Farewell Tour -and- New World Man Guitar World Magazine - June 2022 by Joe Bosso (Farewell Tour) and Gregory Adams (New World Man)

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AS PRIMUS PRIME MOVERS LES CLAYPOOL AND LARRY LaLONDE PREPARE TO SET OFF ON A TOUR THAT PAYS TRIBUTE
TO RUSH’S ICONIC 1977 ALBUM, A FAREWELL TO KINGS, THEY CHECK IN WITH GW AND — OF COURSE — RUSH’S ALEX LIFESON.

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“HONESTLY, THIS WHOLE THING STARTED AS A JOKE,” SAYS BASSIST LES CLAYPOOL, EXPLAINING HOW HE AND HIS PRIMUS BANDMATES — GUITARIST LARRY “LER” LaLONDE AND DRUMMER TIM ALEXANDER — BEGAN COVERING RUSH’S 1977 ALBUM A FAREWELL TO KINGS FROM START TO FINISH. “THEN ONE DAY IT WAS LIKE, ‘HEY, WAIT. MAYBE THIS ISN’T A JOKE. MAYBE WE SHOULD ACTUALLY DO THIS.’”

Claypool quickly points out, however, that at first the band considered paying tribute to their musical heroes by playing that album’s follow-up, 1978’s Hemispheres, but there was one little hitch: “Hemispheres has ‘Cygnus X-1 Book II’ on it,” he says, “and we couldn’t really go out and play that one without doing the first one — that would be a little strange.” For a second or two, the band even tossed around the idea of covering Rush’s grand sci-fi classic 2112, but Claypool thought that such a gesture would be deemed “too obvious.”

“So we decided to play A Farewell to Kings,” he says, “which made sense because it has ‘Cygnus X-1 Book I.’ Plus, that was the first Rush album I ever heard. I remember seeing Cygnus as a kid and watching the Rocinante spaceship flying through the black hole and just ejaculating in my pants and thinking, ‘That’s the greatest thing I had ever seen.’”

Ever since Primus opened for Rush in 1992, the members of both bands have remained tight. Recalling his reaction when he was told that Primus planned to tackle A Farewell to Kings live, guitarist Alex Lifeson says, “I thought to myself, ‘I hope Ler gets those chords right.’” He laughs. “You know, the song ‘A Farewell to Kings’ has some quirky chords in it, especially the ones that are up high on the neck. And with ‘Xanadu,’ I thought, ‘Oh, my God. The poor guy’s going to be suffering night after night with that 40-pound guitar on his shoulder.” He adds, “But seriously, I thought it was great. What an awesome idea.”

Originally, Primus planned to take their A Tribute to Kings tour — a full reading of A Farewell to Kings followed by a set of their own songs — out on the road in 2020, but once Covid effectively shut down the global concert business for the next 18 months, they were forced to postpone those dates until last year. Lalonde notes that the unexpected time spent at home had its benefits.

“To be honest, it meant I could use all of that free time to actually figure out these guitar parts,” he says. “Like Alex said, these songs aren’t that easy to play. I found out the best way to learn the chords was to simply email him and ask him what they are. And that heavy guitar as well [a Gibson EDS- 1275 doubleneck] — I’m using one he sent me, but I found out he put bricks inside of it. It’s twice as heavy. There’s bricks inside of it. I’m sure of that.”

Lifeson lets out a good-natured laugh, but he doesn’t dispute whether he did or didn’t add any weight to the guitar. “It feels that way,” he says.

The 2021 A Tribute to Kings tour was enthusiastically received by fans of both bands, so much so that Primus are setting off on another such excursion this spring, and for the first time the itinerary will include stops in Rush’s home turf of Canada. “I’m glad that people are into seeing it,” Lalonde says. “It should come as no surprise that people love these songs, and they love seeing them being played and hopefully not butchered too bad — at least myself. That love is reinforced when I meet people who come out to the shows. A lot of them say how emotional it was to see these songs being played. They’d sing along to them. For me, it was cool to see how much people love this band.”

In the following interview, Claypool, Lalonde and Lifeson discuss Primus’ A Tribute to Kings tour, and Lifeson reflects on the recording of the iconic album behind it all.

Alex, I’m curious. Did Rush ever play A Farewell to Kings in its entirety?
ALEX LIFESON: I would guess so. I mean, we did some of the songs.
LES CLAYPOOL: I asked Geddy about this. I looked this up because I have that big giant book of all the set lists. You know the one, right?
LIFESON: Yeah, yeah.
CLAYPOOL: It’s got everything — how much you guys got paid. The ticket prices are amazing. I asked Geddy if you guys ever did “Madrigal” live, and he said no. I’ve never seen it on a set list.
LIFESON: No. No, there was always one or maybe two songs we would record knowing we would never play them live. That was certainly one of those songs. “Different Strings” [from Permanent Waves] was another.
CLAYPOOL: “Madrigal” has become the song where Ler and I embrace each other on stage as we perform it. Sensitive, sensitive tune, you know?

Both bands hit it off when you played together in 1992. You would even jam with one another after sound checks, right?
LIFESON: We did. We would do sound check at 4:30, and then Primus would set up and they’d do their sound check. We’d have dinner at 6, and then we would have a jam, usually in our dressing room or in a hallway that was nice and echoey. At one point, the deal was that you had to go out and get an instrument you couldn’t play. Ler, I think you got a clarinet.
LARRY LaLONDE: That’s right.
LIFESON: I got an accordion and a flute. Weall played these instruments we had no idea how to play.Weactually recorded these jams. I don’t know what happened to those recordings, but we did them everywhere. When we played in Berlin together, just after the wall came down, we had a jam outside around the corner from the parking lot of the arena. There was a little grassy area outside the stage door, and I remember setting up there. Neil had his practice kit, I think.
LaLONDE: I saw Alex using a tortilla chip for a guitar pick one time. That was pretty sweet. [Laughs]

When you say “jam,” what kinds of songs would you play? What’d it sound like?
LaLONDE: It sounded like somebody asked, “What would it sound like if someone had just bought an accordion that day?” That’s the kind of music it was.
CLAYPOOL: I will say, one of the greatest things I ever experienced was during one of those jams in a sports arena locker room and watching Neil play the lockers as his percussive instrument. It was amazing.

Bearing in mind that the tour is called A Tribute to Kings, I’m curious if any of you have seen actual Rush tribute bands.
CLAYPOOL: On YouTube, I’ve seen — what are they called — Rash? They’re the one band that’s pretty popular. I see Geddy wearing their shirts.
LIFESON: Yeah. He’ll endorse anybody. [Laughs]
LaLONDE: I saw them with the Gillettes.
LIFESON: I haven’t seen any. I don’t really think about it, to be honest with you. I guess it’s a nice compliment that someone would take the time to learn your songs and play them. I suppose we’ve all been tribute bands at one time, learning other people’s songs when we’re starting out. I don’t know… I don’t really think about it.

It’s a whole different subgenre from what Primus is doing here. Full-fledged tribute bands get the whole thing down — the attire, the way the members look.
LIFESON: Yeah, that’s pretty crazy. I don’t know why you’d want to look like Geddy. [Laughs]
CLAYPOOL: I already look like Geddy. [Laughs] I have four silk robes I bought for this tour.
LaLONDE: Yeah, that’s how you get the sound.
CLAYPOOL: Exactly. It sounded terrible until we got the robes.
LIFESON: More scarves.
LaLONDE: Yeah, we need scarves. We’re deficient in scarves.

What about Primus tribute bands? Les and Ler, have you checked out any?
LaLONDE: Not really. I think I’ve seen some clips people have sent me, here and there. People send me, like, a two-second clip or something—I’m assuming it’s a cover band or someone playing a song.

Alex, have you been to any of the Tribute to Kings shows?
LIFESON: No, I haven’t been out of this city in two years. I would love to see them. I think there’s a Toronto date coming up this summer?
CLAYPOOL: Massey Hall.
LIFESON: Massey Hall’s beautiful. They’ve just done a major, multimillion-dollar restoration of the place. I just did a gig there for Andy Kim.

Have you seen any videos of Primus from this tour?
LIFESON: No, I haven’t. I’m still trying to figure out how to work my computer or iPad. I’m waiting for the real thing. I’m sure it’s awesome.
LaLONDE: He’s waiting to see me play the parts wrong in person.

Ler touched on how hard it was to nail some of the chords in this material. Les, were there any difficult aspects for you as well?
CLAYPOOL: Oh, my God, yes. [Laughs] The vocals were very difficult. I mean, everything about it’s very difficult— it’s frickin’ Rush! Besides having to put on a big cinder block of a double neck instrument around your neck every night… I have to say, I love playing Primus songs, but every night I look forward to playing A Farewell to Kings because it’s just so much fun.

About the vocal parts, I kind of figured out a little trick of Geddy’s, which I won’t say, because I think I think it might be a secret. Finally, my son just said, “Dad, quit trying to sing it like Geddy. Just do it your own way.” So I just kind of did that. I have some stuff that’s sort of in the upper register, so I would just take on these characters, like Sgt. Baker [from Primus’ 1991 album Sailing the Seas of Cheese] … And, of course, there’s the keyboard parts. But once you’ve got it, you’ve got it.

Did playing the same instruments as Rush used at that time help you feel more “Rush-like”?
CLAYPOOL: Yes. And the robes! [Laughs]
LaLONDE: For me, it definitely did. One of the hardest but most fun parts is trying to switch between the necks. There’s a video that shows how Alex does it. It’s one of my favorite parts of the whole night, trying to get that sweeping across and flipping the switch back.
LIFESON: You’ve got to be quick.
LaLONDE: You do! But there is a video out there—I think it’s from Moving Pictures. There’s one little section I saw where they show you do it back and forth. I was like, “Oh, what’s that?” I froze it. I watched it, like, a hundred times trying to figure it out. It’s awesome.

Alex, A Farewell to Kings is often cited as a breakthrough album for Rush. Does it hold a special place in your heart?
LIFESON: Yeah, it does. I remember when we were in the studio recording it and the mood we were all in at the time. We had done a tour of Britain before the album. It was the first time we toured there and the promoter didn’t expect anything, but we actually did really, really well. We came back to record the album there, and it was the first album that we recorded in Britain. It was really a great experience for us to go back to the roots of the music we listened to when we were young. Rockville was a very cool, very rural kind of studio, not fancy at all, but it had a good sounding room and a great sounding console. We had so much fun recording, as we always did.

And then playing this stuff — “Closer to the Heart” became quite a big song for us, and “Xanadu” was always a treat. “Xanadu” was the first song we recorded, and I remember we played it once from beginning to end so that the engineer, Pat Moran, could get levels. We played it one more time, and that’s the take that’s on the album. We did all 11 minutes of it, and Pat was like, “What?! They switched guitars — what the fuck?” [Laughs] He was so impressed. And then we got to the second song, which was “Cygnus” or something where it was a little more tedious and more hard work. [Laughs] Back then we used to prepare. We used to go into the studio with songs written and ready to go. And it was certainly one of the last examples of that.

Any thoughts on doing another Rush album after this tour?
LIFESON: Uh, no. [Pause] Are you talking to me?

Oh, no, no! I’m sorry. No, I meant the Primus guys.
LIFESON: Oh, OK. [Laughs]
CLAYPOOL: I mean, we have to do Hemispheres at some point in time; at least we’ve got to do “Cygnus Part II,” just because you’ve got to finish the sandwich, you know?
LaLONDE: And I already know how to play it. One of the ways I learned how to play guitar was learning all the stuff from Hemispheres. It’s like, I’d never seen these chords anywhere before; all my guitar heroes didn’t play these chords. So that’s how I learned them.
LIFESON: I’m to help you with those chords if you need it — if I can remember.
LaLONDE: You’re going to regret that offer.

ALEX LIFESON’S PLACE IN MUSIC HISTORY AS a premiere prog player cannot be understated. Across five decades with Rush, the Toronto-based guitarist delivered thrillrides of dramatic arpeggios, quixotic whammy-play and irregular hooks galore. But seven years on from Rush’s final concert performance — and two since the tragic loss of drummer/lyricist Neil Peart to glioblastoma, a form of brain cancer — Lifeson returns this spring with music from his much-anticipated, and stylistically divergent new project, Envy of None. The fledgling group’s sonic aesthetic is quite a pivot from what longtime Rush fans may be expecting from the Canadian guitar hero — some of the darkly cinematic, synthesized soundscapes of the quartet’s 11-song, self-titled effort arguably hew closer to the moody swerve of Violator-period Depeche Mode or Nine Inch Nails than the soaring prog elasticity of, say, “YYZ” or “La Villa Strangiato.” Though not without its giant guitar moments, Lifeson’s purview within Envy of None’s first album was to play with texture more so than high-flying, trem barheavy lead work.

“I feel like I’ve fully explored the whole area of soloing,” Lifeson tells Guitar World. “I think I have a particular style and character to my solos, [and] there’s lots of variation in my soloing, but I think at this point in my life it’s more about servicing the song. Not being too distracting, or shining a light on any particular thing. It’s just getting into the groove, tapping your foot and feeling connected with the song itself.”

Though Lifeson is excited to be taking himself in a new sonic direction, Envy of None’s debut album nevertheless follows Rush’s staggeringly impressive and iconic body of work — Canada’s greatest power trio left a wholly immeasurable imprint on music fans across 19 full-length albums and countless mind-bending live performances. While Lifeson revealed in 2018 — some 50 years after forming Rush as a teenager — that the group were basically done, he clearly hadn’t closed the book on music altogether. At the time of that announcement, he’d already been drafting the original passes of tunes like Envy of None’s “Kabul Blues,” an evocatively sandy sway of back-masked guitar tricks and slack, snapped banjo licks.

“After the last Rush tour in 2015, I made sure I started writing immediately. I didn’t want to lose it; I didn’t want to feel like that was the end. So I continued to write, just for my own benefit,” he says. “A few of those tracks are on my website, some of them are on the Envy of None album.”

As Lifeson was developing song sketches on his own, longtime friend and bassist Andy Curran — previously of Toronto hard rockers Coney Hatch, and a former A&R person who spent time on the road with Rush — also approached the guitarist about playing on a clutch of electronics-spiked tunes he’d been working on with guitarist/ programmer Alfio Annibalini. Lifeson agreed, casually sending files back and forth with Curran for a few years before Portland, Oregon-based vocalist Maiah Wynne added her dramatic vibrato to the pieces. The singer was the X-factor Lifeson and co. needed to put the band on the front burner. While initially conceived as an EP, by 2021 Envy of None got serious about their songbook, ramping up their productivity to produce a full-fledged album.

“You need to have a focus like this,” Lifeson suggests of finding inspiration within Envy of None. “It’s one thing to pick up the guitar and play for 10 to 15 minutes a day; it’s another thing to devote a whole day to recording and developing a part.”

Fittingly enough, Lifeson is explaining this while seated in front of a couple dozen guitars hanging from the walls of his Toronto-area home studio. This includes a beauty, butterscotch ’52 reissue Telecaster from 1980 that Lifeson wagers he’d written “at least 70-80 percent of Rush’s material on” and a prized 1953 J50 acoustic that Geddy Lee gave him on his 65th birthday. The deep brown body of another Tele was made out of a door that once hung at the long-gone Le Studio facility in Morin- Heights, Quebec, where Rush recorded seven albums between 1980 and 1993. While sizable, the collection used to be a whole lot bigger, with Lifeson explaining that he’d recently sent off 63 guitars to be sold at auction. Amongst the cull was a prized white ES-355 he’d picked up from Gibson’s then Kalamazoo-based factory in 1976, along with a Dove acoustic and a double- necked 1275. Lifeson refers to the semihollow ES-355 as the “quintessential Alex Lifeson guitar” — Gibson had reproduced the gold-plated character piece as a Lifeson signature in 2008, though the guitarist notes that the neck was a bit fatter on the repro than his Norlin-period original — and it was featured on every Rush album from 1977’s A Farewell to Kings through 1996’s Test for Echo. While he was ready to let go of the guitar, downsizing his collection ended up affecting him more than he’d expected.

“My god, that was one of the most emotional, difficult things I’ve ever done in my life. I thought it would be easy. I worked it all out in my head, but I was a mess when I did that. The 355 was the last one to go. The case was wrapped in bubble wrap, and I sat in the mudroom in my house just holding it, talking to it and kissing the bubble wrap — it was pretty pathetic. Then I carried it out to the truck and said goodbye to it.”

The Envy of None album did, however, give Lifeson the opportunity for one last dance with the ES-355, which surges through chunked-up chord work on the record’s bruising “Enemy.” Elsewhere, Lifeson’s prismatic, delay-distanced sculpting plays a more supportive role, as on first single “Liar,” one of many moments that crackles via Curran’s in-your-face fuzz bass. “I feel like I’m catching a break, to be honest with you,” Lifeson says of providing textural “ear candy” while his Envy of None counterparts step to the forefront.

When it came to the interplay between he and Annibalini — the latter musician juggling beatmaking with alt-pop guitar performances on “Never Said I Love You” — Lifeson quickly realized he wasn’t there to go wild on the tracks as a lead player.

He explains: “I got the sense that [Andy Curran] wanted me to be the guitar player, but I kept [listening to] Alf’s guitar parts in ‘Never Said I Love You,’ for example, which is a great, hooky, poppy kind of song. When I first heard it, I thought, ‘There’s nothing wrong with the guitars on here; I’m not going to replace stuff that I don’t need to.’ It’s effective; it’s his style. Maybe I wouldn’t have played that, but it suits the song and it’s great. Who am I, a big shot? Forget it. I’ll just play some nice, big acoustic in the chorus, lift it up and make it hookier in that sense. I was perfectly happy with that.”

Throughout the making of Envy of None, Lifeson was likewise blissing out on the perception- distorting peel of backwards guitar. It’s a go-to flavor on the aforementioned “Kabul Blues,” as well as “Old Strings,” a striking cosmic ballet. Throughout most of the track, Lifeson’s volume pedal conjures elegiac, mock-pedal-steel styling. He shifts gears in the second verse, though, dovetailing a Hendrix-inspired ripple of backmasked licks around Wynne’s softened vocal, Lifeson envisioning the co-mingling “as this swirling dance between her and I.”

“Anything that’s backwards sounds unusual, and if you process it, it sounds even more unusual,” he elaborates of the aesthetic, while noting that he’d flipped Wynne’s vocals to more accurately match her performance rather than just add some “random” backwards melody. “I clued in on that being a more concise way of making something backwards sound like it’s connected to the song. It adds so much emotion and character to the part.”

Gear-wise, Lifeson played around with plug-ins through most of the effects-heavy sessions, but he admits to bringing out his Electro-Harmonix Electric Mistress to achieve some of Envy of None’s wettest tones. One guitar that still sits in Lifeson’s collection is a ’57 Les Paul Goldtop, which he gloriously puts to use through a dexterously mountain-scaling set of runs that conclude “Spy House.”

“That was the first song I wrote at the end of the Rush tour,” Lifeson says. “It has a solo because it was a natural thing for me to go into [at the time]—it’s the only solo on the record, I believe. It was written from that point of view, [so] it is more guitar-centric. I mean, I love having those contrasts of spacey, dreamy stuff happening and a few moments [like] that.”

Beyond the album’s big solo, Lifeson ultimately found favor weaving his unique guitar flavor around his Envy of None bandmates, who also had a hand in reconfiguring some of Lifeson’s ideas. “Kabul Blues” had been premiered as a Lifeson instrumental in the summer of 2021, but was remodeled for the Envy of None album to include Wynne’s delay-dripping vocal melodies—Lifeson also revamped his transcendent wriggling on the piece to better fit the singer’s aesthetic. While he’d initially brought a “simplistic” four-string rhythm to the demo, he gladly got Curran to provide supple lowend work on the piece to give it “a bass player’s sensibility.”

In the case of “Old Strings,” the song initially existed as an up-tempo number with a “rootsy sort of swing to it” before Curran and Annibalini brought down the tempo, Lifeson hints at the original version being earmarked for a future solo album from Wynne. A roots-rustic twist remains on the LP, however, via the inclusion of closing number “Western Sunset.” Following the eerily fuzz-forward, post-industrial pound of “Liar” or “Enemy,” the burnt ochre haze of acoustic strums and brushed snare hits stands as an understated, bittersweet instrumental, which Lifeson dedicated to departed friend, Rush bandmate and eternal drum icon Neil Peart.

“I visited Neil when he was ill,” Lifeson had previously explained in a press release. “I was on his balcony watching the sunset and found inspiration. There’s a finality about a sunset that kinda stayed with me throughout the whole process. It had meaning. It was the perfect mood to decompress after all these different textures… a nice way to close the book.”

While the first Envy of None album was recorded remotely, earlier this year the quartet convened in Toronto for a listening party with family and friends—it had been the first time all four members of Envy of None has listened to the album together. Despite this, they didn’t carve out any extra time to hit up a rehearsal room and work out the arrangements in-person. Lifeson suspects Envy of None could start touring at some point in the future—for that matter, he also notes that a few song ideas currently hovering in the digital ether could take shape eventually. That said, Lifeson is also quick to note that if Envy of None roll up in your town, there’s a damned good chance he’s not the one who’ll be riffing it up alongside the rest of the band.

“My touring days are over, but we would certainly put together a group of musicians that could go on the road with Maiah and present a really cool show. I would maybe do a couple of dates here and there [but] I’m certainly not going to go on the road for 200 days a year on a tour bus,” he says, adding with a learned, knowing chuckle, “been there, done it.”