Classic Rock
Geddy Lee released demo inspired by Neil Peart’s family tragedy
Back in 1997 the late Rush drummer and main lyricist Neil Peart experienced a tragedy in his family since his daugther Selena Taylor died in a car accident and one year later his mother passed away and Neil Peart said that it was a result of losing their daughter.
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After those losses Rush took a break to give Peart time to heal and it was when Geddy Lee decided to make a solo album since the band wasn’t touring or recording. The result was “My Favorite Headache” released in 2000. Now, 23 years later, the musician released “Gone” and “I Am… You Are”, two demos from that album. According to him the track “Gone” was inspired by all the tragedy involving Peart’s family at that moment.
Hear the unreleased Geddy Lee demos: “Gone” and “I Am… You Are”:
He talked about “Gone” in an interview with Q104,3: “When you lose somebody, you relive a lot of your other losses. And I was thinking about, ‘How does one deal with a sudden disappearance of someone from your life, especially a daughter?’ So I wrote this song with Ben [Mink].
“It was the first song we wrote for ‘My Favourite Headache’, and we demoed it, but it just felt… it was beautiful, but I felt it was too raw. It was too close to the bone. I didn’t think it was appropriate to release it, out of respect for Neil and the way he was. I didn’t feel it was right. So we shelved it.”
“I Am… You Are” was “about relationships. It’s about me in the midst of a difficult conversation with my wife, which happened more than once in my life. I think the personal nature of that made it also maybe something I wasn’t prepared to follow through with,” Geddy Lee said.
Recently the Rush vocalist, keyboardist and bassist said that there is a possibility that Rush might comeback with another drummer and tour around the world.
