Video: Seventeen-Year-Old Future Rush Guitarist Alex Lifeson Persuades His Parents to Let Him Become a Musician

A friend was just telling me that I should see Beyond the Lighted Stage, the new documentary about Rush, even though I’m not a huge Rush fan. And now Metal Insider have gone ahead and posted a clip which pretty much backs up my pal’s claim. This footage is amazing: guitarist Alex Lifeson, age seventeen and just starting Rush (they may have even still been known as “The Projection” at that point), convinces his Serbian immigrant parents to let him drop out of the twelfth grade (or “grade twelve,” as it’s know in Canada) and attempt to have a career as a professional musician. I’m sure a LOT of you have had a similar conversation with your own families at some point — if not to do anything as drastic as drop out of high school, then just to give up a good job to pursue a seemingly-impossible dream (I assure you, Mama Rosenberg did not jump for joy when I told her I was quitting my steady, well-paying office job to try and do some silly metal blog full-time). So we can all relate to this. Watch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Q7zLCw5xy_w

Funny enough, elsewhere in the doc, Lifeson apparently admits that his parents were right. Oh well. Luckily things all worked out for him anyway.