Like a lot of people who travel the world and enjoy ample income, Geddy Lee is a collector. He's developed interests in wine, fine art, and vinyl, but it wasn't until 2012 that the Rush frontman developed an interest in perhaps the most obvious thing for him to collect: bass guitars.

The bassist has more than made up for lost time since that year, when a music shop offered to trade a rare 1950s Fender Precision bass for one of Lee's stage-used instruments. He passed, but that led to a discussion with his bass tech and a deep dive into the history of first Fender, then other bass makers.

Now, he has enough instruments to fill a book — and he has. Geddy Lee's Big Beautiful Book of Bass is accurately titled: it's a massive coffee-table volume full of hundreds of photographs of instruments from Lee's epic bass collection, sorted by manufacturer and model and then in chronological order.

The author proves an amiable tour guide through the history of electric bass guitars, starting in 1952 with the first mass-production model. Fender's Precision bass was given its name because it included frets like a guitar, so players could hit notes precisely. "Leo Fender's concept for the instrument," writes Lee, "was that anyone who could play a guitar could now play the bass."

While Lee is an accessible writer, he doesn't often slow down to explain his jargon, so good luck if you don't already know what a "stinger" or a "clover leaf tuner" is. I still don't quite understand why the original Gibson Thunderbird was a "reverse" bass, or what exactly changed when the company started producing "non-reverse" models.

Lee writes that the first time he played a Thunderbird with Rush, "it got quite a number of shocked looks from the crowd." Those were some very attentive fans, but then, what would you expect from the front rows of a Rush show in 2015? Even those who aren't so attentive, though, will recognize some of the iconic models here.

There's Les Claypool's Carl Thompson "Rainbow" Bass with its fist-like body extension, for example. And then there's perhaps the most recognizable bass brand associated with a particular player: the Höfner "violin" bass, which Paul McCartney has played since the earliest days of the Beatles.

"Because I was left-handed," said McCartney as quoted by Lee, "it looked less daft because it was symmetrical." Lee has an ultra-rare "Cavern" Höfner, so called because it's the model McCartney played at the Cavern Club after buying it in Hamburg.

It's unclear whether that's the rarest bass in these pages, but Lee clearly has some doozies. One amazing novelty is a Rickenbacker "Lightshow" bass, equipped with a translucent shell and colored lights that theoretically ("most of the time") correspond to the notes being played. Few ever made it out of the factory; the ultimate Lightshow band played with Vegas showgirls in the early '70s, boasting a bass and two matching guitars.

In what amounts to a book within a book, Lee also sits down for conversations with rock star bassists including John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin), Adam Clayton (U2), Bill Wyman (the Rolling Stones), and Jeff Tweedy (Wilco). He bonds with collector Ken Collins about how you become a singing bass player because no one else wants to sing, and Claypool asks him to demonstrate "YYZ."

The enthusiastic Lee isn't precious about any of this. As befits a guy who's a musician first and a collector second, he likes to collect both pristine and road-worn models. He also isn't afraid to carefully disassemble his vintage instruments, to give readers a look inside.

He also modestly tucks the section on the basses he's played with Rush at the back of the book, so it's easy to skip if that's not what you came for. He writes about the challenges his techs faced when he brought his collection on the road for Rush's 40th anniversary; for most of his career, he's had only a few trusted "favorite headaches."

He gravitates towards Fender Jazz basses from the early '70s, not sharing the opinion that the Beatles killed guitar craftsmanship in the U.S. by stimulating mass production. If you know one Rush song, you've probably heard Lee play a 1972 black Fender Jazz, which made its debut on "Tom Sawyer" and subsequently appeared on several albums and tours before it finally hit its last legs about a decade ago and is now on display in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

I was having a tough time getting the right tone out of my Rickenbacker 4001 for "Tom Sawyer" and, exasperated, decided to give the '72 Jazz a try instead. Paul Northfield, our engineer at the time, plugged in a tube compressor, made a couple of quick adjustments, and bingo! He got a terrific top-end twang out of it not dissimilar to a Ricky. More important, the bottom end sounded tight and deep, and melded perfectly with Neil's bass drums.

If you want a lot more where that came from, you know what big book to look for.

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