That was a very important friend to have. He was older than us and he was the only one who had a car. The guy that lived next door to me, Gary Cooper, was the bass player. I had a friend named John Rutsey who played drums, and we had a little basement band called The Projection. (Image credit: Chris Walter/Getty) 1968: The First GigĪlex Lifeson: It was cool to be young and be in ‘a band’. That was a bummer!įresh-faced: Geddy Lee. He was threatening to tell my mother that I was high. He was very straight and he was really upset with me. But I was a little too high to be very functional, and this guy was really mad at me.

At that time I was playing in another band, and after I got high with Al, I went over to the guy in my band’s house for rehearsal. We went to the local public school grounds to smoke some pot. He was just a terrific pothead, and a terrible influence on me. Geddy Lee: The first time I ever got high was with Alex. We were beginning to look at music more seriously and really trying to figure out what the musicians were playing, how the bands worked.

The good old days! We’d either play along with the record, or we would both plug into Ged’s amp and just play, him on bass, me on guitar. We loved to learn all those great Cream songs, play along to the record player, and play them better and better and better.

Almost every day we’d go to his parents’ place after school and we’d jam for two hours.Īlex Lifeson: For a long time we were in different bands, but we always jammed together. And we both had a really deep passion for music and wanting to play it. Geddy Lee: We wanted to be rebellious, to break away from our families, like all kids want to do.

Alex Lifeson: It was at junior high, in that ‘getting to know you’ stage, that Geddy and I got heavily into music.

By tor and the snow dog