“The 80s was tough for me as a guitarist.”

Alex Lifeson looks back on the Rush’s progression through the 80s, aka ‘the keyboard era’.

DEV

The first 15 years of Rush’s recording career can be divided into clear chapters, each consisting of four studio albums bookended by a live album. Signals kicked off their third chapter – aka ‘the keyboard era’. Its successors saw Rush charting a slightly wayward course, torn between the synth-heavy sounds of the moment (largely down to Geddy Lee) and their traditional guitar-centred sounds (via Alex Lifeson). “I guess I just fought for my guitar rights for years after Signals,” says Lifeson. “Of course, on the albums that followed, we really developed the whole keyboard character. But it was a bit of a fight.” Grace Under Pressure (1984) – co-produced by Peter Henderson after U2 associate Steve Lillywhite blew out Rush to work with Simple Minds – went some way to…

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Prog (Digital) - 1 Issue, Issue 139

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