Geddy Lee likes his wine. The singer and bassist with Canadian rock band Rush has a cellar collection at home which totals some 5,000 bottles, and on tour he's always on the look-out for a new variety to try.
"I've been drinking a lot on the tour," chuckles the 57-year-old. "Days off are usually my evening to go out and find a good restaurant and drink some wine; I also always carry my portable eight-bottle cellar with me..."
Like a fine wine, Rush seem to get better and better with age - uncorking a spectacular three-and-a-half hour show on their current Time Machine Tour, which rolls into the LG Arena this weekend.
"Yeah, it's a working job, manual labour... but it's great work if you can get it," Lee jokes.
Playing full pelt for that long is no mean feat in itself, but especially when you've known each other - and many of the songs - for longer than most folks' marriages.
Lee says the secret is not only a shared musical vision, but the ability to have fun at the same time:
"We're really pleased with the way we're playing on this tour," says Lee. "In all immodesty I think we're playing as well as we've ever played; I feel pretty good about that.
"We're all very different personalities - I think that's a contrast and a healthy thing; we all have certain strong things in common too - we have a great sense of pride in our ability to make each other laugh, and that is almost like a nightly challenge, always in the background, you know - it's a one-upmanship we have with each other, making each other laugh and that even crosses over onto the stage.
"We're not just pretending, we are having fun," he insists. "Everything else about touring is not so pleasant - days off are great, but on a show day there's no better time than on stage.
"Your secret goal every night is to see if you can crack up one of your bandmates during a song and crack him up so bad that he'll make a mistake as a result; Alex is the clear winner on a nightly basis, because he's such a goof and an idiot.
"The other thing we share is a remarkably similar sensibility of the kind of music we want to make - that's no small part of why we're together after all these years." Rush
?Alex the goof' is Alex Lifeson, Rush's guitarist and Lee's childhood friend who he joined in Rush in 1968. Drummer Neil Peart, who completes the trio, took his seat in 1974.
Since their self-titled debut that year, Rush's unchanged line-up has released 19 studio albums and sold more than 40 million units, with countless platinum albums and awards - although oddly they've never got their hands on a Grammy, despite several nominations.
Work on their 20th studio album, Clockwork Angels, is due to start in earnest in the autumn. Lee hopes to have it finished by Christmas. Two new songs are aired in the current show.
This year also sees the 30th anniversary of the release of Moving Pictures, one of their most successful and best-loved albums, featuring hit singles Tom Sawyer and Limelight - and live favourites YYZ and Red Barchetta.
To mark the occasion, Rush are playing Moving Pictures in its entirety as part of the marathon Time Machine set.
Read More http://www.birminghampost.net/life-leisure-birmingham-guide/birmingham-culture/music-in-birmingham/2011/05/20/rush-are-laughing-in-the-limelight-65233-28709648/#ixzz1pbRA4wfx Geddy Lee likes his wine. The singer and bassist with Canadian rock band Rush has a cellar collection at home which totals some 5,000 bottles, and on tour he's always on the look-out for a new variety to try.
"I've been drinking a lot on the tour," chuckles the 57-year-old. "Days off are usually my evening to go out and find a good restaurant and drink some wine; I also always carry my portable eight-bottle cellar with me..."
Like a fine wine, Rush seem to get better and better with age - uncorking a spectacular three-and-a-half hour show on their current Time Machine Tour, which rolls into the LG Arena this weekend.
"Yeah, it's a working job, manual labour... but it's great work if you can get it," Lee jokes.
Playing full pelt for that long is no mean feat in itself, but especially when you've known each other - and many of the songs - for longer than most folks' marriages.
Lee says the secret is not only a shared musical vision, but the ability to have fun at the same time:
"We're really pleased with the way we're playing on this tour," says Lee. "In all immodesty I think we're playing as well as we've ever played; I feel pretty good about that.
"We're all very different personalities - I think that's a contrast and a healthy thing; we all have certain strong things in common too - we have a great sense of pride in our ability to make each other laugh, and that is almost like a nightly challenge, always in the background, you know - it's a one-upmanship we have with each other, making each other laugh and that even crosses over onto the stage.
"We're not just pretending, we are having fun," he insists. "Everything else about touring is not so pleasant - days off are great, but on a show day there's no better time than on stage.
"Your secret goal every night is to see if you can crack up one of your bandmates during a song and crack him up so bad that he'll make a mistake as a result; Alex is the clear winner on a nightly basis, because he's such a goof and an idiot.
"The other thing we share is a remarkably similar sensibility of the kind of music we want to make - that's no small part of why we're together after all these years." Rush
?Alex the goof' is Alex Lifeson, Rush's guitarist and Lee's childhood friend who he joined in Rush in 1968. Drummer Neil Peart, who completes the trio, took his seat in 1974.
Since their self-titled debut that year, Rush's unchanged line-up has released 19 studio albums and sold more than 40 million units, with countless platinum albums and awards - although oddly they've never got their hands on a Grammy, despite several nominations.
Work on their 20th studio album, Clockwork Angels, is due to start in earnest in the autumn. Lee hopes to have it finished by Christmas. Two new songs are aired in the current show.
This year also sees the 30th anniversary of the release of Moving Pictures, one of their most successful and best-loved albums, featuring hit singles Tom Sawyer and Limelight - and live favourites YYZ and Red Barchetta.
To mark the occasion, Rush are playing Moving Pictures in its entirety as part of the marathon Time Machine set.
"I have a lot of very strong memories [of making the album] - it was a real watershed moment in terms of how you make albums," Lee recalls.
"It was a rather intense session that began in the winter and ended in the spring; it was a lot of fun and it was a great experience.
"We holed up in Morin Heights, Quebec in a kind of ski area about an hour north of Montreal; the studio was built in this beautiful setting and you stayed in a little house on the other end of a lake that you shared with the studio.
"It was the dead of winter, it was very cold and that's why you tended towards cabin fever by the end of making that record," says Lee.
"I don't think we knew what the hell we were doing by the end," he laughs. "I think we'd been up there so long and worked so hard on it you just lost all your objectivity. Rush
"I remember when I had driven up there, the weather was okay and I had a sort of sports car at the time and the record took way longer than we expected ?cos we had some technical issues with the mixing console - it was one of the first kind of computerised mixing consoles in Canada - and of course as the seasons changed it started going a bit wonky, so we were way overdue to deliver the record and it was very stressful.
"I remember driving back to Montreal and it was a terrible snowstorm and I'm in this little stupid sports car driving Terry Brown our producer and his dog in the back and I was supposed to go on a little holiday with my wife - who had already left for the holiday by the time I got back.
"I couldn't believe I got back to Toronto in one piece; I grabbed a bag, went to the airport and flew to Barbados and my wife picked me up at the airport; I must have just looked like a melting lump of Geddy..."
Happily all the hard work paid off, and Moving Pictures is now rightly seen as a classic - and a massive seller, with more than four million copies sold worldwide.
Lee has his own theories on why the record has done - and survived - so well: "It's interesting, you know, being one of the few bands that's been around long enough to actually have some perspective on its past; Moving Pictures has survived rather well, especially for a hard rock album; there's something about the melodies and the combination of the edginess of the record yet there's a melodic content that has allowed it to age somewhat gracefully, which surprises me but is something I can see now playing some of these songs for the 30th year.
"Camera Eye was a song I really did not want to play live," he confesses. "I just felt it hadn't aged very well - yet when you bring your present day attitude to it, you can take it to another place and I have to say it's now one of my favourite moments in the entire show."
Lee admits playing for 210 minutes every night can take its toll, but experience and regime are key factors to ensuring they're always at the top of their game:
"Honest to god I train and work really hard at staying healthy before a tour," he says. "I really have a very strict regime during show days; my trainer has designed a way of keeping me healthy - it never works but I think he tries anyway!
"You learn what you can take and what you can't take," he adds. "For me it's really important to get a lot of sleep. Being the primary singer it affects me in a different way from the other guys - but I don't know how Neil drums for three hours the way he drums, and rides motorcycles - he's a mad man - but for me the next day is all about sleep.
"After 40-plus years you learn who you are; I'm a bit paranoid, I've become a bit of a germaphobe because of how easy it is to get a throat infection.
"I'm fanatical with washing my hands and staying out of draughts and I do have a fear of hockey arenas because we've done a bunch on this tour already and sure enough I got a throat infection halfway through the tour - coming into these really cold buildings with so much ice on the ground, sooner or later it's gonna get you because the path of least resistance is your poor tired voicebox!"
* Rush play the LG Arena on Sunday. A two disc deluxe anniversary edition of Moving Pictures is out now.
While record sales are on the decline, live music, it seems, has never been more popular. Or more lucrative. A by-product of this - combined with the opportunity to cash in on the nostalgia trip of the over 30s - is that more artists are turning to their back catalogues for inspiration when it comes to touring.
Rush's performance of their classic 1981 album Moving Pictures this weekend is one example - but it's a growing trend.
Last year, Echo and the Bunnymen toured their classic 1984 album Ocean Rain; Primal Scream are currently performing their 1991 opus Screamadelica in its entirety to mark the 20th anniversary of release; in June, Roger Waters does the same with Pink Floyd's epic The Wall. December sees Stourbridge's finest The Wonder Stuff celebrate the 20th anniversary of Never Loved Elvis with its first ever full live rendition.
So why are more and more bands turning album running orders into ready-made set lists?
Simon Fowler, frontman with Brummies Ocean Colour Scene, recently completed a UK tour marking the band's 21st anniversary, which included two sets each night - one of which was their 1996 million seller Moseley Shoals in its original order.
He sees the popularity of such shows as simply a love of nostalgia: "I guess people just like looking back onto a period of their life," says Simon. "Perhaps it was growing up, when they were leaving school, got their first car or going out for the first time, and they associate it with a bit of romance - if you have romance in the back of car; I think we used to call it something else!"
"We wouldn't be allowed to leave the building without playing Riverboat Song and The Day We Caught The Train; they've always featured, but it's interesting to play them in the album order," he says.
"It's strange as well; The Day We Caught The Train is the second track on the album and that's pretty much how we usually end the night; the opening night in Newcastle we played Riverboat and The Day We Caught The Train, I said goodbye to the audience and went to walk off!"
Last year, UB40 marked the 30 year anniversary of the release of debut album Signing Off with a special intimate gig at the Hare and Hounds in Kings Heath - where they played their very first gig as an eight piece.
Only a few hundred were lucky enough to see them play there, however, so a few months later the band toured the UK with a similar set - included the album, as it was recorded.
"People know what they're getting in advance, I suppose," says saxophone player Brian Travers. "It was a wonderful opportunity for us to go back and see how much we'd changed. Also, it's a bit of a cop-out to just play the hits; you have to challenge the audience a little."