Alex Lifeson
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Alexander Zivojinovich OC (b. August 27, 1953, Fernie, British Columbia), better known by his stage name Alex Lifeson, is a Canadian musician, best known as the guitarist of Rush. ("Lifeson" is a literal translation of "Zivojinovich".)
The son of Serbian immigrants, Nenad & Melka Zivojinovich, Lifeson was raised in Toronto, Ontario. Lifeson plays guitar, plays the occasional bass pedals and composes for the rock group Rush. Lifeson's solo album, Victor, was released in 1996.
Outside of music, he owns and operates a small consumer-products design, engineering, and manufacturing firm The Omega Concern, as a gourmet chef is part owner of the Toronto restaurant The Orbit Room, and is a licensed aircraft pilot and motorcycle operator.
Along with his colleagues Geddy Lee and Neil Peart, Lifeson was made an Officer of the Order of Canada on May 9, 1996. The trio were the first rock musicians so honoured.
Tone and equipment
In Rush's early career, Lifeson used Gibson ES-335's for the first single and the first three albums: RUSH, Fly By Night, and Caress Of Steel, and for the 2112 tour he used a Gibson Les Paul and Marshall amplification. Later on in the '70s he started using a Gibson EDS-1275 (similar to Jimmy Page) for songs like Xanadu. By the time of Hemispheres he had switched primarily to a cream-colored Gibson ES-355 guitar, with most of the amplification coming from Sunn amplifiers. Pedal wise he used various phaser and flanger pedals and a Cry Baby Wah Wah. , and a "Plexi" amplifier. Beginning in the late 1970s, he increasingly incorporated twelve-string guitar (acoustic and electric) and chorusing (Using the Roland Dimension C) into his sound. While Eddie Van Halen is usually credited as the inventor of the "superstrat," Lifeson actually adopted a key super-Strat component — the Floyd Rose locking vibrato system — before Van Halen. By the time of the 1982 Rush album Signals, Lifeson's primary guitar had become a hot-rodded Stratocaster with a Bill Lawrence high-output humbucker (a type later made famous by Dimebag Darrell) in the bridge position and a Floyd Rose bridge, and as the '80s wore on he switched from passive to active pickups and from vacuum tube to solid-state amplification, all with an increasingly thick layer of digital signal processing. Lifeson used Stratocasters from 1980 to 1986(he used them on newer material from Permanent Waves and Moving Pictures on their respective tours and more predominantly from 1982's Signals up to 1985's Power Windows, with a small detour on the Grace Under Pressure CD to use Hentor Sportscasters, which were custom built for him. (Lifeson was the primary endorser of the now all-but-forgotten Gallien-Krueger solid-state guitar amplifier line.) In the late 1980s he switched to Carvin amplifiers in the studio and his short-lived Signature brand guitars onstage and in the studio.Lifeson primarily used PRS guitars during the recording of Roll The Bones in 1990/1991. When recording 1993's Counterparts, Lifeson returned to rock guitar tradition: he continued to use PRS guitars and Marshall amplifiers to record the album, and for the subsequent tour. On one Counterparts song, Stick It Out, Lifeson used a Gibson Les Paul to create a deeper, more resonant tone for the song's signature riff but used a PRS on the guitar solo. He maintains this "classicist" stage rig today, although his signal processing chain is still so complicated as to make Pat Metheny's processing rack or Robert Fripp's "Lunar Module" look minimalist. Lifeson currently uses PRS, Fender, and Gibson guitars, and Hughes and Kettner amplifiers. In 2005, Hughes and Kettner introduced an Alex Lifeson signature series amplifier; $50 from every amplifier sold will be donated to UNICEF.
The Naples incident
On New Year's Eve 2003, Lifeson, his son, and his daughter-in-law were arrested at the Ritz Carlton hotel in Naples, Florida. Lifeson, after intervening in an altercation between his son and police, was accused of assaulting a sheriff's deputy in what was described as a drunken brawl.On April 21, 2005 a plea deal was made between Lifeson and the prosecution by which he would be spared a custodial sentence if he agreed to plead no contest to a single charge of resisting arrest without violence. The plea was offered by the prosecution after the judge in his son Justin's trial reduced the charge against Justin from resisting arrest with violence to resisting arrest without violence. The reduction was in response to a pre-trial defense motion to dismiss the charges entirely, and was made after the prosecution has presented their case, but before the defense had called any witnesses. According to Justin's file in the Felony section of the Public Records database of Collier County, Florida [link], the judge determined that, based on the testimony of the prosecution's witnesses, including one of the police officers involved in the incident, that while the potential for violence existed, none was offered by Justin. As part of the plea agreement Lifeson and his son were each sentenced to 12 months of probation with the adjucation of that probation suspended. Upon successful completion of the probation, the matter is to be expunged from their records. In addition, they had to pay all court costs. In the fall of 2005, the court granted early dismissal from probation to both Lifeson and his son.
According to the band's official website [link], Lifeson is currently pursuing legal action against the Ritz Carlton and the Collier County Sheriff's Department for what he calls "their incredibly discourteous, arrogant and aggressive behavior of which I had never experienced in thirty years of travel."
Trivia
- Bandmates often call him by his nickname, "Lerxst," which also appears in a subsection of La Villa Strangiato (an instrumental based on images of Lifeson's famously vivid nightmares) from Hemispheres, titled "A Lerxst in Wonderland." The section features lengthy tremolo guitar soloing.
- During 2003, he played himself in an episode of the Canadian smash hit mockumentary Trailer Park Boys in which he is kidnapped by Ricky as punishment for not being able to get tickets, then requested to perform a private concert back at the trailer park.
- When Digitech produced the 2120 Artist Studio Guitar System, Lifeson created one of the presets, calling it "New Lerxst."
Awards
- 1983 - "Best Rock Talent" - Guitar for the Practicing Musician
- 1991 - Inducted into the Guitar for the Practicing Musician Hall of Fame
- 1996 - Officer of the Order of Canada, along with fellow bandmates Geddy Lee and Neil Peart
External links
- [Read 2002 CNN interview with Alex]
- [Article about Lifeson's arrest]
- [Article about Lifeson's plea deal]
- [Alex Lifeson gear, by songs]
| Rush |
| Geddy Lee | Alex Lifeson | Neil Peart |
| John Rutsey |
| Discography |
|---|
| Albums: Rush | Fly by Night | Caress of Steel | 2112 | A Farewell to Kings | Hemispheres | Permanent Waves | Moving Pictures | Signals | Grace Under Pressure | Power Windows | Hold Your Fire | Presto | Roll the Bones | Counterparts | Test for Echo | Vapor Trails |
| Live albums: All the World's a Stage | Exit...Stage Left | A Show of Hands | Different Stages | Rush in Rio | | Rush Replay X 3 |
| Compilations: Archives | Chronicles | Retrospective I | Retrospective II | | Gold |
| Other records: Not Fade Away (Single) | Feedback (Cover album) |
| Related articles |
| ' | ' | Victor | My Favorite Headache | A Work In Progress | Anatomy of A Drum Solo |
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