Oh man, when it comes to Alex, this is the piece that always stands out in my head. You just don't hear this sort of thing anymore...1/32nd notes on a guitar?!? (Or are they 1/64th? Just nuts)
Hahaha... or in Brit.. the demisemiquavers?
That's kinda not how it works though when describing what he does.
That stuff is more for a drummer or keyboard type gluing the structure of a song together.
(Now who's being semantical VZ?)
His appeal was from what he created through the use of the effects he ran his guitar through.
I mean yeah he certainly rips up and down the fingerboard, but there's a gillion guys that can do that. The genius was in the sound he created using the effects available to him, both early on and thru the years. There are purists that criticize this, as in "it's cheating", but make no mistake, using various electronic methods of manipulating a sound, if the result is something new, unique, and incredible... requires a level of artistic genius that few are born with. Kids can create all kinds of stuff today using all the gadgets out there now, but can they bend the human mind and evoke an emotional response from millions with the sound alone? No. Those folks are few and far between.
Ya really gotta hand it to Rush, even more so than the early greats like Pink Floyd or the Stones. What they inspired in the kids that came up listening to them, shaped the next generation of rock music. Had there never been a Rush, we'd have never experienced the likes of Kurt Cobain and Dave Grohl changing everything r&r with Nirvana. And that's just one example.