To fully appreciate a discussion around My Effin’ Life, the auto-biography of legendary RUSH vocalist/bassist/keyboardist, and all around good/Canadian guy, Geddy Lee, it’s helpful to be a long time fan of RUSH. If you’re not, might I kindly recommend that you take a break from reading, go listen to RUSH’s mammoth discography religiously for somewhere between 10 and 15 years (more if the bug hits you) until you’re a total geek about the band, can air drum the entirety of YYZ, and can instinctively throw your fist in the air and yell “Hey!” at the right parts of the 2112 Overture? Then come back to this article (it will likely have been read by 6 or 7 people by then) and enjoy the rest of it.
Oh, and before we go on, just to set some expectations, this is not a review of the book. I’m incapable of writing one of those. Instead I’ll mostly just ramble aimlessly about my own personal memories that the book conjures up rather than the actual book itself, because that’s what I do. So come to think of it, for this discussion of My Effin’ Life, you probably don’t need to be a lifelong RUSH fan, and if you already took my advice above, sorry about the upcoming lack of RUSH talk.
What I enjoyed most about this read was just how pleasant and, well, normal, Geddy comes across. He paints a similar portrait of his bandmates, guitarist Alex Lifeson and drummer/lyricist Neil Peart. For being a trio of lifetime rockers with a rabid, loyal fanbase, a band that has toured the world countless times and earned innumerable accolades, all three seemed to be decent, well-adjusted dudes through it all. It’s a sea change from so many other rock n roll auto-bios where the dude basically runs feral for 75% of the book until some self-imposed disaster hits, causing the dude to reel it in and wisen up in the last couple chapters, but you can tell that there’s still a lingering maniac inside that dude as he reflects back. It’s just who the dude is. But not these three dudes.
Geddy and the boys, while indulging in their share of excesses in their youth, never dialed it up to that cliched rock n’ roll level. They were normal journeyman joes who just grew up and grew old together, making badass loud profound space age music along the way. And I think it was the relatability of these guys that kept leading me to relate back to my own group of lifelong pals and all of our hijinks over the years, especially the ones soundtracked by RUSH tunes.
Most of us have a “My band” band, right? A band that you’ve attached yourself to for most of your life, consider yourself the band’s ombudsman in your group of friends, and you assume that when people think of that band, they think of you first. My “My Band” bands have always been Tom Waits and Fishbone. Whether or not others would agree that I deserve these, I don’t know. RUSH was our buddy Aye Aye’s band, though. And everyone did and still does agree that RUSH is Aye Aye’s band.
Aye Aye (aka Thane aka Walker) had been a RUSH fan since he was a young kid, and I believe it was our 9th grade year in ‘89 or ‘90 when Aye Aye brought forth their music to our friend group, not unlike the protagonist of 2112 presenting his unearthed ancient guitar to the priests of Syrinx. Unlike those oppressive temple overseers, though, we did not shun Aye Aye for this gift from the gods, but rather embraced him as our rock n’ roll savior. We all quickly pivoted to RUSH super fandom and we looked to Aye Aye for guidance, to teach us and lead us through the long, complex catalog of this mesmerizing Canadian power trio.
RUSH was already deep into their career, having achieved international acclaim and playing packed arenas, before Aye Aye would bring their music into our lives, which was right around the release of the 1989 album, Presto. As Geddy recounts in the book, this was the tour where those huge inflatable rabbits were introduced as stage props, and holy crap, I’d forgotten all about those! I was actually at that show! My first RUSH concert, as well as my first actual rock n’ roll concert. We RUSH neophytes were driven to the Omni arena (do I remember that correctly?) in Atlanta by a buddy’s mom in her Honda Civic, singing “Show Don’t Tell” in the backseat while our buddy up front yelled at us to knock it off.
That was also the show where we ran into the longhaired metalheads from school, but a grade or two above us, smoking cigs in the arena concourse. My buddy Leo tried to impress them by bumming one of their smokes. Leo, not yet the chainsmoking lover of cigarettes that he would later become and remain for many years (you might say that his “My band” was Marlboro Mediums), did not know how to light a cigarette. The metal head held up a lit Bic, and Leo nervously reached out and put the tip of the cigarette into the flame, as if he was sticking a s’more into a fire. The metal head groaned and said, “Put the cigarette in your mouth, asshole.”
So I guess Leo learned how to smoke from the Presto album.
I like that stupid story, and it reminds me of another stupid story attached to another RUSH album; the third studio album, and second with drummer Neil Peart, Caress of Steel.
Or in this case, Caress of Steal…
It would have been shortly after the Presto concert when Leo and I were at a B. Dalton’s bookstore in Town Center mall. There was a small display of “classic rock” cassette tapes for sale, and Leo and I decided we were each going to steal one. We were not the shoplifting type, and in fact were pretty decent rule-following high schoolers at the time, but hey, don’t knock it til you tried it, right? Leo grabbed Steppenwolf’s The Second and I snatched Caress of Steel. That part was easy. But we were too chicken shit to actually exit the store and so we ended up loitering in that B. Dalton for, hell, at least another hour or two, trying to get up our nerve to simply cross the threshold back out into the mall, looking suspicious as hell as we walked up and down every aisle repeatedly forever. The only reason we didn’t get caught, I have to assume, is because the employee was either too lazy to deal with it or took pity on the pathetic posers who chose a bookstore to be their trial run in anti-social behavior.
So I guess I learned that stealing was not my calling from the Caress of Steel album.
I was drawn to Geddy’s stories about their early 80s releases of Permanent Waves, Moving Pictures, and Signals, not only because these albums contain some of their most noteworthy tracks (and was also when they really started leaning into synth), but because this phase of RUSH’s career was pretty much ubiquitous in our car stereos once my buddies and I turned 16.
Geddy reflects on a minor controversy (for lack of a better term) that arose over the years with one of their biggest hits, “Freewill” from Permanent Waves (1980). He explains how the theme of that song, and most explicitly the lyrics “I will choose freewill” has been oversimplified by a handful of listeners, turning it into a lame battle cry for excusing selfish behavior. Putting yourself above others. Or put simply (my words, not his), being an asshole. The song had higher expectations of its listeners than some may have deserved, including me and my dumb friends…
Yes, I have a personal anecdote involving the willful misinterpretation of that song. Once the gang and I were old enough to drive, we used our freshly obtained freedom to usher in a whole new phase of mobile mayhem, and one night we told our parents that we were going camping, but instead we drove across town to sneak onto an active train bridge that crossed over Lake Allatoona, 50 feet or so above the water. We planned to lay out our sleeping bags and “camp” in the rafters directly under the tracks, dangerously high over the dark water below, a remarkably stupid idea that we thankfully didn’t end up doing.
But also on the docket that night was to jump off that train bridge into the lake, another remarkably stupid idea that we did end up doing. We were pretty terrified at the prospect. Most of us, anyway. One of the more mischievous members of the gang, Dirty D, led the pack, and he crawled up on the railing and, standing up there on that rickety rod of metal, staring down into the blackness below, illuminated by moonlight and the headlight of an oncoming train, pumped himself up by yelling, “I WILL CHOOSE FREEWILL!” right before jumping.
The rest of us, afraid to jump but more afraid to be the one chicken who wouldn’t jump, all reluctantly took turns following him off the top of the train bridge. Somehow we all went home that next morning unharmed. I think we were simply too stupid to get hurt.
Leo later pointed out the ridiculous irony of the situation. Echoing Dirty D’s fierce cry of independence, “I WILL CHOOSE FREEWILL,” each of us performed the exact opposite of freewill. We literally did what pissed off parents ask after their child has succumbed to peer pressure: “If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you jump too?”
So I guess my buddies and I learned the dangers of groupthink from the Permanent Waves album.
Tales of friendship and adventure and rock n’ roll continue throughout the book, taking us to the later years of RUSH and their last couple of albums and tours, and as Geddy talked about the making/touring of Clockwork Angels, I reflected back on that concert, the last RUSH show I attended. Back around 2012, a good 15+ years since the old high school hijinks. I went to that show with Dirty D, the same guy who led the gang off the train bridge so many years before. We’d lost touch over the years, reconnected as adults, and caught one final RUSH show together. A full circle.
Unfortunately there would not be too many more RUSH shows for anyone to attend after that tour…
As RUSH fans all know, loss is a major part of the tailend of RUSH’s multi-decade legacy. In fact, loss, in its many forms, is a prevailing theme throughout the book, and Geddy covers it with an empathy and humanity that deepens the narrative rather than letting all the heaviness weigh it down.
While this is a book about the trajectory of a rock n roll band, at its core it’s a book about friendship. A bittersweet coming of age journey and beyond of three buddies and their legendary music that allowed me to revisit some wonderful, and wonderfully stupid, memories of my own good buddies.
And as a nice poetic wrap-up, it was Aye Aye, the friend who introduced our gang to the music of RUSH nearly 35 years ago, who gave me my copy of Geddy Lee’s My Effin’ Life. A helluva book about a helluva band that played a big role in our lives. Thanks ole pal.
Leave a Reply