Review: My Effin' Life

My Effin' Life by Geddy Lee
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"We're only immortal for a limited time."
-Neil Peart

There are three reasons why Rush is one of my all time favorite bands. Pratt the Professor, quoted above with lines from the underrated 1991 classic song "Dreamline" (which I've sung acapella and karaoke for various audiences in my time), was one of them. Lerxst and his wackadoodle antics are another. But perhaps none make as great an impact as the Dirk, the Deke, Geddy Lee himself.

Like many musicians of his time, he sure got into the world of sex 'n drugs 'n rock 'n roll (well, not so much the sex part, seeing as he really had one true lady love in Nancy Young, even if their relationship became strained during the band's heyday), but he also never forgot his humble beginnings as the son of Jewish immigrants and Holocaust survivors. (Chapter 3, the only real break in the linear storytelling of this memoir, relates the experiences of his mother Mary, born Manya, as she and her family struggled under the Nazi regime, up to and including long stints in the death camps.) More than once, Lee remarks on how he really shouldn't be here, not if the Nazis had had their way, so the fact that he's gone on to be one of the most accomplished musicians and artists of the 20th and 21st centuries is the prfect double-barreled middle finger to Hitler and all his followers up to now.

Much of the story is familiar to me as a Rush fan, following the stylistic evolutions of the band's sound - Led Zeppelin hard rock imitators, Neil Peart joining the band to work in his literary influences like Tolkien and Ayn Rand (though of course Peart distanced himself from Rand over the years as he realized he couldn't reckon with a philosophy that so blatantly disregarded other people's needs), long and complex suites to rival classical composers, 80s synths (Alex Lifeson would probably rant at me in a mixture of Serbian and English for saying that that era of Rush has always been my favorite, but then again I did always love the 80s synthwave style), pulling back from 80s synths in favor of 90s alternative, Peart's personal tragedies of the late 90s, and finally, the elder statesmen selling out stadiums the world over throughout the first two decades of the new millennium.

There are, however, plenty of surprises in store even for diehard fans like myself. I didn't know how much the management actively screwed the band over, especially in the early days, driving wedges between several group members until Lee, Lifeson, and Peart formed the tight knit trio we know and love. As a Bay Area boy, I would always hear about concerts at Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, but the real Bill Graham actively shut Rush out of the Bay Area scene all through the 70s, and only after seeing them grow successful in the 80s tried to entice them with custom Sonoma Valley wine bottles reading "30,000 Bay Area fans can't be wrong!" (That, plus apparently they couldn't do much but play the Cow Palace, and my parents agreed with Lee's assessment about how poorly designed that place was acoustically.) I didn't know much about Lee's personal life, but damn, is he open about the ups and downs of his marriage and how much he was to blame for most of the latter. (Nothing super dramatic, though I can only imagine how much they'd jack up the drama factor in the event of a biopic.) And perhaps the biggest surprise for me is why Rush only ever played in Asia once, because of a traumatic culture shock incident in Japan where Peart almost came to blows with a yakuza who was beating up his girlfriend in public.

At least two passersby in two different states have remarked on the sight of me reading this book, and I told them to buy a copy when they could. But first, I'll have to make sure my buddy Koda and his neighbor Jamie (who says he was a bouncer at a Rush show in Regina, Saskatchewan, in 1975) get a chance to at least enjoy the highlights of Lee's big beautiful life...

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