna care when I'm gone.

SPEAKER_01 23:19

Right.

SPEAKER_00 23:20

But to know that that you've left uh a mark and you've and even more so you've helped people. Like I get a lot of mail from people who say I was in a terrible place in my life, and your music spoke to me in such a way and pulled me out of you know the worst things that I could imagine. And I'm great now. Thank you. I mean, what more could you can you expect than that? Yeah, that is the ultimate.

SPEAKER_01 23:50

Thank you again. Good luck with all the rehearsals. I know the tour is gonna be amazing. Really looking forward to hearing how you guys feel about it and seeing all the success that comes from it. Because I've seen your shows, they're mind-blowing. So I'm very, very excited for you guys.

SPEAKER_00 24:07

Thank you. Thank you so much, Mackenzie. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 24:12

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Starting Rumors: My Life as a Mockstar. Getting to sit down with today's guest was such an honor. One of those moments where you quietly look around and think, is this really happening? I'm still convinced my teenage self would have fainted dramatically, probably right into a display of studded belts at Hot Topic. I loved sharing this conversation with you, and season two is just getting started. Make sure you're following the show so you don't miss what's coming next, because the lineup this season? Absolutely wild in the best way. If you enjoyed this episode, send it to a friend, share it online, or leave a rating or review. It helps this little mock star universe keep growing. I'll see you next time with another incredible story. Until next week, stay loud, stay curious, and stay a little bit legendary.