ALEX LIFESON and I are on Zoom, talking about the genre-challenging sounds put forth by his new band, Envy of None. Over the years, Lifeson and I have talked countless times in person and over the phone about the groundbreaking music he’s made throughout his long and storied career, whether it be his boundary-stretching guitar work in the legendary Canadian supertrio Rush; the creative chances he took with Victor, his first-ever solo project in January 1996; or the just-mentioned Envy of None, a new four-piece collective whose adventurous self-titled debut was just released in April 2022.
During this particular Zoom call, Lifeson is visibly perched in front of an impressive studio wall populated by row after endless row filled with some truly amazing gear. Naturally, I can’t help but inquire about one particular guitar I spy that I’m 99.99 percent sure was responsible for one of the most moving sound sequences in the entirety of Rush’s recorded C.V., a vaunted canon that spans almost five full decades.
“Yeah, that’s my Hentor, the guitar I used for the solo on ‘Limelight,’” Lifeson clarifies with a nod and a grin, referring to the cheekily renamed hybrid Fender Stratocaster outfitted with a Floyd Rose vibrato arm. Besides its Envy of None deployment, said Hentor is indeed the guitar that supplied the thoughtful, elegiac solo in “Limelight,” one of Rush’s signature songs that Lifeson has told me on more than one occasion, “remains my favorite of all the guitar solos I’ve ever done.”
And that’s the power of popular music right there, boiled down to a few sentences. Just by Lifeson’s namechecking the 1981 song title “Limelight,” many of us instantly conjure the vibe, tone, and feelings the song and its subject matter elicit, most especially the character of his emotive, note-sustained, and expertly restrained guitar solo.
“Limelight” is but one of the seven instantly identifiable and equally individual songs comprising the 40 seamless minutes found within the grooves of Rush’s eighth studio effort, February 1981’s landmark . This five-times-platinum, norm-elevating album catapulted Rush from a cult-favorite concert draw with a number of FM radio hits to their credit into a certified household-name headlining act henceforth able to chart their own course for the remainder of their career. The combined axis of bassist/vocalist/keyboardist Geddy Lee, guitarist Alex Lifeson, and drummer/lyricist Neil Peart carried the torch for bringing complex, time-signature-shifting music to the masses for over 40-plus years—an impressive sonic book officially closed for good following their final, 35-date R40 Live Tour in 2015. With Peart’s passing in January 2020
