Why John Petrucci wouldn’t be John Petrucci without Rush’s Alex Lifeson

Dream Theater guitarist John Petrucci has never shied away over how much he learned after discovering Rush and counterpart Alex Lifeson at just the right time in his life. In 2019 he told Prog how deep Lifeson’s influence had gone.

“Alex Lifeson is such a big influence on me in so many ways. You know how it is when you discover a band as a teenager – you just get so invested in it.

The first couple of Rush albums, I literally learned every song, and me and my friends, including [Dream Theater bassist] John Myung , jammed to all that stuff. I think from learning all those songs, it’s just ingrained as part of my style.

I remember dissecting YYZ and learning the guitar solo and all these different techniques of hammer-ons and pull-offs, even the scales that Alex used. I use that stuff all the time with Dream Theater.

Rush introduced me to progressive rock and metal, and the idea that song structures didn’t have to be the typical three-minute thing. That style of music was the perfect backdrop to storytelling and conceptual lyrics – things like 2112 . All of that had a huge influence on me and opened my mind to exploring a more unique way of writing in a progressive style.

The odd time signatures and songs that had multiple parts – something like La Villa Strangiato , where it’s broken into sections much in the way that Genesis would do it – was a big influence. His guitar sound changed the way I create the effects that I use. Some of his approaches to chordal playing and making a band sound really big with just one guitar was a huge influence on me.

The thing with Rush is, since they were just a three-piece, the guitar really had the job of taking up a lot of space. So the very big approach that Alex had to playing guitar and using open strings, pedal tones, chords that were richer and using chorusing on the guitar, it all really filled out that space.

I do some solo work, touring with G3 , and that’s just a trio – so it harkens back to that influence when I’m trying to make the guitar fill out a lot of space when there’s no keyboards and no second guitar player, especially during the instrumental sections when there’s no vocal.

Alex has a beautiful way of approaching the guitar. He brought the guitar to the forefront and made it take up this beautiful space in such a great way.”