Geddy Lee

At 70 years old, Geddy Lee has this physical status:

Geddy Lee Weinrib, (born Gary Lee Weinrib; July 29, 1953), also known as Geddy Lee, is a Canadian musician, guitarist, and songwriter best known as the lead vocalist, bassist, and keyboardist for Rush's lead singer, bassist, and keyboardist.

Lee began to play Rush in September 1968, at the request of his childhood friend Alex Lifeson, who was sent by his grandparents, Jeff Jones, to replace original bassist and frontman Jeff Jones.

My Favourite Headache, Lee's first and so far only solo effort, was released in 2000. Lee's style, technique, and expertise on the bass guitar have inspired many rock musicians, including Cliff Burton of Metallica, Steve Harris of Iron Maiden, John Myung of Dream Theater, Les Claypool of Primus, and Tim Commerford of Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave.

On May 9, 1996, Lee, along with his Rush coworkers, guitarist Alex Lifeson, and drummer Neil Peart, was appointed Officer of the Order of Canada.

The trio was the first rock band to be honoured as a team.

After 14 years of eligibility, the group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013; they were unanimously nominated in the Hall's first election by fan vote.

Lee is ranked 13th on Hit Parader's list of the 100 Top Heavy Metal Vocalists of All Time.

Early life

Lee was born in May 29, 1953, in the Toronto suburb of Willowdale, Toronto, to Morris Weinrib (born Morris Weinrib; October 5, 1920 – July 2, 2021), who later moved to Wierzbnik. His parents were Jewish Holocaust survivors from Poland who survived the ghetto in Starachowice (where they met), incarcerated in Auschwitz, and then Dachen-Belsen concentration camps during the Holocaust and World War II. They were in their teen years when they were first detained in Auschwitz. Lee describes how his father begged guards to hand over his mother shoes. After a time, his mother and his father were moved to Bergen-Belsen and his father was transferred to Dachau. Morris went out looking for Manya and discovered her at a Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp four years after the war ended and the Allies liberated the camps. They married there and then immigrated to Canada.

Lee's father died early, prompting Lee's mother to help three children, as she was in charge of the successful Newmarket, Ontario variety store that her husband owned and operated. Lee believes that not having parents at home during those years was probably a factor in his death, but that my life was changed because my mother didn't know us." He said that losing his father at such an early age made him aware of how "quickly life will pass away," which inspired him from then on to get the most out of his life and music.

He turned his basement into a practice space for a band he formed with high-school classmates. Since the band started earning money from small performances at high school shows or other occasions, he decided to drop out of high school and play rock and roll properly. His mother was devastated when he told her, and he still feels he owes her for her daughter's mishaps. "All the shit I put her through," he says, "on top of the fact that she just lost her husband." I felt like I had to make sure that it was worth it. I wanted to tell her that I was a professional, that I was working hard, and that I wasn't just a fuckin' lunatic."

Lee's reflections on his mother's journey as a refugee and of his own Jewish roots appeared in Jweek. Geddy, Lee's name, was derived from his mother's heavy Polish accented pronunciation of his given first name, Gary. This was picked up by his classmates in school, prompting Lee to adopt it as his stage name and later his legal name. When Geddy started school, Lee was mistakenly registered as Lorne, causing Geddy to assume his name was Gary Lorne Weinrib.

The lyrics include the following verse:

Personal life

In 1976, Lee married Nancy Young. Julian and Kyla are the parents of a son and a daughter. With a range of 5,000 bottles, he is a keen watcher and wine collector. He takes his annual trips to France, where he indulges in cheese and wine. The Geddy Lee Scholarship for winemaking students at Niagara College was established in 2011 by a charitable foundation that he supports.

He is also a long-distance baseball fan. When growing up, he was a fan of the Toronto Blue Jays and became a fan of them as well. Lee began reading Bill James' books, particularly The Bill James Baseball Abstracts, which culminated in an interest in sabermetrics and participation in a fantasy baseball keeper tournament. He collects baseball memorabilia, donated a portion of his collection to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, and threw the ceremonial first pitch to open the 2013 Toronto Blue Jays season. Before the 1993 MLB All-Star Game, Lee performed the Canadian national anthem. Lee planned to film an independent film about baseball in Italy in 2016.

Lee has referred to himself as a Jewish atheist, but not so much as a faith. I'm not concerned with faith at all. "I'm a Jewish atheist, if that's possible."

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Music career

Lee began playing music in school when he was 10 or 11 years old and got his first acoustic guitar at 14. He began playing drums, trumpet, and clarinet in school. However, Lee's obsession with playing instruments in school wasn't exciting, so he took basic piano lessons privately. Since listening to some of the most popular rock bands at the time, his enthusiasm soared dramatically. Jack Bruce of Cream, John Entwistle of The Who, Jeff Beck, and Procol Harum were among his early influences. "I was mainly interested in early British progressive rock," Lee said. "That's how I learned to play bass, emulating Jack Bruce and others like this." Lee, who liked that "his music was distinctive," commented Bruce's style of music, "it wasn't boring." Lee has also been influenced by Paul McCartney, Chris Squire, and James Jamerson.

Rush began participating in coffeehouses, high school dances, and a variety of outdoor recreational activities in 1969. They were now playing predominantly original songs in tiny clubs and bars, including Toronto's Gasworks and Abbey Road Pub, by 1971. During the first years, Lee referred to the group as "weekend warriors" in the group. They were downing jobs during the weekdays and playing music on weekends: "We wanted to get out of the boring suburbs and the endless similarities." . . And all that stuff. . . "The music was a way for us to talk out." They were simply "a straightforward rock band" from the start, according to He.

They began performing at Victory Burlesque Theatre in Toronto, which was short of funds. The New York Dolls, a glam rock band, performed in Toronto. Rush began performing full-length concerts, mainly made up of original songs, in cities such as Toronto and Detroit in 1972. As they gained more fame, they began to appear as an opening act for companies like Aerosmith, Kiss, and Blue Yster Cult.

Rush mirrored a "power trio" model, with Lee playing bass and singing. Lee's vocals produced a distinctive, "counter-tenor" falsetto and resonant sound. Lee had a three-octave vocal range, from baritone to tenor, alto, and mezzo-soprano pitch ranges, but that has drastically decreased as age. Lee's playing style is widely praised for his use of high treble and struggle as well as his use of the bass as a lead instrument, often contrapuntal to Lifeson's guitar. Lee primarily used a Rickenbacker 4001 bass in the 1970s and early 1980s, with a grit in his tone. Lee used Steinberger and later Wal basses during the band's "synth epoch" in the mid-1980s, with the former having more of a "jazzy" tone, according to Lee. Lee began using the Fender Jazz Bass almost exclusively from 1993 to his iconic high treble sound. Moving Pictures was Lee's first attempt to record "Tom Sawyer" on a record.

Rush's fame as a rock band has soared over the past five years, including 2112 (1976), Moving Images (1981), and several early albums. With the introduction of A Farewell to Kings in 1977, Lee began synthesizers. The new sounds boosted the group's "textural capabilities," according to keyboard critic Greg Armbruster, and allowed the trio to perform an ordered and more complex progressive rock music style. Since he could control the synthesizer with foot pedals, Lee was able to play bass simultaneously. He received the Best New Talent award in 1981 for his 1981 debut in Keyboard magazine. Lee was surrounded on stage by stacks of keyboards by 1984's Grace Under Pressure.

Rush became one of the world's biggest rock bands by the 1980s, with arena seats selling out when touring. Lee was known for his energetic stage moves. "It's amazing to see so much pure energy expended without a nervous breakdown," music critic Tom Mulhern wrote in 1980. They began without an opening act in 1996, with their shows lasting almost three hours.

Christopher Buttner, a music industry reporter who interviewed Lee in 1996, referred to him as a "role model" for what every musician aspires to be, as well as his stage performance. Lee's ability to change time signatures, play multiple keyboards, use bass pedals, and control sequencers were cited by Buttner, who performed lead vocals into as many as three microphones. Buttner claims that few musicians of any genre "will juggle half of what Geddy can do without actually falling on their faces." As a result, Mulhern says Lee's instrumentation was the group's "pulse" and created a "one-man rhythm section," which complimented guitarist Alex Lifeson and percussionist Neil Peart. Lee's "biting, high-end bass lines, and inventive synthesizer service" has credited to the group's success as one of the most "innovative" of all the league rock bands. Lee was named as the "Best Rock Bass" player from their reader's poll by 1989.

Cliff Burton of Metallica, Steve Harris of Iron Maiden, John Myung of Dream Theater, Les Claypool of Primus, and Sadus, Death and Testament's Steve Giorgio are among the bass players who have cited Lee as an influence.

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Awards

• Bass Hall of Fame – Guitar Player magazine
• Six-time winner: "Best Rock Bass" – Guitar Player magazine
• 1993: "Best Rock Bass Player" Bass Player magazine's readers' poll
• 1994: With Rush, inducted into the Juno Hall of Fame
• 1996: Officer of the Order of Canada, along with bandmates Alex Lifeson and Neil Peart
• 2007: Best Album for Bass (Snakes & Arrows) – Bass Player magazine
• "Coolest Bass Line in a Song" (for "Malignant Narcissism") – Bass Player magazine
• "Best 2007 Cover Feature" for "Northern Warrior" – Bass Player magazine
• 2010: With Rush, "Living Legend" – Classic Rock Magazine
• 2010: With Rush, Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
• 2012: Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal
• 2013: With Rush, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee
• 2014: Awarded an honorary doctorate from Nipissing University in North Bay, Ontario (along with Neil Peart, and Alex Lifeson)
• 2021: Lifetime Achievement Award for his philanthropic work at the Artists for Peace and Justice (APJ) annual gala in Toronto on September 11.