Geddy Lee and Paul Gilbert on the Understated Genius of Alex Lifeson’s Guitar Work

Alex Lifeson can’t reasonably be called overlooked. A Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee since 2013, co-creator of over 40 million record sales, and the subject of a South Park gag that confirmed his place in the pop-culture firmament, he’s hardly a secret. Yet as Rush prepares its Fifty Something Tour—with Anika Nilles stepping into the late Neil Peart’s role—the conversation around Lifeson’s guitar work has hardened into a particular refrain: he remains, among his peers, strangely underrated.

Speaking in London, bassist and vocalist Geddy Lee didn’t soften the claim. “I think he’s the most underrated guitarist in rock history,” he said. “People don’t realise how inventive he was, because he refused to conform sonically, his chordal use.” Lee pointed to the way Lifeson made a three-piece band sound larger than its parts, inventing chords and weaving parts that often felt like multiple guitarists at once. That density, Lee argues, was the result of deliberate avoidance—a refusal to reach for a standard solo when a more textural, chord-driven approach could reshape the song.

Paul Gilbert, currently promoting his album WROC, was more wary of the underrated label but emphatic about the substance. “His chord work is so unique, and the way he arpeggiates them, makes riffs out of them—there’s always something really creative with the rhythm stuff,” Gilbert said. Lifeson never defaulted to shred, a restraint that served Rush’s grander concepts. It’s a discipline Gilbert respects: the ability to be audacious without hijacking the music’s architecture.

Lee cited “Red Sector A” from Grace Under Pressure as a high point—a track written from the perspective of his mother and father, Holocaust survivors, over which Lifeson floats a solo that’s both untethered and devastatingly precise. “He’s taken a song with this repetitive, mind-numbing arpeggiation,” Lee said, “and he’s floating on top with these really interesting chord progressions—and that whole solo!” It’s a reminder that Lifeson’s genius lies not in flash but in finding the one part that makes the song heavier, stranger, and entirely his own.