Book Review: “My Effin’ Life” by Geddy Lee
My Effin’ Review
It seems that the publisher behind Rush bassist and vocalist Geddy Lee’s memoirs has high hopes for them. Harper has shipped about 500,000 copies of the first edition hardcover to stores — which, if you’re an American, would amount to Gold Record status right out of the box. (If you sell that many albums as a musician, you’ve got a Gold Record in the States.) And, to be sure, this book is proving to be popular: I saw news articles in my Facebook feed (nevermind the fact that I’m not supposed to see them as a Canadian) about every whistle-stop on Lee’s book tour following the book’s release that quotes verbatim from the Q and A sessions at the end of each reading. To wit, I’ve also seen this book retailing in Shoppers Drug Mart. Let me tell you something: never in a million years would I think that a book about one of the most divisive Canadian bands ever — you either love ’em or you hate ’em — would be sold in a drugstore. If anything, this book will probably go a long way towards rekindling interest in the power trio known as Rush — whose 40-plus year musical career came to a screeching halt in 2015 with drummer and lyricist Neil Peart’s retirement and subsequent discovery that he had a brain tumour that he would succumb to.
Now, I think I can say that I might not be the world’s biggest Rush fan, but I think I can say that I was the biggest Rush fan of the small village where I grew up: Barry’s Bay, Ontario. I probably was the only Rush fan there (there’s that divisiveness again). I know a lot of Rush history, then, even as my interest in the band started to wane after their Different Stages live album in 1998. I gobbled up all the biographies and newspaper articles that were written about the band at the time and even wrote to the Toronto Sun to inform them that they screwed up on the songs that were performed at a concert I had the good fortune to attend. (Thanks, Dad!) By the way, if you’re curious, the newspaper claimed that the band played “Subdivisions” at the concert I went to. They did not. However, they did play “The Analog Kid” off of the same album, Signals. Anyhow, this goes a long way to say that I was a bit of a fanatic about the band growing up. So I naturally wanted to read Lee’s take on his life on the road and in the studio. Having said that, let’s get the elephant in the room cleared away: a lot of this book dovetails into stories that have been recounted elsewhere (with one exception: this book says nothing about guitarist Alex Lifeson’s drunken arrest in Florida in the early 2000s). So you’d be forgiven if you would think that this 500-page book could have been pruned down a bit. (Heck, it could have been easily split into two books, but more on that in a moment or two.)
However, there are things in this book that you might not have known about. Lee talks pretty candidly about his coke habit of the late ’70s and early ’80s, which I did not know about, and changes the light I had about Rush being a group of strait-laced guys you wouldn’t be ashamed of if you were caught listening to them by your parents. I also didn’t know that Lee had marital problems that required therapy not once but twice in his life. (But I guess that was a given, considering the amount of touring the band did in its heyday.) Entertainingly, there is no love lost in this tell-all, gossipy book between Lee and former tourmate Gene Simmons of KISS and producer Steve Lillywhite, who turned down an opportunity to produce the band with just two weeks to go before they were booked to be in the studio. Parts of this book are a raised middle finger to various people who made Lee angry. By the book’s end, though, the book is touching as Lee recounts and remembers those in the Rush family and elsewhere who passed away too soon before their time. Lee has dealt with a lot of loss in his friends and family, and reading this account gave me a healthy dose of respect for the dude for going through what he went through. To paraphrase Kermit the Frog, it’s not easy being Geddy Lee.
This brings me to my only criticism about this read and it’s one that I’m hesitant to make. The Rush story doesn’t begin until about page 100 of the book. The first 100 pages recount the fact that Lee’s father died when he was just 12 years old (something I didn’t know) and the horrors that both his parents went through as Holocaust survivors. Don’t get me wrong: this is an important part of the story and it needs to be told. Anyone with antisemitic tendencies needs to read those first 100 pages to understand just how horrible the Nazis were. That being said, the tonal shift between this section and the music-making is a little jarring. I felt that Lee might have been able to expand this section a little and release it as a separate book because the first part of the volume is a little heavy — and I’m not referring to the style of music Rush started out playing. Still, this is a welcome addition to Rush heads who want to get the inside scoop on the inner workings of the band, and it’s a bit of a surprise to learn that Lee could be a bit of a, well, prick with his stubbornness and determination. Still, his candor reveals just why his bandmates hung around him for so long. He’s also a real mensch. So, if you love Rush as much as I did, read this book. It’s not bad. And, besides, a half a million Rush fans can’t be wrong
Geddy Lee’s My Effin’ Life was published by Harper (HarperCollins) on November 14, 2023.
Of course, if you like what you see, please recommend this piece (click on the clapping hands icon below) and share it with your followers.
Get in touch: zacharyhoule@rogers.com
