Creativity Quote by Geddy Lee

That little phrase "safe and comfortable" is doing more work than it first appears. Geddy Lee is talking about bass-playing choices, but the real subject is permission: when does a musician earn the right to be bold, weird, or foregrounded without turning the whole track into a flex?

Coming from Rush, this is practically a mission statement. Lee isn’t describing a bassist who arrives with a flashy part and forces the band to build around it. He’s describing a builder who needs the architecture to hold before he starts hanging daring shapes off it. The bass line can be busy, melodic, even lead-like, but only after the surrounding structure feels "very interesting" and, crucially, compositionally satisfying. That’s the prog ethic in a single sentence: virtuosity is allowed, even encouraged, as long as it serves the song’s design.

The subtext is a quiet argument against the stereotype of technical rock as self-indulgent. Lee’s "once I know" signals restraint and sequencing: first craft, then risk. It also hints at trust within a band famous for complexity. If the framework is strong, the bassist can play with more harmonic responsibility, take rhythmic space, and still land the plane because the chord movement, dynamics, and arrangement are doing their share of the storytelling.

It’s a musician admitting that freedom isn’t a vibe; it’s something you engineer. The interesting structure isn’t a backdrop to the bass part. It’s the reason the bass part can exist at full volume.