Forty-four years after joining Rush (with guitarist Alex Lifeson and original drummer John Rutsey in 1968 before Neil Peart joined in 1974), bassist-singer Geddy Lee still finds it impossible to be jaded about creativity.
"I don't see how you can be really, it's too interesting," he told QMI Agency in Toronto while promoting the band's new concept album, Clockwork Angels, out June 12, with a Canadian tour in the fall.
"I mean writers, painters, whatever you do that involves that creative thing where something comes out of nothing. I think it's really thrilling. I just always count myself as lucky that I've been able to make a living doing something that's that abstract. It's a treat for me. So to be able to keep doing it is a priviledge."
For the record, Lee doesn't feel his 58 years either.
"It's hard to fathom your actually that age 'cause you don't think in context of your number," he said. "I still feel fairly childish so I don't like to accept that number I'm aging into. I think the same thing is true as the band. You still feel like a band that we're still lucky and we're getting away with something by being in a rock band."
And like Peter Pan, you never get old. Or at least never feel like you do.
"It's a youthful game and you can let yourself get old with it but one of the secret rewards of being in a band or being a musician or that you're kind of allowed to side-step the rules of your adulthood. Rock is such a teen-connected thing. We think in terms if you're going to rock you better have some youthful energy there or it ain't rock no more."
Lee says in some ways he still feels like the 15-year-old guy who joined his buddy Lifeson's band Rush all those years ago.
"I do, I've got more confidence obviously and there's things that I know that I can do where when I was younger I didn't know what I could do, I was just looking to prove myself," he said. "And now I think I just look to improve myself."