Life & Mortality Quote by Alex Lifeson

There’s a quiet provocation in Lifeson framing death not as a dramatic cliff-edge but as a concept he’s long since made room for. Coming from a musician whose work is built on time signatures, tempo changes, and long-form arcs, the line reads less like bravado and more like a practiced relationship with endings. He isn’t claiming invincibility; he’s declining to participate in the cultural script that treats death as a taboo jump-scare.

The phrasing matters. “At the same time” signals he’s responding to an earlier clause we don’t hear, the classic interview rhythm where vulnerability is immediately balanced with resolve. “Never been afraid” is absolute, but it’s also carefully limited: he’s talking about fear of death itself, not the pain, the grief, the unfinished business. Then he adds “or the concept of death,” widening the frame from personal mortality to the idea of mortality as an organizing principle. That’s the subtext: if you’re not terrified of the end, you can stop living like everything is a frantic audition for permanence.

For rock musicians, death is always nearby as myth and industry commodity: the romanticized early exit, the morbid headlines, the cautionary tale. Lifeson’s refusal to fear it pushes back on that fetishization. It suggests a mature artistry that can look at finitude without turning it into either a tragedy or a brand. In that sense, the line is less about dying than about staying sane while time keeps counting.