Famed Rush frontman and bassist, Geddy Lee, tells many fascinating stories in his new memoir, My Effin' Life. He charts his story from his humble beginnings outside Toronto in the 1950s and 1960s to achieving worldwide success with one of the biggest rock bands of all time.

On the new episode of World Cafe, he chats with Kallao about his book, his family, his creative journey, and the song that his bandmates almost nixed. Listen below.

During the chat, Geddy was asked if it was true that at one point he wanted to shelve one of Rush's biggest hits, "Tom Sawyer". He responded, "Yeah, yeah. It was... I can't swear on this show, so... it was a very difficult song to record, I tell you. Every turn, something was going wrong. And then when we came to mix it, there were all these technical problems, because we were using one of the first computerized mixing consoles in North America at the time. That was in 1980, right? '79, '80. And there was this grounding problem, and the song kept mixing itself, it kept remixing itself. So it was just... nothing was working. And, at one point, I thought, 'Maybe we just forget this song and move on'. It just goes to show you, I wouldn't know a hit single if I tripped over it."

Lee's My Effin’ Life In Conversation tour, in support of his recently released his memoir, My Effin' Life, lands in the UK on Wednesday, December 13. Dates are below and tickets are available here.

Dates:

December
13 - Sheffield, UK - City Hall
14 - Glasgow, UK - Royal Concert Hall
17 - Portsmouth, UK - Guildhall
18 - London, UK - Barbican

My Effin' Life is available now via Harper Collins. Order here.