The band Geddy Lee was “in ecstasy” listening to: “We thought, ‘What is this?’”
Progressive rock isn’t really the kind of genre that you can turn your brain off listening to. For all of the great singles that have come out of the experimental side of rock, there are only so many times a band can ask their audience to dance along to an odd time signature before they start getting slightly confused. Geddy Lee may have been able to put together different layers of bass virtuosity across every song, but even he admitted that there was some power behind turning off his mind and throwing on some Led Zeppelin.
Then again, Zeppelin was never the easiest group to listen to, either. Looking back on some of their greatest works, songs like ‘Black Dog’ or ‘The Crunge’ are much more complicated than most people realise, almost like they were trying to sell the idea of making danceable music with a few more beats thrown into every measure.
And for all of the legendary status surrounding ‘Stairway to Heaven’, that song seems to be famous more for its grandiose structure than actually being a complicated arrangement. It’s certainly ambitious and goes through many twists and turns, but it’s hard to call it complicated now that it’s been ingrained into the collective psyche for years.
Before all that mythologising, Jimmy Page was still fresh out of the Yardbirds looking to put a group together, and Lee remembered being in musical heaven when he got their debut record, telling Mojo, “As soon as the first Zeppelin LP dropped, we all bought it and thought, What is this? It had a kinda Humble Pie vibe, but it was broader, and the brushstrokes were bolder. We were in ecstasy, jabbering about them non-stop.”
Though Lee had been working on his bass skills for a few years, this is when he truly found his calling as a rock musician. He had a clear vision for what he wanted to be, but maybe that vision was a little bit too on-the-nose when Rush first started putting their first tunes together.
Regardless of how classic it stands today, the Canadian icons’ first record does have a few too many Zeppelin traces for a new up-and-coming band. Even though many people drag Greta Van Fleet through the mud for their Zeppelin similarities, a song like ‘Finding My Way’ was practically the same thing, only with a lot more energy.
It’s all about how a band builds on that, though, and Rush wasn’t about to become the next copy of Led Zeppelin. No, they had the vision to become progressive rock gods, and once Neil Peart took over for original drummer John Rutsey, Fly By Night put many of those Zeppelin comparisons to rest the minute the song ‘Anthem’ started.
Sure, Zeppelin could write a song like ‘Black Dog’ or take their listeners on expanded journeys on ‘Kashmir’, but writing a story as surreal as ‘By-Tor and the Snow Dog’ or ‘Xanadu’ is something that belonged to Rush the minute that they locked in. Fly By Night was still a long way from their breakthrough in 2112, but no matter how far they strayed from their roots, Lee always had that little hint of Robert Plant in his high range and the fire in his belly from hearing ‘Dazed and Confused’.