HeadRUSH

Mus​i​cRadar​.com recently spoke with Alex Life­son and asked him what he thought were his three best gui­tar solos. Alex chose Freewill, Kid Gloves and Lime­light. Very inter­est­ing. Here’s what Lerxst had to say about each solo:

1. Lime­light (1981)

I love the elas­tic­ity of the solo. It’s a very emo­tional piece of music for me to play. The song is about lone­li­ness and iso­la­tion, and I think the solo reflects that. There’s a lot of heart in it. It’s a feel thing: you have to feel a solo as you play it, oth­er­wise it’s going to sound stiff. I never had that prob­lem with Lime­light. The first time I laid it down in the stu­dio, I feel a real attach­ment to it and I could tell it was spe­cial. Even now, it’s my favorite solo to per­form live. I never get tired of it. Each time I’m about to play it, I take a deep breath and I exhale on that first note. I guess that sounds corny, but for me, it releases something.

2. Kid Gloves (1984)

That song is from our Grace Under Pres­sure album. What I like about the solo is, it’s the oppo­site of Lime­light: it’s got a hip, kind of slinky atti­tude, a lit­tle goofy humor. When I play it, I feel a cer­tain con­fi­dence, also like a prankster, which is not the way I am in real life at all. What’s funny about it, too, is that it has a plot to it, and I only real­ized that after I recorded it for the first time — I never have a plot in mind when I’m record­ing solos; I always just kind of wing them. The Kid Gloves solo guided me; it’s like it knew what it wanted to be and I just had to allow myself to follow.

3. Freewill (1980)

It’s a really hard solo to play. I think I feel a cer­tain amount of pride in that fact alone. Every time I play it, I’m amazed I got through it. It’s so fre­netic and excit­ing. The rhythm sec­tion too — Geddy and Neil are all over the place. It’s prob­a­bly one of the most ambi­tious pieces of music Rush has ever done. In a sense, everybody’s solo­ing at the same time. Record­ing it, I didn’t have any­thing planned; I was just respond­ing to what the other guys did. Basi­cally, I was just try­ing to keep up! But I think it worked out pretty well. I’m rather happy with it, and I can usu­ally find fault with every­thing I do.

Many thanks to Rushis​a​band​.com for the info.