Metal Express Interview with Alex Lifeson

Mick Burgess from Metal Express Radio recently sat down with Alex Lifeson for a very in-depth and informative interview. The majority of the questions from the interview focused on the making of Clockwork Angels, particularly Alex's solo efforts on some of the tracks:

Your guitar work throughout especially on the likes of “Clockwork Angels” and “Wish Them Well” is your most inventive for a while. Did you bring those solos to the writing process complete or were they a result of a spontaneous jam?

It`s funny because the solo in “Clockwork Angels” and also the solo in “The Garden” which are two of my favourite solos that I`ve ever done, were throwaway solos. After we`d written those songs and worked on the arrangements, Geddy went away for a few days, so I continued working and filling things in a little bit and I threw down a couple of solos in just a few takes and that was it. The thing is that after a while they kind of grow on you and you don`t think about them when you’re doing them as they were so natural and spontaneous so those solos were two throwaways that I did very early on before those songs were really fully developed. With me, when I don`t think too much about what I`m doing that`s when I tend to do my best work.

Why did you decide to fade out the solo on “The Wreckers”?

Well there`s so much going on, there`s an orchestra playing, strings and keyboards stuff going on. The solo per se is not a flashy solo, it`s more a double stringed screen that exists under there so it`s more of a whole composition of sound rather than a straight ahead solo like in “Wish Them Well”. It just felt right to fade the solo out.

Burgess continues the interview by touching upon topics such as Rush's upcoming 40th Anniversary (R40), the remastering of older albums and Vapor Trails:

Talking of re-mastering your albums, Vapor Trails was quite a raw album which had quite a harsh sound. You remixed “One Little Victory” and “Earthshine” for the Retrospective III compilation and they sounded fantastic and a lot warmer. Are you considering remixing that album?

We`ve been talking about it for years but every time we try to make a move on it something else comes up and because it`s a back burner issue it gets left. We were very close a while back and Rich was going to start remixing it when we finished this record but other things were slotted in but we`ll get to it one of these days.

Click HERE to read the entire interview.

Thanks to Ed from RushIsABand for passing along the interview.

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