GEDDY LEE Talks The Agony Of The Mixing Process & Nearly Throwing Out “Tom Sawyer”

“Some of the things, maybe the nuances you’ve fallen in love with, maybe there’s no room for them anymore. And I find that very painful process.”

We all would agree on the fact that Rush‘s Geddy Lee knows a thing or two about capturing musical magic. But even after over four decades of electrifying performances and chart-topping albums, there’s one part of the creative process that still leaves him feeling blue: post-production.

In a recent interview with NPR’s World Café, Lee compared the mixing stage of album creation to the famous Woody Allen line: “Marriage is the death of hope.” He explained, “I always took that expression and applied it to music where I always felt mixing is the death of hope.

“Because when you’re making a record, it’s full of possibility — I mean, it really is a wondrous process; it’s like magic. And so when you come to the mixing part, which is the final, you have to review everything that’s on the tracks and make some very hard decisions about how they need to be placed. And some of the things, maybe the nuances you’ve fallen in love with, maybe there’s no room for them anymore. And I find that very painful process.”

It’s a bittersweet sentiment that likely many artists can relate to. The initial spark of inspiration, the joy of collaboration, the thrill of laying down raw tracks – all of that gets funneled into a single, final version. And sometimes, the magic gets a little… muddled.