"I do love using keyboards and I love writing keyboard parts, but I am not a player in the true sense of the word"
About this Quote
Geddy Lee is admitting, with a kind of Canadian bluntness, that there’s a difference between touching an instrument and speaking it as a native language. It’s not false modesty so much as a craftsman’s calibration: he loves keyboards as a tool for composition and color, but he refuses the identity badge of “keyboard player” the way rock culture hands it out. In a genre where virtuosity is currency, he’s drawing a boundary around what counts as fluency.
The subtext is about function over mythology. Lee’s career in Rush is built on the improbable workload: singing, playing intricate bass lines, triggering synth parts, sometimes all at once. Keyboards, for him, are architecture, not ego - a way to expand the band’s harmonic world, create atmosphere, sharpen the drama of a section. By saying he’s “not a player in the true sense,” he’s telling you he doesn’t romanticize the instrument; he respects it enough to acknowledge what he can’t (or won’t) claim.
Context matters here: Rush’s synth-heavy era pulled them into the crosshairs of rock purists who treated keyboards like a betrayal. Lee’s line quietly sidesteps that culture war. He’s not pleading for legitimacy; he’s reframing the role. The intent is precision: don’t confuse the love of building parts with the lifelong discipline of performance. That humility, oddly, reads as confidence - the kind that comes from knowing exactly what you’re responsible for, and refusing to sell it as something else.
The subtext is about function over mythology. Lee’s career in Rush is built on the improbable workload: singing, playing intricate bass lines, triggering synth parts, sometimes all at once. Keyboards, for him, are architecture, not ego - a way to expand the band’s harmonic world, create atmosphere, sharpen the drama of a section. By saying he’s “not a player in the true sense,” he’s telling you he doesn’t romanticize the instrument; he respects it enough to acknowledge what he can’t (or won’t) claim.
Context matters here: Rush’s synth-heavy era pulled them into the crosshairs of rock purists who treated keyboards like a betrayal. Lee’s line quietly sidesteps that culture war. He’s not pleading for legitimacy; he’s reframing the role. The intent is precision: don’t confuse the love of building parts with the lifelong discipline of performance. That humility, oddly, reads as confidence - the kind that comes from knowing exactly what you’re responsible for, and refusing to sell it as something else.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
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