Nope, not the video game.
Were you aware that there are asteroids named after Geddy, Neil, and Alex?
Recently in Alex Lifeson Category
There's a newer interview with Alex over at Modern Guitars. Lots of talk about the Snakes & Arrows Live DVD, some Retrospective II info, Vapor Trails remixing, and so forth. Interesting tidbit:
Alex: You know, it's funny that you mention that. I was up at my studio...I'm upgrading and changing my control room around a little bit. Rich and I have sort of "moved in together" in there. And I was cleaning up the back room...I've gotten rid of a bunch of stuff over the years...and I just found a case that was way up on the top shelf, and at the bottom of this box were a bunch of reel-to-reel, unlisted, unmarked, recordings...and I can only imagine that they're pre-'74. So, they would probably be from between '70 and '73...recordings from that period. So, they would probably have songs like "Run Willie Run," and "Slaughterhouse," and "Garden Road," and all of those early songs that we wrote and played during our bar days.Skip: Oh, wow. I've got to tell you that I think the fans would eat that up, even if it was just something put out via the web site, in digital form, as an "official bootleg series" or something.
Alex: Yeah, I'll see what sort of shape they're in. I know a couple of the reels were...you know those small reels, and I've got to think that even spooling them might be a problem, never mind me playing them. Anyway, I just discovered them, so who knows? There may be something in the near future.
The whole interview is nice and long and worth reading.
There's a decent recent interview with Alex Lifeson over at Crawdaddy! today.
Not much new sadly. Here are some highlights.
On picking new songs to play:
We wanted to play the whole record live, but we had to settle for nine songs, otherwise we'd be playing for four hours and that's a little too much for us and, I think, for our audience. We had to make a decision about some of the songs we wanted to do. We all really wanted to do "Faithless", and we talked about actually doing it on the last half of the tour. We prepped it and we ran through it a couple of times, but in the end we just decided to kind of stick with what we had and just change up some of the older stuff.
On Rush being an influential group:
I think that younger bands look at us as perhaps a model that, you know what, you can do it your way. You can play the music that you want to play. You can find your audience, you can grow and not get stuck in all the things that, you know, people used to get stuck in. Now, granted, things have changed so much in the last five to 10 years in the industry, and things don't happen the way they used to happen...
Guitar Player 2008 Readers Choice Awards
Alex Lifeson wins for Best Article in 2007: Different Strings
Best Rock Guitarist: Alex Lifeson
Snakes & Arrows wins 2007’s Most Ferociously Brilliant Guitar Album
Way to go!
There's a new interview with Alex over at Billboard.com. He talks about the live album/dvd and the upcoming tour.
Lots of tidbits:
DVD in later summer/early fall. Shot in HD.
"We thought we should maybe revisit some older songs we're not playing currently or haven't been in the last little while. So we changed out a few songs in the set. We're gonna keep it loose and maybe kind of bounce back and forth."
New album news?
"I'm guessing that we're probably going to take a little bit of the break at the end of this tour," says Lifeson, who's been updating his Web site with a number of new features he hopes to roll out soon. "I don't see us really doing much in the way of any new material probably until the spring of next year, and then we'll see where we go."
A 12-year -old Rush fan and guitarist named Zack Tabori comes up to the Hughes & Kettner booth at the NAMM show last month and asks to play the Alex Lifeson Signature TriAmp. They let him go ahead and do so and are impressed by his playing and offer to take his conact info so that Big Al can hook him up with some swag and tickets. Alex decided to give the kid one of his amps as well.
You can see a video of the whole story here. Well worth watching, the kid is blown away.
The Gibson Alex Lifeson ES-355 Guitar is available for pre-order at Musicians Friend right now. Only $3699.
The guitar has a maple body, 3-piece maple neck, '57 Classic pickups with individual volume and tone controls, and a Maestro Long vibrola tailpiece.
From the Winter NAMM 2008 show:
Throughout most of Alex Lifeson's ride to superstardom with the super group Rush, a 1976 Gibson ES-355 had been by his side, both in the studio and on stage. With it, he had created many of Rush's breathtaking layered soundscapes, and the very same ES-355 continues to be an indispensable part of his live arsenal. The Gibson Custom Shop Alex Lifeson Signature ES -355 guitar is a recreation of this iconic instrument and a tribute for a true modern master, and guitar he used to expand the definition of popular music.
No more information at this point.
