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Rush guitarist faces charges after New Year's Eve fracas

By GUY DIXON
From Saturday's Globe and Mail

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Even the good guys of rock 'n' roll have their bad days, it seems. Alex Lifeson, the guitarist from the superstar Canadian rock group Rush, was released on bond Friday after a New Year's Eve scuffle with Florida police officers, who reportedly had to use a stun gun to calm him down.

The sheriff's office in Collier County, Fla., said the British-Columbia-born guitarist, whose real name is Alex Zivojinovich, posted a $14,500 (U.S.) bond after being charged with six counts ranging from disorderly intoxication and resisting arrest to aggravated battery of a police officer.

Officers reported that they even used a Taser stun gun to subdue him while he was leaving a luxury hotel ballroom Wednesday night after the guitarist, who had begun bleeding from his nose, spat what a police report called “bio-hazard blood” into an officer's face.

The guitarist's son Justin and daughter-in-law Michelle were also arrested during the altercation, according to police, and have been released on bonds of $3,000 and $500 respectively.

Police reports say the incident started when officers were called to a ballroom at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Naples, Fla., a resort town overlooking the Gulf of Mexico. Hotel security had complained a guest was trying to sing to the crowd at the hotel's New Year's event and had refused to leave the stage on which the house band was playing.

The police say they took Justin aside and out into a service hallway, and told him they would have to escort him off the property. Upon returning to the ballroom, his father — police reports describe him as being drunk and list his age as 46, although most biographic information on Rush says he was born in 1953 — allegedly said, “Take me to jail, I don't care, it's ...New Year's Eve.”

Alex then pushed Justin in a direction opposite to the one an officer was trying to lead him, as the officer told Alex he was obstructing justice. Other members of the party joined in, the police report says, including Justin's wife, Michelle.

Once they got to a service stairwell, now crowded with commotion, one officer allegedly struggled with Justin and stunned him with a Taser. Another officer was pushed down some stairs by Alex, who also fell and was by then bleeding from his nose, the report says.

Justin disputed this account, saying that the deputy fell as she was pushing his father down.

He also said that at the start, all he was trying to do was to sing on stage. “I was singing Happy New Year's, that's all I was doing, singing to the whole crowd. That's all I said, ‘Happy New Year,'” he told the Associated Press. “Everyone was enjoying themselves. That's when someone apparently started yelling for one of the security guards. There was no violence on our part.”

A friend who answered the telephone at the guitarist's residence in Naples said yesterday that Alex was unable to comment at this point. Representatives for the band also weren't immediately available.

Despite the band's legion of steadfast fans worldwide, Rush is the kind of arena rock group that really hasn't been in fashion for years. If anything, that's its biggest charm. Most people who grew up in Canada in the 1970s and 1980s — even those who vehemently aren't fans — will immediately recognize the group's rolling, guitar-drenched hits such as S pirit of the Radio , Limelight, Closer to the Heart and Tom Sawyer.

With bassist Geddy Lee's distinctive wail and drummer Neil Peart's complicated patterns, Rush has maintained a kind of loveable incongruity — down to their puzzling use of clothes driers rotating onstage, like those used at the Rolling Stones SARS concert in Toronto this summer. The group, which originally formed in 1968, has been planning to celebrate its 30th anniversary since Mr. Peart joined on drums with a North American and European tour beginning in June.

The band has a reputation for integrity. But with this latest incident, its guitarist might have succumbed to a new trend, the same as the currently highly in-fashion group the White Stripes. Jack White, the guitarist for that band, was charged in December with punching the singer of another trendy Detroit band, the Von Bondies.