Alex Lifeson - Rush - Guitarist

(Credits: Far Out / Shipguy)

Thu 22 May 2025 12:00, UK

The story of Canadian progressive rock trio Rush chronicles an inverse trajectory of classic rock’s supposed narrative. Burnished by a love of Yes and Genesis, Rush’s classic line-up was cemented for 1975’s Fly by Night with the addition of drummer and principal songwriter Neil Peart and dared to hit the ground running just as their beloved prog was lapsing into stuffy parody.

Soldiering on as if punk never happened, Rush would end the decade as one of the era’s biggest stadium sellers. It’s the 1980s that yielded Rush’s commercial peak. Pushing chunky synthesisers to the fore with the Oberheim OB-X and Moog Taurus bass pedals, the tighter compositions and new wave veneer brought the trio to the peaks of the MTV era and occupied a wholly niche intersection between synthpop affection and prized patch on a metalhead’s sleeveless denim.

Such a creative eclecticism was encouraged in no small part by a band that, ultimately, all roads lead to when charting swathes of bands’ foundational influences. When boiling down the key artist who paved the way for Rush and popular music in general, guitarist Alex Lifeson had to credit the little Merseybeat group The Beatles with setting the perennial example across rock, pop and beyond. “…I start breaking it down into terms of structure and tone and the kinds of sounds they got, and George Martin‘s incredible production,” he told Ken Dashow on WAXQ’s Q104.3. “Throughout their history, they are undeniably the most remarkable musical unit in the history of music in our world…”

It’s hard to disagree. The Beatles’ legacy has suffered from a suffocating rock heritage platitudes of “greatest band ever” tags, which quite rightly rub newer generations of music fans up the wrong way and encourage rejection. The fact is, The Beatles are an infinitely more fallible and interesting band than immortal Boomer fawning would indicate otherwise.

Every step of the way, The Beatles were striving for something new. Even before their very first ‘Love Me Do’ single, the band resisted the EMI professional Martin’s push to record Mitch Murray’s ‘How Do You Do It’ in favour of their own material, helping to usher in the era of the internal pop songwriter over merely covering established numbers. Over time, the rock ‘n’ roll and R&B renditions that smatter their early output would fade to make way for John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s confident and dynamic songcraft, with brief but vital assistance from lead guitarist George Harrison.

The Beatles’ creative unit grew to an astonishing height of ambition and scope, giving artists a license to jump into the world of the avant-garde, folk pieces, proto heavy metal, or children’s novelty songs into their extensive oeuvre. It’s a pace of work unlikely to ever be seen again, 12 studio albums, we’re sticking to the original UK releases here, and a plethora of singles and EPs across barely eight years.

From Rush’s Lifeson to Kurt Cobain and Billie Eilish, The Beatles’ indelible legacy looks set to stretch beyond Elvis, Elgar, or even Mozart.

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