Alex Lifeson: Gibson interview cover new album recording.

Are you starting to get a sense of when the album might come out?

Well, you know, that’s been sort of in flux lately because we decided to go back on the road. We finished the last tour and there was such a movement to keep us out there. (laughs) And we gave in to that. You know, our intention was to get into the studio and record as soon as that brief tour ended, but that didn’t quite happen. So we’re back from this tour in July. We’ll take a short break in the summer, start recording in September and hopefully have the new album out for the start of the next tour, which would be in the spring of 2012.

Because the songwriting and recording process of the album has been drawn out, on account of the tour, have you found that the material or the concept has evolved beyond what you originally conceived?

Well, it’s hard to tell because we haven’t really gone back to the old material. Ged and I both really wanted to move forward. You know, if we start listening to the old stuff, we’ll get bogged down with reworking the arrangements. I know exactly what we would end up doing. Instead, we’d rather move forward, continue writing, then look at the whole project and see what needs to be done with it in terms of any other rearrangements or rewriting or anything like that.

Actually, that’s the benefit of looking at this as a long-term project. There’s lots of room and space to update and change things as we go along. In terms of whether it’s deviated from the original concept, it’s a little hard to say. Neil, already, has been talking about rewriting a bunch of lyrics and he has some shifts, I think, in direction maybe in mind, although he hasn’t elaborated on that yet. more

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