RUSH Frontman On 'Snakes & Arrows': 'In Retrospect I Feel We Kind Of Overdid It With Overdubs'

Jim Allen of Billboard.com recently conducted an interview with bassist/vocalist Geddy Lee of Canadian rock legends RUSH. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Billboard.com: The RUSH documentary "Beyond The Lighted Stage" came out last year. What was your initial reaction?

Geddy: It was hard for me to watch in some ways. It was kind of fun to watch the old, old stuff, the bad hair and bad clothes. And seeing the old performances, I enjoyed that. It was kind of an out-of-body experience, because I didn't recognize that as me. But I found it uncomfortable just to see so much of us talking [laughs]. I enjoyed all the parts where other people were talking more than watching us talk incessantly about what we do.

Billboard.com: What moved you to perform "Moving Pictures" in its entirety on the "Time Machine" tour?

Geddy: We thought that was the perfect time, and the perfect album to do that with. Because I guess it would be considered our quintessential album, and it was the 30th anniversary of that album being released. It also gave us the opportunity to play an 11-minute song on that album called "The Camera Eye", which we had never really embraced as a live song.

Billboard.com: What can we expect from the next album, "Clockwork Angels"?

Geddy: The first two [single] releases from this album, "Caravan" and "Brought Up to Believe", are a great indication of where this album's going, although there's much more variety than just what those two songs offer. When I look back at [2007 album] "Snakes & Arrows", as happy as we were with that record, in retrospect I feel we kind of overdid it with overdubs. We'd like to simplify that, just in terms of making sure the guitar, bass and drum sounds are big and loud and clear, and any time we are going to add an overdub, to make sure that it definitely is adding and not subtracting.

Read the entire interview from Billboard.com.