The emotional song that Geddy Lee didn’t want to release
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Songwriting is almost too personal for artists. Most professionals can probably make a raw song out of a few chords and their personal feelings, but sometimes songs should be kept in the archives because they are far too raw for prime time. Although Geddy Lee usually left the emotional music to Neil Peart when he performed with Rush, he felt that his own song “Gone” was far too emotional to release when he released his own solo album.
But does it really make sense for anyone from Rush to record a solo album? The idea that the power trio still has ideas left after trying out their classics is one thing, but the idea that there’s still room for an entire album’s worth of material was certainly interesting to the bassist.
Although Lee had been the face of the group for years, they were close to leaving the band when they first went through the album. Contrails. Although it felt like the group could have continued until the end of time, Peart’s rug was pulled out from under him when his daughter and wife died in quick succession, leading him to take a break from music and drive all over the United States.
Lee and Alex Lifeson didn’t want to just sit around doing nothing, and during these years Lee had amassed a collection of songs that would become part of his solo album. My favorite headache. While someone like Matt Cameron of Pearl Jam and Soundgarden could never achieve what Peart did on a record, not every track was intended to be a prog epic.
This was an excuse for Lee to let off steam, but out of respect for Peart, he made sure to keep “Gone” off the track list. Given that his friend had survived the greatest tragedy anyone could experience, Lee felt it would be inappropriate to write a song about grieving a loss whose wound still hurts.
Speak with volume up, Lee made a conscious decision not to include the song on his solo album. He says: “One of them was written right after Neil’s daughter Selena died. The song is called ‘Gone’. It’s a song about loss. And even though it’s not directly about Selena, it resonates because it’s about all of that loss and what you feel when someone in your life is suddenly gone and you’re left with these feelings that you can’t understand.”
While Lee preferred to talk about lighter topics, Peart was not one to suppress his own emotions. contrails, Half of the record sounds like the drummer is processing his grief in real time, almost as if letting out all his energy in songs is a way for him to heal from the trauma rather than being too exploitative.
But would we have expected anything different from Peart? His entire writing process revolved around figuring out who he was outside of the celebrity bubble, and while he had a lot to process, he made sure he came out the other side a stronger person. Lee may have written a song that fit what Peart was saying, but at the time, the story he was singing wasn’t really his to tell.
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