Rush singer Geddy Lee revealed the replacement bass he used on “Tom Sawyer” when his go to bass wasn’t quite working right in a new NPR World Cafe interview. Geddy Lee made a horrible Eric Clapton revelation yesterday.
“I didn’t use a Jazz bass in the ’70s because I was a hardcore Rickenbacker man, and my tech at the time said – we had a day off in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and so he said, ‘Why don’t we go to the pawnshop?’ We walked to this pawn shop and hanging on the wall was this blond-neck Jazz bass, and I said, ‘I don’t have a Jazz bass.’ So I haggled with the guy for five minutes.
He wanted $200 for it, so for $200 – no case, he threw in a cardboard case, but I walked out with this Jazz bass, and I didn’t use it very often, for a number of years it just was a spare dressing-room bass, that kind of thing. And then during the recording of [1981’s] ‘Moving Pictures,’ I was having trouble getting a tone out of my Rickie for the song ‘Tom Sawyer,’ so I pulled that one out and we got a tone for it right away. From that day forward, it became my number one.”
Lee also discussed The Who bassist John Entwhisle, who he recently leaked a brutal secret about. “He was the man. He was the first real collector of basses too – he was a fanatical collector of basses and of guitars. Even though he didn’t play the guitar, he collected them and hung them on his walls. He was a collector, and he was just… What’s the word? Pioneer.
He created a whole different style of rock ‘n’ roll bass playing, and he introduced a tone to the palette of rock ‘n’ roll for the bass that didn’t exist before – very bright, very aggressive. And he was always playing. The first time I heard ‘My Generation,’ along with every bass player of my era, incredible.” Geddy Lee ‘slept with’ a big Rush name.
