Alexander Zivojinovich OC (b. August 27, 1953, Fernie, British Columbia), better known by his stage name Alex Lifeson, is a Canadian musician, best known as the guitarist of Rush. ("Lifeson" is a literal translation of "Zivojinovich".) The son of Serbian immigrants, Nenad & Melka Zivojinovich, Lifeson was raised in Toronto, Ontario. Lifeson plays guitar, plays the occasional bass pedals and composes for the rock group Rush. Lifeson's solo album, Victor, was released in 1996. Outside of music, he owns and operates a small consumer-products design, engineering, and manufacturing firm The Omega Concern, as a gourmet chef is part owner of the Toronto restaurant The Orbit Room, and is a licensed aircraft pilot and motorcycle operator.
In Rush's early career, Lifeson used Gibson ES-335's for the first single and the first three albums: RUSH, Fly By Night, and Caress Of Steel, and for the 2112 tour he used a Gibson Les Paul and Marshall amplification. Later on in the '70s he started using a Gibson EDS-1275 (similar to Jimmy Page) for songs like Xanadu. By the time of Hemispheres he had switched primarily to a cream-colored Gibson ES-355 guitar, with most of the amplification coming from Sunn amplifiers. Pedal wise he used various phaser and flanger pedals and a Cry Baby Wah Wah. , and a "Plexi" amplifier. Beginning in the late 1970s, he increasingly incorporated twelve-string guitar (acoustic and electric) and chorusing (Using the Roland Dimension C) into his sound. While Eddie Van Halen is usually credited as the inventor of the "superstrat," Lifeson actually adopted a key super-Strat component — the Floyd Rose locking vibrato system — before Van Halen. By the time of the 1982 Rush album Signals, Lifeson's primary guitar had become a hot-rodded Stratocaster with a Bill Lawrence high-output humbucker (a type later made famous by Dimebag Darrell) in the bridge position and a Floyd Rose bridge, and as the '80s wore on he switched from passive to active pickups and from vacuum tube to solid-state amplification, all with an increasingly thick layer of digital signal processing. Lifeson used Stratocasters from 1980 to 1986(he used them on newer material from Permanent Waves and Moving Pictures on their respective tours and more predominantly from 1982's Signals up to 1985's Power Windows, with a small detour on the Grace Under Pressure CD to use Hentor Sportscasters, which were custom built for him. (Lifeson was the primary endorser of the now all-but-forgotten Gallien-Krueger solid-state guitar amplifier line.) In the late 1980s he switched to Carvin amplifiers in the studio and his short-lived Signature brand guitars onstage and in the studio.
Lifeson primarily used PRS guitars during the recording of Roll The Bones in 1990/1991. When recording 1993's Counterparts, Lifeson returned to rock guitar tradition: he continued to use PRS guitars and Marshall amplifiers to record the album, and for the subsequent tour. On one Counterparts song, Stick It Out, Lifeson used a Gibson Les Paul to create a deeper, more resonant tone for the song's signature riff but used a PRS on the guitar solo. He maintains this "classicist" stage rig today, although his signal processing chain is still so complicated as to make Pat Metheny's processing rack or Robert Fripp's "Lunar Module" look minimalist. Lifeson currently uses PRS, Fender, and Gibson guitars, and Hughes and Kettner amplifiers. In 2005, Hughes and Kettner introduced an Alex Lifeson signature series amplifier; $50 from every amplifier sold will be donated to UNICEF.
On New Year's Eve 2003, Lifeson, his son, and his daughter-in-law were arrested at the Ritz Carlton hotel in Naples, Florida. Lifeson, after intervening in an altercation between his son and police, was accused of assaulting a sheriff's deputy in what was described as a drunken brawl. On April 21, 2005 a plea deal was made between Lifeson and the prosecution by which he would be spared a custodial sentence if he agreed to plead no contest to a single charge of resisting arrest without violence. The plea was offered by the prosecution after the judge in his son Justin's trial reduced the charge against Justin from resisting arrest with violence to resisting arrest without violence. The reduction was in re sponse to a pre-trial defense motion to dismiss the charges entirely, and was made after the prosecution has presented their case, but before the defense had called any witnesses. According to Justin's file in the Felony section of the Public Records database of Collier County, Florida, the judge determined that, based on the testimony of the prosecution's witnesses, including one of the police officers involved in the incident, that while the potential for violence existed, none was offered by Justin. As part of the plea agreement Lifeson and his son were each sentenced to 12 months of probation with the adjucation of that probation suspended. Upon successful completion of the probation, the matter is to be expunged from their records. In addition, they had to pay all court costs. In the fall of 2005, the court granted early dismissal from probation to both Lifeson and his son.
According to the band's official website, Lifeson is currently pursuing legal action against the Ritz Carlton and the Collier County Sheriff's Department for what he calls "their incredibly discourteous, arrogant and aggressive behavior of which I had never experienced in thirty years of travel." Bandmates often call him by his nickname, "Lerxst," which also appears in a subsection of La Villa Strangiato (an instrumental based on images of Lifeson's famously vivid nightmares) from Hemispheres, titled "A Lerxst in Wonderland." The section features lengthy tremolo guitar soloing. Alex Lifeson and BubblesDuring 2003, he played himself in an episode of the Canadian smash hit mockumentary Trailer Park Boys in which he is kidnapped by Ricky as punishment for not being able to get tickets, then requested to perform a private concert back at the trailer park. When Digitech produced the 2120 Artist Studio Guitar System, Lifeson created one of the presets, calling it "New Lerxst."
Gear
You can tell from the insouciant tenor of Alex Lifeson’s gear descriptions in the various tour books that although he is very much a “tech head,” that he doesn’t take it all quite as seriously as the usual Guitar God. Effects have always played a big part in Alex’s sound, but the main difference in his live sound, over the years, comes mostly from the guitars that he’s used at any given time. Alex started out with his war-worn Gibson ES-335 and a couple of Marshall stacks. The sound we hear on their first live album however, is a Gibson Les Paul, a guitar that he would return to years later. During the earlier years, Alex also employed a Fender Twin Reverb, onstage, for cleaner sounds. The effects Alex used, early on consisted of the usual Cry Baby wah pedal, an Echoplex, a phaser, and a Morley volume/echo pedal. If A Farewell to Kings saw a change in the sound of Rush, then Alex’s was the most pronounced. He added a cherry finished Gibson EDS-1175 doubleneck guitar that was pretty much identical to the one Jimmy Page made famous a few years earlier with Led Zeppelin.
Alex also began to employ a newer effect known as “chorusing” to his sound. The chorus effect takes the incoming signal and splits it into two separate signals, detuning the secondary signal to give the impression of more than one instrument playing, and giving it a spacious, expansive sound. The Electro-Harmonix Electric Mistress flanger was a similar effect, but gives the sound a sweeping tone similar to a jet engine passing overhead. Alex acquired a white Gibson ES-355, which was given a bit of a custom job with its electronics. This guitar had a lot of warmth and character, and went a long way to further refining Alex’s sound. He also began playing acoustic guitar onstage, utilizing a homemade contraption that would hold his acoustic in place, on a stand, so he wouldn’t have to switch between guitars. He soon had a white Gibson doubleneck, and a new Roland GR-500 guitar synthesizer. A black Gibson ES-345 would sometimes make it to the stage, as well. He changed amps on the Hemispheres tour to Hiwatt stacks. If all this new equipment weren’t enough, from this point on, Alex would have a set of Taurus pedals on his side of the stage, joining Geddy in their rather unique musical tap dance.
Alex was clearly going through a transitional phase with his gear on the Permanent Waves tour. His amps consisted of a changing combination of Mesa/Boogie, Marshall, and Hiwatt driving Marshall cabinets, while he added a customized Fender Stratocasters to his live arsenal of guitars. Alex began using a new Gibson Howard Roberts Fusion guitar onstage for the Moving Pictures tour. The guitar had a dark sunburst finish and looked like a large Les Paul with f-holes in the wings. He now had a white, black and red Strat, but changed his amps, once again. This time, he was using smaller Marshall “combo” amps. Combo amps are self-contained units with the amp and speakers built together as one unit. Alex would use this equipment for the next few years, and this sound is captured live on their Exit… Stage Left album. If you have a copy of Rush’s Grace Under Pressure live video, you can see Alex playing a blonde Fender Telecaster on “New World Man.” He would use this guitar live on the next tour, as well. Late in the Power Windows tour, Alex was introduced to Signature guitars. He had the company build him a few models and began endorsing them.
There is a lot of dissension in regards to Alex’s sound on the Hold Your Fire and Presto tours. Along with these guitars, Alex had switched to solid-state Gallien-Krueger amps. The rather thin sound he used during this time, which can be heard live on A Show of Hands, is not fondly remembered by most Rush fans. Luckily, the guitars of one Paul Reed Smith came to Alex’s rescue. The guitars were exceptionally made, giving Alex the feel of the Strat with the tone similar to a Les Paul. He has been using these guitars for over ten years now. Alex added a Gibson Les Paul to the mix on the Counterparts tour and, to many guitarists’ relief, began using Marshall stacks (JCM 800 models) once again. He continued this setup for the Test For Echo tour, replacing the JCM 800’s with newer 900-series Marshall’s; along with a few different Paul Reed Smith model guitars. Newer effects include the Roland VG-08 effect modeler, along with piezo pickups placed in his guitar. Piezo pickups have a separate, acoustic-like signal that can be used either in conjunction with the regular guitar sound, or simply by themselves. So while the boys have seemingly returned to their roots as far as equipment goes, there is still a lot of current technology helping to achieve their live show, which remains amazing after all these years.
