Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson is featured in the latest episode of Gibson TV’s My First Gibson, and in it he explains that he was 12 years old when he got his guitar.
“I wanted to play guitar because I just thought it was such a cool instrument, I thought it sounded really cool,” he shares. “You know, when I listened to music that had guitar music in it, particularly like The Beach Boys in that period, in the mid ’60s, it was just the driving force of the music and it just kinda spoke to me I think.”
He says when he was in his teens, every Saturday he’d go to a music store in Toronto called Long and McQuade’s and take down a guitar and play until a sales person would kick him out. He talks about all the guitars he used to try out, until he finally got himself a Gibson, noting, “I just couldn’t believe how easy it was to play.”
Lifeson says that guitar was his main axe until Rush got their record deal, and he and the band went back to Long and McQuade’s to buy new instruments; that was when he was able to purchase his first Les Paul.
“It was so cool doing that, it was like a dream come true for any young musician,” he says.
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