“My Effin’ Life” – by Geddy Lee.
I don’t think I want to be a rock star anymore.
This is not the typical rock autobiography. Yes, Geddy does delve into cocaine, but he’s married to his childhood sweetheart and if you’re looking for tales of debauchery, this is not the place.
Then again, Geddy is Canadian. Most Americans have never been north of the border. But if they go, they’ll find out it’s the same, but different. Canadians tend to be very verbal, and the country is like a giant high school, everybody knows everybody and if you think you’re better than everybody else, you’re going to be torn right down.
In other words, Geddy is a regular person, just like you and me. Which is both amazing and refreshing in a world where our musical heroes live a fantasy life on private jets, yachts and private islands and in general live a much better life than you, because they’re special.
Geddy is special. Because he’s the son of Holocaust survivors.
In a world where too many deny their Jewishness, Geddy, i.e. Gary, does not. He owns it, and continues to own it. Which is refreshing in a world where too many try to pass.
That’s a feature you won’t find in the typical rock book, Geddy’s roots. He goes back to the old country, to the concentration camp, with his mother. It’s very vivid and very memorable. Geddy may give elements of growing up short shrift, but not his heritage, it made him who he is. And when his father dies long before his time, Geddy spends a year mourning according to Jewish law.
This is not your average rock star.
So, once his dad is gone (Geddy believes he died from the strenuous work and poor food in the camps), his mother doesn’t have quite the power over him that was exercised previously by the parental team. In other words, Geddy is on his own. And ultimately he drops out of high school, to play music, to make it.
But he doesn’t make it right away. It takes long enough that the average person would give up. Actually, Neil Peart had. He went to London, gave it a good run, and then came back to the Great White North to get into his father’s business. If Rush hadn’t needed a new drummer, you never would have heard of Peart, considered one of the best behind the kit ever.
As for Alex Lifeson… Like Geddy, that’s not the guitarist’s real last name. It’s the English meaning of his Serbian moniker. That’s another thing about Canada, it’s a melting pot of immigrants. They say more languages are spoken in Toronto than anywhere else on the planet. I’ve never verified this, but my experiences in T.O. seem to indicate this.
So it’s the story of boomers who experienced the Beatles, and then Cream… I went out with a Gen-X lawyer who said it’s the same as it’s ever been. That if you don’t get it, you’re too old, that today’s youngsters are just as passionate about music as their forebears. That’s hogwash. Unless you were there, you’ve got no idea of the impact of the Beatles. Guys grew their hair, they picked up guitars, the music was EVERYTHING!
So the goal is to play original music, and then you hit the road.
Geddy gives a lot of credit to his manager Ray Danniels. Then again, he disses Ray later in the book, for cutting financial corners (not screwing the band, just saving money) and not booking them in exotic places like Brazil earlier. Geddy is stunned at the passion of the fans in South America. Who knew? But music travels everywhere.
So ultimately Cliff Burnstein gives a thumbs-up and the band gets signed to Mercury and…
This is when it starts to get repetitive. The band plays night after night, but since they’re openers, not that long. And then they get into a station wagon and drive hours to the next gig.
Turns out Neil Peart is a reader, and he gets Geddy hooked on books. And when they finally graduate to a bus, they watch the same movies over and over and over, quoting lines to each other.
In other words, it sounds incredibly BORING!
There are so many hours to kill. And they end up with nicknames for each other and inside jokes, it’s positively adolescent, but they’re grown men on a grind.
Yes, every year is the same. Make an album, tour incessantly, make another album, it goes on for more than a decade exactly like this. As for the rest of life…
Well, Geddy’s girlfriend now wife starts a fashion business and those in the industry have no idea she’s even married to Geddy. And when it gets really bad, they go to counseling, but Geddy says first and foremost he likes to work, and his wife is a saint, she did the child-rearing, kept the household alive and intact. And if work called, Geddy went. Work came first.
Then again, this is something that amateurs, wannabes, don’t understand. That it’s nearly impossible to make it, and if you want to you have to work around the clock, sacrificing so much. A lot of which most people refuse to give up.
Now as the years wear on and success grows, there are buses, and occasionally private jets, but it never really sounds luxurious. It sounds like work, and a few creature comforts to make the work just a bit more comfortable.
As for the work…
Every album is covered. The most interesting part of making the albums is choosing a producer. The band wants the feedback, which you don’t get if you produce yourself. They want enthusiasm, direction, and…
Geddy’s fully aware that Rush is not a traditional, mainstream act. The band expects no radio airplay, when that was everything, and for a long time gets none. They’re building the band on the road, like I said above, night after night. And the bigger they get, the less respect they receive. And Geddy is not magnanimous, he says: “Fact is, to this day I have a long f*cking memory for people who treat me badly.” Like Billy Preston, who parties with them all night and then never seems to remember that they’ve met. Then again, Robert Plant goes out of his way to be nice.
And then come the disasters.
If you’re a Rush fan, you know them. If you’re not, I won’t mention them because I don’t want to kill the element of surprise.
Yes, you can read and enjoy “My Effin’ Life” even if you’re not a Rush fan, even if you’ve never heard a Rush song. Read the Acknowledgements and you’ll find out that Geddy had help, but the book reads like Geddy wrote it.
As for Geddy… I was constantly trying to put him in a slot. On one hand, he was like a kid I went to high school with. But in other ways, he’s a musician, which is its own breed, which most people who want to be stars never realize. It’s not exactly that Geddy has airs, then again, he goes on about how bossy he can be, how he micromanages things. He oversees mixing and mastering and the albums are finished because they have to be released so the band can go on the road, otherwise he’d tinker with them forever.
And all this goes on for decades, but then the bodies of Neil and Alex start to wear out. You may think you want to play forever, but there’s attrition and aging and Neil says he wants to retire.
Geddy still hasn’t metabolized this, never mind Peart’s passing. It was the three of them, playing off each other, how can it be Rush with only two?
Which of course is fascinating when the Stones are on the road with only two. And other bands ply the boards with only one original member. It’s hard to give up. That roar, that adulation you get back from the crowd, you can’t get it anywhere else.
So Geddy now goes on walking tours with his wife. And plays with his grandkid. But he’s still hankering to play music. But not exactly sure how to move forward, now that the tragedies and pandemic are in the rearview mirror.
Now if you’re a dedicated rock fan, you know Rush. You heard “Tom Sawyer” on the radio, more. This is not foreign territory. Rush was a hit act before, during and after the MTV era. They have a place in the firmament. And probably, unless you’re a hard core fan, “My Effin’ Life” is just another book you’re not going to read.
I only picked it up because of the good reviews. And in truth, it’s long. I don’t mean that it’s hard to read, it’s just that you’re going along, deeply involved, and then at some point you realize it’s the same cycle over and over again and then…
Well, then the changes begin.
But before that…
I’m glad that Rush dedicated themselves and made this music. But if you think you want to be in a rock and roll band, you should read this. At Berklee and Belmont too. Because the flash, the partying, the money, is only a tiny bit of the overall picture. Rush has to create this music out of thin air. They don’t go to the publisher for songs, they don’t employ co-writers, they build it fragment by fragment. And although the band tends to agree, there are moments of dissension, like when Alex protests about the inclusion of keyboards.
And Geddy talks about having to learn all this music and play it all on stage. It’s one thing to make the record, but to perform it live?
Eventually Rush is so successful that they can do An Evening With… In other words, play for hours with no opening act. And this is extremely satisfying. But it’s still only three hours out of the day. The other twenty one you’re coming down from the show, you’re traveling, you’re killing time until the next gig. Meanwhile, your kid is growing up without you, your marriage is strained. You’re part of a self-contained unit, it’s not like you’re putting down roots in your hometown, joining clubs and cementing relationships. In truth, it’s an endless circus wherein promoters and other musicians become your buddies, and if this is your chosen line of work, kudos.
But we’ve become inured to the flash. We think it’s all fun and games.
Not that Geddy is complaining, it’s just that reading along I said to myself that this is not how I would have chosen to live my life.
Then again, I am not a musician.
Geddy Lee is. This is his story, complete. No punches are pulled, he’s not trying to impress you, he’s just telling you how it all went down. How he was bitten by the bug and had to follow the music, the rest of life be damned.
Honestly, I rarely read these rock books. It’s hagiography, they leave the good stuff out. But I found “My Effin’ Life” satisfying. I’d still like to know more about the money, how much was made, how much was spent and where it is now. Geddy does say the band sold its publishing. Then again, that was back in 2014, I wonder if they’re kicking themselves that they didn’t hold out a little longer for the Merck money.
Then again, Geddy can always make more music. What else is he going to do?
