1,200 Pages? What Was I Thinking?

Frontman of the much-missed Rush, child of Holocaust survivors, veteran of 40-plus years in progressive rock, self-confessed germophobe and details obsessive and arguably the Greatest Living Canadian there's a lot for Geddy Lee, 70, to talk about. Fortunately, he's been able to squeeze it all into his new autobiography, My Effin' Life, in which he explores the perils of fame, the pleasures of retirement, and an unexpected dalliance with Peruvian marching powder. Asked to name Rush's best album by Joel McIver, he warns, "Millions of fans are going to disagree with me on this..."

- By Joel McIver

There has never been another band quite like Rush, who formed in 1968 and blew people's minds worldwide for the next 47 years. An intellectual trio of master musicians who delivered high-fantasy flights of fancy in the 70s, ascended synth-and riffheavy commercial heights in the 80s and settled neatly into classic rock iconhood in the 90s, they represented the ultimate triumph of mind over marketing. With a very Canadian reputation for polite eccentricity, the trio - Geddy Lee (vocals, bass and keyboards), Alex Lifeson (guitar) and Neil Peart (drums) - should, by rights, have never made it big, but in fact they were huge, especially at the triumphant back end of their careers, when they played arena tours worldwide.

If you caught them on one of those dates, you'll recall the staggering scale of both the production and the songs. Even as a mere trio, Rush made planet-sized music, with Lee steering the show through their big hits Tom Sawyer, YYZ, Limelight and The Spirit Of Radio with a benevolent smile, uttering batlike vocals of extraordinarily high frequency: famously, US alt-rockers Pavement saw fit to discuss his unique pipes in their 1997 song Stereo.

If you never saw Rush live, you're out of luck, because they ceased touring in 2015 and Peart died at the age of 67 five years later, to the widespread shock and grief of the group's enormous fanbase. This marked the end of Rush as we knew it: more than just a rock drummer, Peart was a deep thinker and lyricist who had suffered the losses of his first wife and daughter, causing him to step away from Rush from 1998 to 2002.