Veteran three-piece progressive rock band Rush has been around since the Nixon era, and surprisingly, they've been an influence on such disparate bands as Metallica, Catherine Wheel, and Gang Starr. But the recent release of Different Stages, a three-CD live album -- two discs of which were recorded last year, the third in 1978 -- is a bittersweet occurrence, as it comes on the heels of tragedy (in the last year, drummer Neil Peart sadly lost both his wife and their only daughter). Paul Semel talks with bassist/singer Geddy Lee about remixes, that disc from '78, and some unpleasant subjects.

So how's Neil doing?

Um... he's about how you'd expect him to be after going through what he's gone through. He's doing okay.... It's been a terrible, terrible year for him.

This may be a premature question, but what is the status of the band?

Well, the band is... I mean, let's try to be polite about this. We've just gone through a terrible, tragic year, so I think it's inappropriate to even discuss that. Everybody is trying to heal, and certainly discussing it in public is not something I'm comfortable with doing.

Fair enough.

Let's change the subject.

Okay. So one disc of the new album was recorded in 1978. And rumor has it that you guys just "found it" somewhere. How do you lose a tape?

Well, it wasn't lost, it was in my basement. I knew it was there all the time. And I always knew that I'd check it out one day. But when I did, I was really surprised by how strong it sounded. I also wasn't expecting it to be in such good shape after sitting around for 20 years.

What made you finally decide to listen to it?

I bought a new house last year, and in the course of moving I saw it and said, "Oh yeah, those tapes, I wonder what they sound like?" So [guitarist] Alex [Lifeson] and I went in the studio, just for fun, and we had a laugh listening to them, they sounded great. We tried to recall why we never used them, but we couldn't.

Then I remembered that I had a cold, as I usually did when we toured England, and my throat was pretty raw that night. So for the first couple songs, my vocal range was very limited, and I was kind of half-speaking things until my voice warmed up. But then around "By-Tor" it warmed up, and was kind of fine from there on out, though still not 100%. I imagine that at the time the mindset was that we had to run the whole show -- it was done for a radio broadcast, I think on the BBC -- and since the first part of the show sounded weird, I probably made the decision not to run it.

Are there a lot of those kinds of things in your possession?

Almost none, actually. Aside from a whole lot of live gigs that didn't make it onto this album, there's really nothing sitting in the vaults, so to speak.

What was your opinion of the remix of "Tom Sawyer"?

I thought it was really cool. As weird as it was to hear "Tom Sawyer" in that context, I thought they'd done a great job.

I'll tell you what I thought was ironic: Some radio stations started playing that version, and Rush fans were freaking out, saying it was sacrilege. That totally blew my mind. It's like, why would anyone get upset about this?

So what's the worst part about being a being a big successful musician?

(laughing) Just demands on your time away from home, I would say. I like to spend time at home, time with my family, and sometimes that's not possible, but I wouldn't say that's a big problem. I'm a pretty lucky guy.

Let's talk about the newer discs. How do you decide what songs make it on there?

My first priority is to include as many songs as I can that haven't appeared on a live album before. Then I look for versions of songs that, in my mind, are played better than any other time in our history, or have something about them that makes them stand apart.

And the third thing is that I have to present it in a form that's like "An Evening With Rush." You don't want it to be a collection of songs thrown together, you want fans to feel like they're at a Rush show.

So that's where you start. But then reality creeps in, and you realize that not every song that you wanted was recorded, while there's other songs that maybe you weren't crazy about the performances, or maybe the drum mike wasn't working. So sometimes you have to improvise. It's a long and very difficult process.

Do you ever get ideas from listening to those live tapes?

Yeah, you get a lot of insight into the way you put your music together. One of the side benefits of mixing material from 1978 to 1997 was looking at the material in different phases, how some of it was so production-obsessed, and some of it was quite simple and direct. So I learned a lot about how we behaved over the past 20 years.

Did this give you any ideas for the next live album? It is a little early to think about...

I can tell you, it would really take a lot for me to do another one. I've had just about my fill of mixing Rush live.

Well, you probably said the same thing after you put out A Show Of Hands.

I say the same thing after every live album. But I can say with pretty fair confidence that I can't imagine doing another one.

I think the future of live albums is DVD anyway. I don't think there'll be such a thing as strictly live recorded music. The DVD technology is so cool, why just have a live album when you can have the visuals too?

So will there be a video version of this album?

I'm hoping maybe by this Christmas, though I'm still working out the ifs, ands, and buts. But that appeals to me because if I'm going mix live material again, I'd like it to be something fresh and something I could get something out of, experientially.