Alex Lifeson

Alex Lifeson
Alex Lifeson in concert with Rush. Raleigh, NC (June 20, 2007)
Background information
Birth name	Alexander Zivojinovich
Born	August 27 1953 (1953-08-27) (age 54) Fernie, British Columbia, Canada
Genre(s)	Hard rock, Progressive rock, Heavy metal
Occupation(s)	Guitarist, songwriter, Producer
Instrument(s)	Guitar, Mandola, Mandolin, and Bouzouki
Years active	1968-present
Label(s)	Mercury, Anthem, Atlantic
Associated acts	Rush
Notable instrument(s)
Gibson ES-355

Alex Lifeson, OC (born August 27, 1953), is a Canadian musician, known as the guitarist for the rock group Rush. Lifeson founded Rush in the summer of 1968, and has been an integral member of the three-piece band ever since.^[1] For Rush, Lifeson plays electric and acoustic guitars as well as other stringed instruments such as mandola, mandolin and bouzouki. He also performs backing vocals in live performances, and occasionally plays keyboards and bass pedal synthesizers. During live performances, Lifeson, like the other members of Rush, performs real-time triggering of sampled instruments, concurrently with his guitar playing.^[2] The bulk of Lifeson's work in music has been with Rush, although Lifeson has contributed to a body of work outside of the band as well. Aside from music, Lifeson is part owner of the Toronto restaurant The Orbit Room, and is a licensed aircraft pilot, motorcycle rider, and gourmet cook.^[3] Along with his bandmates Geddy Lee and Neil Peart, Lifeson was made an Officer of the Order of Canada on May 9, 1996. The trio was the first rock band to be so honored, as a group.^[4] On May 1, 2007, Rush released Snakes & Arrows, their eighteenth full-length studio album. Lifeson and the band have followed up the album with a concert tour, which began on June 13, 2007.

Biography

Early life

Lifeson was born Alexander Zivojinovich in Fernie, British Columbia to Serbian immigrants, Nenad and Melka Zivojinovich (from Serbian: Живојиновић, Živojinović), and raised in Toronto, Ontario.^[5] His assumed stage name of "Lifeson" is a semi-literal translation of the name "Zivojinovich", meaning "son of life".^[6] His first exposure to formal music training came in the form of the viola which he renounced for the guitar at the age of 12. His first guitar was a Christmas gift from his father, a six-string Kent classical acoustic which was later upgraded to an electric Japanese model. During adolescence, Lifeson was primarily influenced by Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, and Pete Townshend. Lifeson was primarily a self-taught guitarist with the only formal instruction coming from a high school friend in 1971 who taught classical guitar lessons. This training lasted for roughly a year and a half. In 1963, Lifeson met future Rush drummer John Rutsey in school. Both interested in music, they decided to form a band. Lifeson eventually married his girlfriend Charlene and currently has two sons, Justin and Adrian. Lifeson's nickname among his associates is "Lerxst". The name appears in the sub-titles of La Villa Strangiato, an instrumental based humorously on Lifeson's nightmares, from the Rush album Hemispheres. "Hope", an instrumental track from the album Snakes & Arrows which features Lifeson exclusively, is credited to "Lerxst Lifeson, all by his own self".

Body of work

The bulk of Lifeson's work in music has been with Rush. (See Rush Discography) Lifeson's work outside of his involvement with the band includes the following:

• In 2006, Lifeson founded The Big Dirty Band, which he created for the purpose of providing original soundtrack material for Trailer Park Boys: The Movie.
• Victor, Lifeson's solo album released in 1996. Victor (the album) was attributed as a self-titled work (ie. "Victor" is attributed as the artist as well as the album title). This was done deliberately, as an alternative to issuing the album explicitly under Lifeson's name.
• Lifeson composed the theme for the first season of the science-fiction TV series Andromeda.
• Lifeson jammed regularly with The Dexters (The Orbit Room house band from 1994-2004). The Dexters' lead guitarist Bernie LaBarge nicknamed Alex "Big Al Dexter".
• Lifeson made a guest appearance on the 2007 album Fear of a Blank Planet by UK progressive rock band, Porcupine Tree.
• Lifeson was approached by Digitech for inclusion of his trademark sound in their 2120 Artist Studio Guitar System. Lifeson created one of the presets, calling it "New Lerxst."

Guitar equipment

In Rush's early career, Lifeson used a Gibson ES-335 for the first single and the first four albums: Rush, Fly By Night, Caress Of Steel, and 2112. For the 2112 tour, he used a 1974 Gibson Les Paul and Marshall amplification. For the A Farewell to Kings sessions, Lifeson started using a Gibson EDS-1275 (similar to Jimmy Page) for songs like Xanadu and his main guitar became a cream-colored Gibson ES-355, with most of the amplification coming from Hiwatt amplifiers. Pedal wise he used various phaser and flanger pedals, a Cry Baby Wah Wah, along with Marshall 100 watt Super Lead amplifiers and 4x12 cabinets. Beginning in the late 1970s, he increasingly incorporated twelve-string guitar (acoustic and electric) and chorusing into his sound, using the Boss CE-1 Chorus Ensemble and later, the Boss Dimension C. By the time of the 1982 album Signals, Lifeson's primary guitar had become a hot-rodded Fender Stratocaster with a Bill Lawrence high-output humbucker L-500 in the bridge position and a Floyd Rose vibrato bridge. Lifeson increasingly relied on a selection of four identically modified Stratocasters from 1980 to 1986, all of them making use of the Floyd Rose bridge. For the Moving Pictures and Signals albums and on concurrent tours, Alex also used up to four rare brown Marshall 4140 Club & Country 100W combo amps, giving him his perhaps most characteristic guitar tone to date. As the '80s wore on he switched from passive to active pickups and from vacuum tube to solid-state amplification, all with an increasingly thick layer of digital signal processing. He would become an endorser of the Gallien-Krueger and Dean Markley solid-state guitar amplifier lines, as well as Dean Markley Blue Steel strings, gauges .009-.046. In the late 1980s he switched to Carvin amplifiers in the studio and his short-lived Signature brand guitars onstage and in the studio.

Alex Lifeson and his Gibson ES-355

Lifeson primarily used PRS guitars during the recording of Roll The Bones in 1990/1991. When recording 1993's Counterparts, Lifeson continued to use PRS Guitars and Marshall amplifiers to record the album, and for the subsequent tour. On one Counterparts song, Stick It Out, Lifeson used a Gibson Les Paul to create a deeper, more resonant tone for the song's signature riff, using a PRS on the guitar solo. Lifeson currently uses PRS, Fender, and Gibson guitars, Hughes & Kettner Triamp MK II and zenTera amplifiers, and cabinets. In 2005, Hughes & Kettner introduced an Alex Lifeson signature series amplifier; $50 from every amplifier sold will be donated to UNICEF.

Alex Lifeson playing his Garrison GD25-12 guitar

For the 2007 Snakes & Arrows tour, Lifeson has replaced his PRS guitars with Gibson Les Pauls because, in an 2007 interview for Guitarist magazine, he says that "I hear PRS on everything these days and I wanted a little bit of a change ... I love them [PRS] but they have a smaller sound than the bigger heavier Gibsons ... I just wanted to be more traditional." He has also had Fishman Aura piezoelectric pickup systems installed into the Les Pauls to simulate acoustic guitar sounds without changing guitars. He has also replaced his Hughes & Kettner zenTera amp heads with Switchblade heads (which, like the zenTeras, include built-in programmable digital effects, such as chorus and delay, but are valve-powered instead of transistor-powered), while retaining his signature series H&K Triamp heads. His effects for the 2007 tour include a TC Electronics G-Force rack multi-FX, a TC Electronics 2112 spatial expander and a Loft 440 Delay Line/Flanger, as well as the effects built into his Switchblade heads.

Other instruments played

In addition to traditional stringed instruments such as acoustic and electric guitars, Lifeson has also played mandola, mandolin and bouzouki on recent Rush studio albums, including Test For Echo, Vapor Trails and Snakes & Arrows. During live Rush performances, Lifeson uses a MIDI controller that enables him to use his feet to trigger sounds from digital samplers, without taking his hands off of his guitar. (Prior to this, Lifeson used Moog Taurus Bass Pedals before they were obsolesced and replaced by MIDI pedals in the 1980s.) Lifeson and his bandmates share a desire to accurately depict songs from their albums when playing live performances. Toward this goal, beginning in the late 1980s the band equipped their live performances with a capacious rack of samplers. The band members use these samplers in real-time to recreate the sounds of non-traditional instruments, accompaniments, vocal harmonies, and other sound "events" that are familiarly heard on the studio versions of the songs. In live performances, the band members share duties throughout most songs, with each member triggering certain sounds with his available limbs, while playing his primary instrument(s).^[7] It is with this technology that Lifeson and his bandmates are able to present their arrangements in a live setting with the level of complexity and fidelity that fans have come to expect, and without the need to resort to the use of backing tracks or employing an additional band member.^[8] Lifeson's (and his bandmates') use of foot-pedal keyboards to trigger sampled instruments and audio events is visible on R30: 30th Anniversary World Tour concert DVD (2005).

Television and film appearances

Lifeson and Bubbles

In a 2003 episode of the Canadian smash hit mockumentary Trailer Park Boys, titled "Closer to the Heart", Lifeson plays a fictional version of himself. In the story, he is kidnapped by Ricky and held as punishment for his inability (or refusal) to provide the main characters with free tickets to a Rush concert. In the end of the episode, Alex reconciles with the characters, and performs a duet with Bubbles at the trailer park. Lifeson appears in Trailer Park Boys: The Movie, as a traffic cop in the opening scene. He made his film debut as himself under his birth name in the 1973 Canadian movie Come on Children.

The Naples incident

On New Year's Eve 2003, Lifeson, his son, and his daughter-in-law were arrested at the Ritz Carlton hotel in Naples, Florida. Lifeson, after intervening in an altercation between his son and police, was accused of assaulting a sheriff's deputy in what was described as a drunken brawl. In addition to suffering a broken nose at the hands of the officers, Lifeson was tasered six times. His son was also tasered repeatedly. On April 21, 2005 a plea deal was made between Lifeson and the prosecution by which he would be spared a custodial sentence if he agreed to plead no contest to a single charge of resisting arrest without violence. The plea was offered by the prosecution after the judge in his son Justin's trial reduced the charge against Justin from resisting arrest with violence to resisting arrest without violence. The reduction was in response to a pre-trial defense motion to dismiss the charges entirely, and was made after the prosecution had presented their case, but before the defense had called any witnesses. According to Justin's file in the Felony section of the Public Records database of Collier County, Florida,^[9] the judge determined that, based on the testimony of the prosecution's witnesses, including one of the police officers involved in the incident, that while the potential for violence existed, none was offered by Justin. As part of the plea agreement Lifeson and his son were each sentenced to 12 months of probation with the adjudication of that probation suspended. Upon successful completion of the probation, the matter is to be expunged from their records. In addition, they had to pay all court costs. In the fall of 2005, the court granted early dismissal from probation to both Lifeson and his son. According to the band's official website,^[10] Lifeson is currently pursuing legal action against the Ritz Carlton and the Collier County Sheriff's Department for what he calls "their incredibly discourteous, arrogant and aggressive behavior of which I had never experienced in thirty years of travel." On August 10, 2006, a federal judge in Fort Myers, Florida dismissed that portion of the civil legal action wherein fellow band mates Neil Peart and Geddy Lee joined Lifeson in claiming that the Ritz incident caused subsequent financial loss for the band.^[11] However, Lifeson was able to continue his legal claims against the Ritz Carlton and the individual deputies. In his journal-based book Roadshow, Peart relates the band's perspective on the events of that New Years Eve. He also says the incident was and still is a traumatic event for Lifeson and his family. In early April, 2007, Judge Paul Magnuson of the Federal District Court for the Middle District of Florida dismissed Lifeson's lawsuit against The Ritz Carlton and Collier County deputies. The Judge ruled that the deputies used force that was "objectively reasonable" and thus did not rise to the level of a violation of Lifeson's civil rights. Lifeson indicated that he would appeal the ruling.^[12]

Awards

• Named "Best Rock Talent" by Guitar for the Practicing Musician in 1983
• Named "Best Rock Guitarist" by Guitar Player in 1984
• Runner-up for "Best Rock Guitarist" in Guitar Player in 1982, 1983, 1985, and 1986
• Inducted into the Guitar for the Practicing Musician Hall of Fame, 1991
• 1996 - Officer of the Order of Canada, along with fellow bandmates Geddy Lee and Neil Peart

References

External links

• Audio-Technica interview with Alex
• Read 2002 CNN interview with Alex
• Alex Lifeson gear, by songs