Geddy Lee Names Favourite Rush Album to AXS TV

Asking an artist to pick their favourite album is a loaded question. For the people who made the music, the answer can never just be about the music. Personal memories and the surrounding context will forever touch those songs and records. It will always sound like those days in the studio, rather than just the product that came out of them. Of anyone in the world, the artist can be the least objective about their work, but Geddy Lee’s answer for his favourite Rush album is a surprisingly thought-out one.

In the same way that a fan’s favourite album changes often, that goes into hyperspeed for an artist. They can never listen to their music through truly fresh or separate eyes, meaning that it must be incredibly hard to get any sense of ranking or critical thought about them. It must be easy to fall into harsh self-criticism as they hear what they may have done better or hear little mistakes that no one else would pick up on, but the ability to be truly neutral in their evaluation of their work is impossible.

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Geddy Lee sees that and his choice for his favourite Rush album seems to honour it in a way, including the thought of all the past eras, all the past songs, all the mistakes made and lessons learnt, in the reason why he loves this one release in particular.

“I think I probably would have to choose the last record we did, Clockwork Angels,” Lee said to AXS TV, picking out the band’s 2012 album as his top. He’s aware that that’s a cliche answer as he said, “every artist says their most favourite is their most recent and I don’t mean to just to do that.”

But he had a reason for it, and a surprisingly considered and articulate reason given how personal music is and how hard to articulate that fact often is. “There’s something about that record that seemed to be a maturation and accumulation of all the various different versions of Rush that we have been over 40 years,” he explained of the album, hearing it as not just their most recent work, but as a truly summarising work that seems to hold every iteration of the group at once, adding, “they seem to come together in a really natural way on that record.”

It also stands out to Lee as a pinnacle of their talent and proof that across those decades and their nineteen albums, they only improved as their skills were honed. On that final record, he sees the peak of it all, stating, “I think the songwriting is our strongest and our playing is the most confident, so there’s something about that record that I’m quite proud of.”

The album took on even more weight as a pinnacle moment when drummer Neil Peart sadly passed in 2020. The record’s release back in 2012 coincided with a change in the group’s lives as they decided not to tour and went on an indefinite hiatus. Throughout it, though, the message remained clear that Rush was a brotherhood, as Lee said in 2018, “We’re very close and talk all the time, but we don’t talk about work. We’re friends, and we talk about life as friends.” After Peart’s death, the decision was made to officially disband as no one wanted to even attempt to keep going without a crucial member.

So now, Clockwork Angels isn’t just a favourite of Lee’s for its sound and skill, but for its position as the last Rush album and the last recording of his friend and bandmate.