Geddy Lee’s Big Beautiful Book of Bass- One Year Later
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I pre-ordered Geddy Lee’s Big Beautiful Book of Bass (from here on known as BBBB) before I saw the cover. Before I knew anything about it beyond, “Geddy Lee wrote a book all about bass.” To be fair, I’d have preordered it if all I knew was the first five words of that sentence. To be perfectly honest, I’d have pre-ordered it if all I knew was the first word of that sentence. Because I’m That fan. Like, I would venture to guess, most of the people reading this.
So how does this massive tome hold up one year after its release? Was it worth the hype, and how many people have read the whole thing?
image credit- amazon.com
Of course it holds up. Let’s start from the position that there are two types of people in the world- People who know Rush is the greatest band ever, and people who are wrong. The first type of person knows that Geddy Lee would never put his name on something subpar, or even average. If you’re getting something one of the guys from Rush worked on, you’re getting something that has been sweated over, detailed to within an inch of its life, and polished to a high sheen. This is the band that wrote a song too hard for them to play (my personal favorite Rush story from their perfect rockdoc, 2010’s “Beyond the Lighted Stage”.) From the ornate cover to Alex’s hilarious “Backword” (at least it didn’t say “Blah blah blah blah”), the stage is set to take a deeper dive into the world of bass guitar than any book before or since. It’s the perfect example of both Geddy’s playing- ornate while also being easy to get ahold of in your mind- and what I call Bass Player Inferiority Syndrome. Sure, there are a lot of books about guitar, but The Book about bass is going to be bigger and cooler than all of those combined. Also heavier. Heck, even the pages are thicker than a normal book because of their quality.
I will also admit I have not read the book from cover to cover yet. I want to. But it’s really heavy. It’s not built for comfort, it’s built to do its job. *looks at Geddy playing a Rickenbacker and thanks him for the easy metaphor* The book lives in the same space my basses do, and I’ll pick it up and thumb through it when I’m taking a break from learning a song or if I need to step away from something. That’s the kind of book this is. It’s not a bathroom book, that’s for sure.
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One thing I do love about it, and I know this makes me an Old but I don’t care, is that it really doesn’t work as an ebook. You can buy it for Kindle, but why would you? The point of the book is the huge, lush color photographs and the feel of the thing in your hands. It should be analog (kid). It’s the kind of book that you pick up (with your legs, not your back), and flip open to any page. It’s a voyage of discovery, this book. Will I flip to a page to read about a 1977 Rickenbacker 4001 Jetglo Fretless (pg.227), a 1957 Gibson EB Mahogany (pg. 136), a 1968 Yahama SB-5a “Flying Samuri” Sunburst (pg. 368), or an interview with bass genius Les Claypool (pg. 334)?
The interviews, by the way, are the highlight of the book for me. My favorite type of interview is when it’s a conversation between peers who are interested in each other. They know how to ask questions and follow rabbit trails better than a layman who is just interested in the thing or doing a job. The passion comes out in the interviews. That’s one thing about Geddy that he talked about a lot in interviews leading up to the release of the book and afterwards- his passion for bass and how he found this particular obsession. I had assumed, like lots of fans probably, that Geddy owned a massive collection of basses. Why wouldn’t he? And it turns out that he really didn’t because he never looked at the bass like a thing to be collected. It was a tool, and he wanted the tools that would allow him to best do his job. So he didn’t have a million different kinds of instruments. He figured, I sound like this, these instruments do that, so that’s what I need. It wasn’t until late in his career that he started collecting and experimenting with basses and learning about their history, and that brought out the nerd and the passion in him for them. He also learned that he sounds like him through any bass and maybe he could have looked beyond sooner. Sure, his Fender Jazz is His Bass and that is how He Sounds the best, but the tone is in the fingers isn’t just a cliché for a t-shirt.
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The book comes with a pretty hefty price tag for a book, and a crazy price tag for the Super Geek edition that I really wanted could never justify, but it’s completely worth every penny. You can see the money on the page and you can feel it in the textures and care. If you’ve been on the fence about picking this up for yourself, now is the time. Pull up your local independent bookstore and put in an order. Us super-nerd Rush fans already have our copies sitting next to the copies of Clockwork Angels novels we haven’t read yet either. Christmas is coming, get one for the guitar player in your life who needs to be reminded that his two extra strings don’t make him special, or for the drummer in your life because it’s got a lot of pictures and drummers like books like that.
Do you have a favorite part of this book, or maybe some other bass-related book I should write about in the future?
Doug Robertson is the editor of The Bass Blog, the blog component of The Bass Channel, your one stop YouTube channel for all things bass. His number one is a Mexican Geddy Lee Signature Jazz and his boomer is a BEAD tuned T-Bird. Find books by Doug here. If you’re interested in contributing to The Bass Blog please reach out to Doug at doug@thebasschannel.net. We would love to hear from you.
