Geddy at SARSStock in Toronto, 2003
A young Gary Weinrib showing an early interest in music
Geddy and his sister Susan with their father Morris Weinrib
even if I was still not a believer in God. It also brought me closer to my mom who had not really been supportive of me quitting school and running away to join the circus. She wasn’t too keen about that, but I started to understand why she wanted me to go down certain paths in life. And I also understood that with my father no longer around as an enforcer, that was very unlikely to happen. And so, I married out of the faith, as did my brother and my sister—although my sister’s second marriage was to someone Jewish. We’ve all come back to Judaism very strongly. We celebrate all the holidays. I just felt that what my parents went through, the culture they grew up in, created the culture I grew up in. And if you want to understand me, you’ve got to understand that. Scholars talk now about this idea of second- and third-generation survivors, and how that legacy affects them. I’m assuming you feel, it sounds like you’re describing, like you feel like you’re a survivor, too. There’s a lot smarter writing about this than mine, but I do think that there’s a trauma that’s passed on and a guilt that’s passed on. Now, not everybody feels those things in the same way. When I first met Ben Mink, a brilliant musician also from that part of Toron- to, we realized that we had so many similar experiences being children of survivors, I can’t even explain how comforting it was to both of us. It brought out this very dark sense of humour about it all. We made so many bad Holocaust jokes between us because we could, because we were the ones who understood how horrific it was. It bonded us as friends, and we both found a way out of the
There were still a lot of farms on the edge of the city; these were the last people to sell their property for construction that seemed forever moving north. Kids would come on their bikes, and they taunted and terrorized us. We grew accustomed to not advertising our religion. I started getting into music, and meeting other kids that were into music—but few of those kids were Jewish. And eventually I got into different friend groups, to whom I would be introduced: “This is Geddy, he’s Jewish, but he’s OK.” Which I found incred- ibly offensive, but I didn’t say anything. I was quiet. You don’t want to advertise that you’re different, but you get treated as if you’re different. That’s a motivating factor when you’re a young musician to join a band. Part of that you’re motivated by is acceptance. I was a quick learner. Regardless of any aliena- tion I might have felt through these various friends. It was the music that sustained me. It was the music that fed me and the feeling that I can do this. Your book also gets into explaining how you started to reassess your cultural roots... When I joined Rush and started playing bars and playing clubs—and then eventually getting signed to a deal—it was a whole different thing. I was becoming a profession- al musician in my mid-teens. Things were changing really quickly. And it really wasn’t about what religion I was. It was about, you know, music. Everything was music. Every- thing was the band, you know, writing songs and playing as many gigs as we could. Trying to get gigs. And by the time we’d gone on
tour for the first time in 1974, the music was opening a whole new world for me. I used to wear a mezuzah around my neck on stage. Rush was the opening act for Kiss and we were down south, maybe Alabama. Gene Simmons came up to me and he picked up my mezuzah and he said, “I don’t think it’s a wise idea to wear that thing when you’re playing in places like this. They don’t think too kindly of our kind.” He scared me a little bit. I put the mezuzah away. The third chapter is all about your Holo- caust survivor parents’ history before they came to Canada and especially detailed when it comes to your mother, Mary Weinrib. I couldn’t imagine explaining who I am and why I am the way I am without informing people about how I grew up. The shadow of the Holocaust was on me the entire time. Their stories gave me nightmares. And that helped form my worldview. As I got older and was able to put these things in a better per- spective, it still informed my personality. And once I started becoming more successful, I returned to acceptance of my Jewish roots,
22
Made with FlippingBook Digital Proposal Creator