Grace Slick, chanteuse and enchantress of ‘60s San Francisco psychedelic rock stalwarts Jefferson Airplane, is often albeit inaccurately credited with the quip, “If you remember the ‘60s, you really weren’t there.” Many a rock'n'roll star has left any effort to chronicle their life story either entirely to a third party or has leaned heavily on a cowriter or ghostwriter to detail the assorted and often sordid detailings of sex, drugs, and … well, rock'n'roll. While Geddy Lee, bassist/keyboardist/singer of Canadian progressive hard rock trio Rush, used assistance in putting together his autobiography “My Effin’ Life,” its words and tenor are unmistakably his. The result is a lengthy, detailed, and captivating read for not only Rush fans but also students of pop culture intrigued by leaders thereof who, although in the odd and ofttimes artificial world of music stardom, are decidedly not of said world.

Lee is unhurried in his reflections, skipping nothing as he talks about his childhood as the son of Polish Jews who survived the Holocaust and emigrated to Canada shortly after World War Two. He speaks with affection about his father, whose death when Lee was 12 understandably both devastated and formed his world, and his mother, whose adherence to Orthodox Judaism ran counter to Lee’s turn toward atheism. In lesser hands, Lee's sheer amount of detail about his childhood and adolescence would come off as self-indulgent ego-tripping. In his case, however, despite his insistence that when it comes to his music and career therein, he is, in his own words, a bossypants, he also has little, if any, apparent ego.

Lee devotes a chapter of the book to his parents and their respective families’ experiences before and during the Holocaust. He notes that while his father said little about his war experiences, his mother was far more forthcoming about what she suffered in the concentration camps. Corroborating her stories with those from other family members and third-party research, Lee’s writing should be mandatory reading for all who today are unwilling or unable to grasp the underlying horrors of the Israel-Hamas War and antisemitism’s obscene hideousness.

Readers looking for the lurid side of rock stardom will be disappointed in Lee’s recountal of his life to date. While he makes no effort to avoid discussing his affection for drink without excess — well, frequent excess — and occasional drug use, no salacious tales of wild nights with even wilder groupies are to be found. Either Lee chose not to mention any such escapades out of respect to his wife Nancy, with whom he has been since 1976, or given how Rush’s music from the beginning appealed to a majority male audience, there simply were none, is for him to know and the rest of us to never officially find out.

For Rush fans, the book is a near embarrassment of riches in discussing the band’s albums and tours. A casual fan’s eyes may glaze over at the abundance of detail, but given how there is no such thing as a casual Rush fan, this is not a problem. Most of what Lee discusses in the book regarding Rush’s recorded and live output is already known, but it serves as a handy depository containing pretty much all there is to know.

While the book contains several laughs, much of its content has an air of thoughtful melancholy. Lee speaks at length about how the prescribed religious rituals of marking and mourning his father’s passing left indelible marks. The discussion of Rush drummer Neal Peart’s tragedies — his daughter died in a car accident, followed by his first wife’s death from cancer — plus Peart’s fatal bout with brain cancer, which Lee and Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson, at Peart’s request, kept from even family members until his passing in 2020, makes for sobering reading.

A quality autobiography contains far more than corroborated dates and times. It gives genuine insight into the person and information without oversharing, helping the reader understand why the writer has lived their life in the manner they have by forming an understanding of who the person is, thus explaining the what, where, when, why, and how. Geddy Lee’s “My Effin’ Life” is a captivating read not only for Rush fans but for anyone looking to find a rock star for whom the music, not the stardom, is the main attraction.