Alex Lifeson,Geddy Lee: premier guitar interview

Some of the new songs—like the title track—have a really live, spontaneous feel. Did you track any parts together this time?

Lifeson: Sometimes, but not very often. Typically, Ged and I will work in [Apple] Logic with a drum machine or samples, and then we’ll give that to Neil and he’ll work on his drum arrangements, and then we’ll develop it from there. But with this record, we gave him the music and there ended up being a lot of changes in the lyrics as we went along. When it came to actually recording, Nick [Raskulinecz, co-producer] wanted to record off the floor from the first day forward—which was really unusual and a big surprise for Neil, but he embraced it and ended up loving it. His playing is just a lot wilder and less thought out. It’s more reactive to music that, in a lot of ways, he’s hearing for the first time. Nick really prodded him to take different approaches—so it was really quite a palette. Consequently, when he’d get drum tracks done at the end of the day, we’d import them back into Logic, and then redo our parts to what he’d done, and we’d bounce back and forth like that a couple of times … sometimes four or five versions. And then, once those drum parts were established, we’d go in and redo all our parts.

Alex Lifeson basks in the echoing glory of his favorite new signature Les Paul at a September 18 show in Auburn Hills, Michigan. “I gravitated to [it] for probably 60 percent of the record,” he says.

This is the way we’ve worked for a long time:

Full interview: http://www.premierguitar.com/Magazine/Issue/2012/Nov/Interview_Rushs_Alex_Lifeson_and_Geddy_Lee.aspx