“Comical little geezer...you’ll look funny when you're fifty.”

This line is from the film ‘Performance,’ and was aimed at a character played by Mick Jagger. Jagger was about 27 when the film was made.

I thought of that line the other night while watching Geddy Lee performing with Rush. This is not to say that I think Geddy Lee is a comical little geezer, but there are, believe it or not, some who do. In fact, there are some people who have used the word ‘ugly’ to describe him.

I have never read a Geddy Lee biography. I don’t know what his youth was like. But here’s what I suspect.

I think that when he was in his teens, Geddy was made fun of once or twice. I think, like many ungainly teenage boys, he reached for the electric guitar. I think he had special motivation to work at it, got very good at it, and in the words of Randy Bachman, got in “with the right bunch of fellows.”

Geddy Lee was a fairly major rock star about five or six years out of high school, and just kept getting bigger. In the 1970s and 1980s, Rush made the labourers who built the pyramids look like a bunch of layabouts. An album and tour per year, covering virtually every frigging square inch of North America and, eventually, Europe.

Unlike other rock stars, Geddy refrained from blowing his mind or his wealth on drugs or booze. He became a patron of other musicians, a lover of baseball, a family man with a couple of kids, a wine expert, a philanthropist, a member (or companion or some fucking thing) of the Order of Canada. Hell, I fully expect him to be made Governor General one of these days.

Whenever I have seen him interviewed he has struck me as a thoughtful, nice guy. No self-important arrogance, and equally strikingly, no bitterness. No ‘so you think I’m ugly, well kiss my Mercedes-driving ass, you fuckers’ attitude whatsoever. He simply appears to be too busy building and enjoying his life to worry an ounce of what others think of him.

And now he’s back on the road with Rush, and I must say, it was a stellar show. Perhaps the best I’ve seen them. It offered more than nostalgia; it was a combination of staging, musical flair and honest connection with the audience that recalls a superb show I once saw Roger Waters deliver. At the end of it, Geddy quietly thanked the audience for coming, and offered the ‘not done by a long shot’ possibility that we might see Rush make the rounds again.

Definitely not a comical little geezer. In fact, when I think of the kind of derisive remarks often made about Geddy Lee, whether about his voice or his looks or whatever, I think of one of my dad’s lines (I must say, the old man’s getting a lot of space here these days).

In the early 1990s, the Vancouver Canucks had one of the better teams in the NHL. We ware watching a game on T.V., and though the Canucks were solidly ahead, one of the commentators was finding all manner of fault with their play.

Finally, my dad, got fed up.

“Yeah they’re bloody hopeless,” he yelled sarcastically at the T.V. “The only thing they know how to do is win.”