Rush frontman Geddy Lee has seemingly been busy with something during the pandemic, but until now it was unclear what.

Lee confirmed in a recent round of social posts that he's put his life's story into a memoir. He says he's taking a cue from his last book and making it big.

The legendary multi-instrumentalist and singer notes that he hadn't spent so much time at home in Toronto since he was a teenager. After spending a healthy amount of quality time with his grandson and "every European mystery show every produced," Lee says he began to write.

"Words, that is," he clarified; not music.

Having just published his Big, Beautiful Book of Bass in 2018, Lee suggests he was probably ready to start another substantial project. He credits BBBoB collaborator Daniel Richler with giving him the nudge he needed.

Richler, Lee writes, "saw how I was struggling in the aftermath of [Neil Peart's] passing, and tried coaxing me out of my blues with some funny tales from his youth, daring me to share my own in return."

Lee admits he wasn't eager to begin writing, but after he got started he couldn't stop.

"It's a less physical version of arguing with musical notes, without a [Rickenbacker] doubleneck breaking my back! And soon my baby-step stories were becoming grownup chapters," he says.

From there his obsessive personality took over. He started writing, rewriting and diving deep into his memories and his archives — diaries, piles of photo albums and the like.

As the book began to take shape, Richler kindly edited Lee's chapters and removed "a lot of the swearing." He informed Lee that he was indeed writing a memoir.

Lee adds that the book explores his family's Holocaust story, his childhood, his music career and travels and his many hobbies.

The book is still untitled and nearly complete. It will be published by HarperCollins and released sometime in the Fall of 2022.

Emily

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