RUSH's YYZ with Leftybass, 1986...I was a younger man...

[leftybass]

My Pal Randy (also the guitarist in this video) has digitized some of our old band stuff, and here is one that people might dig: YYZ....by Rush, of course.

This was a band I was in during the mid 80's (pardon the period clothing), and we loved Rush as we do now---We also did Xanadu and Freewill in this band......at any rate, here I am with my original '79 4001 LH (still have it) banging out YYZ at a gig...just open room mics, no feed from the board...Most people here probably have never seen me play anyway, so here you go.....from 1986. I am trying to post the link, but if it doesn't show up I may need some help, thanks..

[cjj]

Your link works, but to embed it directly, just take the "rhq1Qbcl_bo" part and put it in the youtube escape block:



Cool vid, thanks for posting it!

[leftybass]

Thx man...this is the first time I've tried to post a youtube vid....

[rickenbrother]

Such a cool vid, it now gets to display twice in the thread! Thanks for sharing this, John!

[jps]

Very cool to see this, John! You guys did a great job on the song.

[ram]

John love the tone – not bad sound at all for a live recording… good rendition as well!

[beatlefreak]

Good job, John. That was great!

[cjj]

Yes, the bass tone is great! Can you comment on how you got the tone (Amps, effects, technique, etc)?

[leftybass]

Yes, the bass tone is great! Can you comment on how you got the tone (Amps, effects, technique, etc)?

I'd like to say it's all in the fingers, LOL....but let me see if I can remember...hmmmm.......

Back then I wasn't even 21, and gear money was hard to come by. Our amps were 'side-washed', i.e. nothing was behind us blowing out to the crowd...I had a cabinet on both sides of the stage as did Randy, but my rig back then on my side was a JBL 1X15" cabinet from the Cabaret series (I still use this JBL to record with)....and some sort of Sunn 1X15" on stage right.

My amp was a Peavey Bass MkII(?) head with the 6-band graphic EQ which was fed thru a Yamaha parametric EQ that belonged to James our singer. The 4001 went into this stuff thru a Tom Scholz Bass Rockman (remember those???) which added a little more to the overall sound....and Rotosounds to top it off.

Nowadays it is a Hartke 3500 and two Eden cabs (1X15 and 2X10), no effects. I record with a SWR 2X10 and the ol' JBL 15" I had in the video.

[weemac]

It's a great performance, I'm not sure if the big "R" could perform it better live! (and I'm a big fan of the big "R")

Eden.

[cassius987]

Nice work!

[FretlessOnly]

No trivial tune, that! Fine job, but it's a bit amusing watching the crowd try to dance to that one.

[leftybass]

No trivial tune, that! Fine job, but it's a bit amusing watching the crowd try to dance to that one.

Some of the crowds I've played to over the years have been 'interesting' to say the least......

[cassius987]

it's a bit amusing watching the crowd try to dance to that one.

Funny, my first band and I once discussed how to dance to YYZ and we decided square dance or ho-down style was about the only way possible. On the other hand the fans in Rio seemed to do a pretty good job of it IIRC.

[walker]

Awesome job, John! You and the whole band. I have even more respect and admiration for you now than I did before! A few of my bands tried to pull that one off back in the day, too. Unfortunately, I have no saved record of any of those shows. I can only hope that we came close to getting it this good. YYZ isn't easy to pull off, but you guys made it look easy. You had Geddy's Rick tone nailed, too. If I wasn't watching the vid, I could have been convinced that it was RUSH themselves. Your guitarist even had Alex's new-wave mullet down!

I also got a kick out of the lone YYZ Dancer.

Sidebar: Your bass then looked just like my '79 4001SLH before I painted it: