Alex Lifeson

Aleksandar Živojinović (born 27 August 1953), known professionally as Alex Lifeson, is a Canadian musician, best known as the guitarist for the rock band Rush.

In 1963, Lifeson met future Rush drummer John Rutsey in school.

Both interested in music, they decided to form a band.

In 1968, Lifeson co-founded a band that would later become Rush, with drummer John Rutsey and bassist and lead vocalist Jeff Jones.

In 1968, Lifeson and Rutsey formed The Projection, which disbanded a few months later.

In August 1968, following the recruitment of original bassist and vocalist Jeff Jones, Lifeson and Rutsey founded Rush.

Geddy Lee, a high school friend of Lifeson, assumed Jones's role soon after.

Instrumentally, Lifeson is renowned for his signature riffing, electronic effects and processing, unorthodox chord structures, and the copious arsenal of equipment he has used over the years.

Lifeson's first girlfriend, Charlene, gave birth to their eldest son, Justin, in October 1970.

Vapor Trails is the first Rush album since the 1970s to lack keyboards—as such, Lifeson used over 50 different guitars in what Shawn Hammond of Guitar Player called "his most rabid and experimental playing ever."

Lifeson was primarily a self-taught guitarist with the only formal instruction coming from a high school friend in 1971 who taught classical guitar lessons.

This training lasted for roughly a year and a half.

When Lifeson was 17, he had an argument with his parents about his future; he wanted to drop out of high school to pursue his dream of becoming a professional guitarist.

A video of the argument was part of a 1973 Canadian documentary, Come on Children, about the struggles of 10 adolescents.

Jones was replaced by Geddy Lee a month later, and Rutsey was replaced by Neil Peart in 1974, after which the lineup remained unchanged until the band's dissolution in 2018.

Lifeson was the only member of Rush who stayed in the band throughout its entire existence, and he and Lee were the only members to appear on all of the band's albums.

With Rush, Lifeson played electric and acoustic guitar, as well as other various string instruments such as mandola, mandolin, and bouzouki.

He also performed backing vocals in live performances as well as the studio albums Rush (1974), Presto (1989) and Roll the Bones (1991) and occasionally played keyboards and bass pedal synthesizers.

Like the other members of Rush, Lifeson performed real-time on-stage triggering of sampled instruments.

The couple married in 1975, and their second son, Adrian, was born two years later.

Along with his bandmates Geddy Lee and Neil Peart, Lifeson was made an Officer of the Order of Canada on 9 May 1996.

The trio was the first rock band to be so honoured as a group.

The bulk of Lifeson's work in music has been with Rush, although Lifeson has contributed to a body of work outside the band as well, including a solo album titled Victor (1996).

Adrian is also involved in music, and performed on "At the End" and "The Big Dance" from Lifeson's 1996 solo project, Victor.

Lifeson's neighbour John Rutsey began experimenting on a rented drum kit.

Rush was on hiatus for several years starting in 1997 owing to personal tragedies in Neil Peart's life, and Lifeson had not picked up a guitar for at least a year following those events.

Lifeson was ranked 98th on Rolling Stone's list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time and third (after Eddie Van Halen and Brian May) in a Guitar World readers' poll listing the 100 greatest guitarists.

However, after some work in his home studio and on various side projects, Lifeson returned to the studio with Rush to begin work on 2002's Vapor Trails.

Lifeson recalls what inspired him to play guitar in a 2008 interview:

"My brother-in-law played flamenco guitar. He lent his guitar to me and I grew to like it. When you're a kid, you don't want to play an accordion because it would be too boring. But your parents might want you to play one, especially if you're from a Yugoslavian family like me."

His first guitar was a Christmas gift from his father, a six-string Kent classical acoustic which was later replaced by an electric Japanese model.

The argument was also included in two documentaries about Rush, Beyond the Lighted Stage (2010) and Time Stand Still (2016).

During his adolescent years, he was influenced primarily by the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Pete Townshend, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Steve Hackett, and Allan Holdsworth; he explained in 2011 that "Clapton's solos seemed a little easier and more approachable. I remember sitting at my record player and moving the needle back and forth to get the solo in 'Spoonful.' But there was nothing I could do with Hendrix."

In 2013, he was inducted with Rush into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Aside from music, Lifeson has been a painter, a licensed aircraft pilot, an actor, and the former part-owner of a Toronto bar and a restaurant called The Orbit Room, which closed in 2020.

Lifeson was born Aleksandar Živojinović (Serbian: Александар Живојиновић) in Fernie, British Columbia.

His parents, Nenad and Melanija Živojinović, were Serb immigrants from Yugoslavia.

He was raised in Toronto.

His stage surname of "Lifeson" is a calque of his birth surname Živojinović, which can be literally translated into English as "son of life".

His formal musical education began on the viola, but he abandoned it in favor of the guitar at the age of 12.