Geddy Lee (Unofficial)

Geddy Lee OC (born Gary Lee Weinrib, July 29, 1953) is a Canadian musician who is the vocalist, bassist, and keyboardist for the progressive rock group Rush. Born in Toronto, Ontario, Lee grew up as the son of Polish parents who were both survivors of Nazi concentration camps Dachau and Bergen-Belsen. Lee's stage name (and later legal name) "Geddy" was inspired by the heavily-accented pronunciation of his given first name "Gary" by his grandmother. In 2004, Canadian Jewish News would feature Lee's reflections upon his mother's experiences and his own Jewish heritage.

An award-winning musician, Lee's style, technique, and virtuosity on the bass guitar have proven very influential in the rock and heavy metal genres, inspiring such players as Steve Harris of Iron Maiden, John Myung of Dream Theater, Les Claypool of Primus, Cliff Burton of Metallica, and countless others. Lee's high pitched vocal style, while less influential, is nonetheless distinctive; one Rolling Stone critic opined a negative review in the Rolling Stone Album Guide that Geddy Lee's voice was a cross between Robert Plant's and Donald Duck's voices. Reference to the latter in the brief review upset many die-hard fans of Rush and Lee.

Lee's first solo effort, My Favorite Headache, was released in 2000. In addition to his composing, arranging, and performing duties for Rush, Lee has produced albums for various other bands, including Rocket Science, and recorded a short rendition of "O Canada" with bandmate Alex Lifeson included on the South Park soundtrack. Geddy Lee is also heard singing the minor hit "Take Off" on the McKenzie Brothers (Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas) 1981 comedy album The Great White North: Bob and Doug McKenzie, as well as appearing in the 1985 charity song "Tears Are Not Enough" by Canadian supergroup Northern Lights.

Geddy Lee has varied his equipment lineup several times during his career. Gigging around Toronto, Geddy used a Fender Precision Bass. From the RUSH album and onward, Lee favored Rickenbacker basses (particularly the 4001 model, which he used extensively in studio and live shows during most of the 70's and early 80's up through the Signals album and tour), and the Fender Jazz Bass (which is heard extensively on Permanent Waves and Moving Pictures). For recording Grace Under Pressure Geddy switched to a headless Steinberger bass, which he would use for the Grace Under Pressure Tour. After this, he began using British Wal basses, which he would use to record (and tour) Power Windows, Hold Your Fire, Presto and Roll The Bones. He switched back to Jazz Basses for the recording of Counterparts, and has been using it, both in the studio and live, since then. In 2002, Fender released the Geddy Lee Jazz Bass, a Jazz Bass based on his original mid-seventies model, that Geddy bought in a pawn shop. In addition to a few cost-saving changes, the instrument features vintage-style pickups and a BadAss II bridge.

Geddy's amps, in the early days, were the usual arena-ready Sunn and/or Ampeg models. By the late seventies, his backline had evolved into the unique configuration of Ashly preamps and BGW power amps, which were run in stereo with his 4001 bass. The neck pickup was sent to one rig and set for a clean, bass-heavy tone, while the bridge pickup was sent to the other amp which was set with an exaggerated treble boost, and a lot of gain on the preamp. This is what made the quintessential "Geddy Lee sound" from 1977 to 1982. Even through his changing stable of basses, this amplifier setup remained constant through 1991. For the Roll the Bones tour, Geddy switched to Gallien-Krueger amps, and later to Trace-Elliot amps. He still uses a Trace-Elliot, however it is not on the onstage backline, but rather underneath the stage, for low-frequency emphasis, so he can feel the bass, along with hearing the notes, through his ear monitors. On recent tours, to "balance out the stage", Geddy has filled the empty space where his backline amps used to sit with industrial size Maytag coin operated dryers. The dryers are filled with Rush tour shirts. Coins are inserted throughout the show either by costumed crew members, "surprise" guests or by audience members who are selected at random. For the band's R30 tour, one dryer was replaced by a rotating shelf-style sandwich vending machine.

Over the years, Geddy's keyboard rig has featured Oberheim keyboards (Oberheim 8-voice, OB-1, OB-X, OB-Xa), PPG keyboards (Wave 2.2 and 2.3) Roland keyboards (Jupiter 8, D-50, CompuRhythm), Moog keyboards (Mini-Moog, Taurus bass pedals that are also used as a control surface for other keyboards), and Yamaha keyboards (DX-7 and KX76 MIDI controllers). Also, he made use of sequencers (the ones included in the Oberheim keyboards and the Roland Compurhythm) that supplied many memorable keyboard melodies, i.e.; "The Spirit of Radio' (Permanent Waves), "The Camera Eye' and 'Vital Signs' (Moving Pictures), 'The Weapon' and 'New World Man' (Signals), 'Red Sector A' (Grace Under Pressure), 'Grand Designs' (Power Windows), and 'Scars' (Presto - the entire bass line was a sequenced bass sample). Since the latter part of the eighties, Geddy's keyboard setup also includes a large rack of samplers which are used to recreate sounds, vocal harmonies, and events from Rush's studio recordings.

These days Geddy Lee seems to be a rock purist, gettin' down with his pawn-shop-purchased Fender Jazz Bass. It wasn't always that way, though; as Geddy was probably the one member of Rush who was totally enamored of high-tech synthesizers, basses, amplifiers, and gizmos. Geddy's earliest appearances after becoming a "signed artist" were with that old warhorse of a million bass players, worldwide... the Fender Precision Bass. He played through a couple of battered old Sunn amplifiers with matching speaker cabinets. After Mercury Records picked up Rush, and Neil Peart was brought onboard, the band received a large advance from the label and proceeded to update their equipment. For the next three years, Geddy's stage setup would not change. The Rickenbacker 4001 bass became Ged's trademark. The amps he was using were the seemingly de rigueur Ampeg SVT model that most rock bassists of the 1970's were using, although Geddy decided on using their V4 cabinets, which contained two 15-inch speakers, rather than their more common 8x10" speaker cabinet. With the recording of A Farewell to Kings, Rush's expansion of sound required the addition of some new instruments, including the classic Mini-Moog synthesizer, and Moog's unusual-looking Taurus bass pedal synthesizer. This first set of Taurus pedals allowed Geddy to play either bass notes or, when interfaced with the Mini-Moog, high, sustained notes. These two pieces of equipment could be seen onstage with Geddy for the next nine years.

Geddy also added the beastly 4008 doubleneck bass/guitar, and changed his amp setup as well. He ran his Rickenbacker in stereo to two Ashley pre-amps, which then went to two BGW 750 power amps and a pair of custom-made speaker cabinets, along with the older Ampeg cabinets. Geddy would continue to use this bass setup until 1991! His Fender Jazz Bass began making live appearances around this time, as well. The keyboards Ged used were constantly changing, however. He acquired an Oberheim 8-voice synthesizer for the recording of Hemispheres, and used it up until the end of the Exit, Stage Left tour. In the interim, Geddy went through the monophonic Oberheim OB-1 synthesizer, followed by their OB-X polyphonic model. On the Signals tour, Ged replaced the old 8-voice SEM modules with an Oberheim OB-Xa synth. He also added a Roland Jupiter-8 which had its own dedicated sequencer, the Roland CompuRhythm. For the next few tours, Geddy was using the PPG Wave synthesizer as his main keyboard. Along the way various other models, such as the Yamaha DX-7, and Roland D-50 would be used, as well. During this time, Geddy retired the venerable Rickenbacker from the road and began using the headless Steinberger bass. He used a black GL-2 model during the Grace tour, and then got a white model, which he would use as a backup. When the band recorded Power Windows, Geddy used a British-made Wal bass. At first, he didn't use this live, opting for the Steinberger instead, but soon his black Wal would be used live. Along with a red Wal that was made later, he would use the brand for several years in the studio and onstage. Geddy also began using larger 76-key controllers onstage to play or trigger what were now, more and more being loaded offstage into Akai-made samplers, which would record old sounds and "events" from their past songs. The advent of programmable sequencers was a major addition to the Rush sound. They allowed the band to trigger keyboard passages, while they continued to play their regular instruments. As the years go on, and technology became more sophisticated, keyboard parts and even background vocals would no longer need to be played from the stage, or even an offstage synthesizer. They simply could be recorded onto a sample and triggered from the foot of any one of the three musicians. For the Roll the Bones tour, Ged changed his amplifier setup to Gallien-Krueger. Because of the aforementioned sophistication of sound sampling, Geddy's keyboard rig was now very streamlined. He seemed to enjoy the freedom that this provided, and didn't feel like he was such a slave to the keyboards, anymore. An even further step back to the basics came for the Counterparts tour, when Geddy started using his old Fender Jazz Bass again. He would have several different Jazz basses made for the Test For Echo tour, and for amplification he was using the Trace-Elliot amps and cabinets he had acquired prior to the Counterparts tour.The Test For Echo tour also was also a "back-to-basics" change for the keyboard setup, which saw his keyboard rig come full circle with the resurrection of heis old Mini-Moog from storage.