Gene Simmons Claims He Taught Geddy Lee ‘What A Blues Scale Was’

Gene Simmons claims he taught Rush bassist Geddy Lee the blues scale as well as the numerical notation for the standard blues progression: 1,4,5. The KISS bassist related the story in an interview that took place a year ago but was recently published in an Ultimate Guitar blog post.

Simmons told the story while discussing his Gene Simmons Master Class and his teaching approach to playing bass and writing songs. One of Simmons’ points was that many musicians in popular music aren’t classically trained and don’t know how to read music but rather play by ear.

Read an excerpt from the Ultimate Guitar blog post:

“And I’ll tell you a telling story. Kiss took out Rush on their first tour. They came out to support us, you know, because we liked what they did. And this was in the, in their ‘Working Man’ period, when they sounded kind of like a Canadian Zeppelin, which I still prefer, sound-wise, but obviously, they’ve done very well, and we used to hang out with the guys and joke around everything.”

“One night back at the hotel or backstage someplace, Geddy [Lee] and I were sitting down, trading licks, and I said, ‘Do you want to do a blues scale? You go first, and then I’ll continue the chord pattern,’ and he said, ‘I don’t know what you mean.’ At least from what I recall, Geddy didn’t understand what a blues scale was or what ‘1,4,5’ meant. That also bears noting that when you go ‘1,4,5’ to a musician, that means something, it’s a relationship of notes or chords. And so I go, ‘Well, okay then, you hit a G, either octave or low,’ and he said, ‘Which one is that?’ Geddy played purely by ear. Now of course later on, he learned what the notes were and stuff like that, but it’s the same thing with The Edge. The reason you heard ‘jingle jangle jingle jangle,’ kind of thing — that became the style of U2’s guitar sound is when The Edge started playing guitar in a band, he couldn’t play chords. He just strummed various notes so, it’s all open to… Music is an interesting thing. You don’t have to get complex about it, just start.”

KISS is hitting the road this fall. Check out their itinerary: