Louder AAA
To get to the beginning, you have to go back to the end. It’s August 1, 2015, and the Forum in Los Angeles is in disarray. It’s the final curtain call on Rush’s R40 tour, and for the first and last time in their four-decade career, at the end of the set Neil Peart has stepped off his drum riser and gone to the front of the stage to hug his two bandmates Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson.
“It was a beautiful moment,” Geddy would say later. For his part, Alex had been waiting for the final moment – not Neil’s embrace, neither of them knew that was coming as his way of saying goodbye – literally watching from the Forum stage the minutes tick away on the giant clock on the back wall of the venue.
“I remember being on stage and thinking how many times we’d played the Forum and wondering just how many times we’d done Working Man [the final song of the show] there, because it’s pretty much been in the set since day one,” said Alex.
“It was a weird feeling knowing that was likely the last time we’d play any of those songs together. I tried to soak in every moment and object at that last gig. I counted down the minutes on the clock they have there; you can see it from the stage.
“I looked at my bandmates and missed them already, and I felt sad to see such joy in Neil’s face when we were down to the last few bars of our last song played together, as we finally finished our set.”
Many in the audience were weeping openly as Geddy said he’d see us down the road some day and Neil waved one final time before disappearing into the shadows.
Yet here we are, some 11 years down that road. It’s January, a blustery, rain-filled grey morning in London’s salubrious Mayfair neighbourhood – a far cry from that warm Californian evening when Rush came to a halt. We’re sitting in a suite in the Connaught Hotel, the wind rattling the picture window behind us.
The last time Lifeson and Lee played the LA Forum was for the Taylor Hawkins tribute in 2022, and going back there to perform took an emotional toll. It was, Lee reflected, “like returning to the scene of the crime”. Which begs the question: why are they beginning the voluminous Rush Fifty Something tour (on June 7) with four shows at that same venue?
Alex Lifeson: Staring at that same clock where it ended, yeah.
Geddy Lee: Supremely stupid idea. It’s a massively stupid idea, because we’re going to be so emotional already, that first show without Neil, and then to be in that building. What the fuck was I thinking? Lifeson: Yeah, what were we fucking thinking?
While scheduling a tour might not seem to be one of the band’s strengths, being able to sell tickets for it is. Since Rush’s announcement in October last year that they were going to be playing a short run of summer shows in 2026, demand has been so high that the tour will now see the band out on the road throughout North America from June and they won’t be home until Christmas. Then more shows in South America at the beginning of 2027 will segue into the band’s first European and UK shows – the UK leg beginning at Glasgow Hydro on March 8 - in 14 years. The band estimate they’ll be out on the road for the best part of two years.
Lee: To be honest, originally we were only going to do those summer dates. Like six or seven residencies, and that was it. When they did the announcement, and the tickets were gone in an instant, our new management [Rush brought in Q Prime (Metallica, Greta Van Fleet) to help manage this tour] became very bullish. They thought some more shows would go well. But nobody saw that response and it just snowballed.
When we talked about how a tour would look, we said: “Well, if we’re going to tour, I would like to go back to England, and I would like to play Europe. It’s been a long, long time.” So that was sort of in the background. And we wanted to make that happen this fall, but all the venues we wanted here were already gone.
Lifeson: You need like a year and a half ahead of time to get in those rooms…
Lee: Q Prime came back and said why don’t we play some more American dates…
Lifeson: So, we said okay, you know, like idiots. And now there are so many dates.
How are rehearsals? There are so many songs you have to play, but whittling the set down must be a near-impossible task? I’m assuming three-hour sets are now a thing of the past?
Lifeson: I think by law that you’re not allowed to play for three hours at our advanced age.
Lee: Some guy will come in with a stopwatch and raise a finger, telling us to stop. But to answer your question, rehearsals are going really well, we’re up to speed on about twenty-five songs.
Lifeson: We started whittling them down from around 900,000.
The tour is already running into 2027. I saw you at the end of R40, and even though the show was peerless you were pretty beaten up from the tour. And although you’re both in great shape, this tour is going to be a long haul at any age.
Lee: I mean, the way we approach a tour now, you have a different way into it.
Lifeson: We’re really making an effort to stay fit in many ways, mentally and physically. It’s inevitable you age, and you slow down, so it’s more of a challenge to get through without some new condition.
Lee: And part of the allure of doing this is the challenge itself. You know, Al and I want to go out and play as well, if not better, than we’ve ever played, and present the songs in a way that our fans will be really happy to hear them. The support for this tour is overwhelming, and we want to earn that by giving them the show they want and in a way that they’ve been asking us to do since 2015. My inbox is always full of love and requests from fans. So we said yes, we’re going to do it, and we’re going to do the best we can.
Of course, it’s a different era, we’ve got a few more miles on the clock since the last time, but we’ll be fine. Going back to what we said about the setlist, what is going to make it easier is that we decided right from the beginning that we won’t play the same show every night this time around. There’s going to be a turnover of about forty per cent of the songs that will change from night to night.
Lifeson: He means just to make things a little harder.
Lee: Obviously there are certain songs that we’ll play every night. But one way to have our cake and eat it too is to flip a certain number of those songs, so that if somebody comes back the second night, they’re going to hear some of those songs that they didn’t hear the first night. They come back the third night, they’re going to hear another set yet again. I don’t really know how it’ll work in practice, but we have five evenings of music with different songs, and we’ll keep mixing them up.
Lifeson: We just saw Anika [Nilles, Rush’s new drummer] in Germany when we were out there doing press, and she was saying how she’s up to speed on the stuff we’ve been rehearsing, and then we told her we’d added a few more songs that she’ll need to learn.
Let’s talk about Anika. She went to Toronto to play with you both just to see if she might fit, and there was no concrete plan to put Rush back together then. On the most basic level, is it just plain weird to turn around and see someone who isn’t Neil sitting behind the drum kit?
Lee: Honestly, it’s still fresh. We’ve had four fairly intense rehearsals. The first one was back in March [2025], which was an experiment. At that time we still hadn’t decided to go out. We wanted to, but if the idea of replacing Neil became too arduous, we would have backed out.
Do you remember what the first song the three of you played together was?
Lee: We’d prepped five songs, but I think it might have been Limelight. We wouldn’t have wanted something like YYZ as the first song, though we did run through it in those sessions. We played Radio with Anika too. I can’t remember what else we played. We did Subdivisions, so it might have been that. But it was a test more than anything else at that point.
The two of you played with different drummers for the Taylor Hawkins tribute shows in London and LA in 2022. Did that help when it came to working with someone new?
Lee: Yeah, I think so. And thank you to Dave Grohl for that. Omar Hakim, amazing drummer, did YYZ with us in London. Grohl, obviously, Chad Smith, who is so much fun, and then someone like Danny Carey, monster drummer. So we knew it would be fun, but it would be a lot of work. And we wanted to find someone that had no context. We wanted someone from a different musical world.
Flashback to the R40 tour. For those final shows, Geddy had taken out a large swathe of his vintage bass collection to play throughout the set each night. Geddy’s bass tech Scully (who also helped curate and procure Lee’s extensive bass collection) ferried dozens of different guitars back and forth per show as the band ran backwards through some of their ‘greatest hits’.
Lee: Yep, we used twenty-seven basses each night, all vintage with the exception of a couple of my standbys. Poor Scully. He was lean and fit by the end of that tour just from going back and forth at the side of the stage.
And we have Scully to thank for Anika being brought in.
Lee: Yep. He was working with Jeff Beck, been on the road with him for a few years, and he was on the final tour, which Anika was a part of. When he came back home after that tour, he comes to my house – he still works for me, and we catch up – and he was just raving about this drummer, and he said: “If you’re ever going to go out do a solo album or whatever, you should think of her. So I researched her, and I love the way she played. I loved her vibe, her story – you know, like playing since she was a kid in Germany, and sort of finding yourself to be a bit of a YouTube sensation and all that, and ending up with Jeff, that was unbelievable. And Al felt the same way.
Was Anika a Rush fan?
Lee: No, not really. Of course, there’s not a drummer alive that didn’t know a song like Tom Sawyer and Neil’s reputation, so the respect was there. But she was more into Foo Fighters, Goo Goo Dolls, all those kinds of bands. And she played a world-beat fusion mix thing. But we had a fun call with her, and asked her to come to Toronto and play with us for five days to see what might happen.
Did you deliberately choose to have a female drummer in order to help move the conversation away from Neil?
Lee: I can’t say that played no part in the discussion, but when it came down to it, it was always about her skill and the way she played.
Lifeson: But then we rehearsed for four days, and on the fourth day Ged and I sat down and we weren’t sure. It wasn’t quite working with the three of us. We were thinking that maybe we should continue with someone else, just to see how that might feel. And on the fifth day, on the last day that we rehearsed, she took all our comments about feel, about Neil’s feel and the way he played, and being very cognisant of the ability that he had, and bang! She nailed the songs all day. It was a real ‘Wow!’ moment.
Lee: She suddenly changed gears, just like Al said, and it all suddenly clicked. She took all that information, processed it, and applied it. That was the real turning point. We were playing, and she was smiling, and we had this eye contact. For a long time I’ve had that drummer/bass player eye contact thing, and that’s so important to me, and it was so much fun. And I thought, man, if she comes on this ride, it’s going to be so good for us because she brings a whole different energy, it’s wonderful. And yes, part of that is because she’s female, I can’t ignore that. But mostly, she rose to the occasion, and we said, do you want to hang around with us? Originally we were only going to do those summer dates, those six or seven residencies. This is now a whole other thing.
Anika has had to learn some extremely complex parts of the Rush catalogue, but how was it for you two? Alex and I once talked about just how hard Rush songs are to play, and that’s from someone who wrote them.
Lee: They’re not all difficult, especially now that our fingers are back in shape. And we’re catching up, and so things come to you over time, and we’ve been doing this since March, even before Anika started, you know, just in case, and for fun too. We were tackling all these different songs and getting our fingers ready. For me it was much more important than Al, because I’ve been writing books, as you know, and he’s been playing, he hasn’t stopped. So my fingers were woefully out of shape, I had way more work to do than he did. I started rehearsing on a daily basis. A song like Tom Sawyer is never very far away – that’s never been out of the set – but with these forthcoming shows we’re trying to cast a wide net, and some of those songs require a lot of listening, a lot of practice.
Sticking with your past, a lot of your old road crew are going back out with you on the tour, not least Lorne ‘Gump’ Wheaton, Neil’s former drum tech.
Lee: Gump came out of retirement to handle Anika. It was really quite touching. He’d been out with Kiss for an age before that. He wanted to do it, and he’s good for her. I’m sure he drives her a little crazy, but he’s so good for her in so many ways, because he knew the cymbals Neil used and the style of playing and how he hit them, and if sometimes she’s not sure what the approach of the song should be, he can call up video stuff and see how Neil attacked it, and then interpret it in her own way, of course. So it’s really helpful, very generous of him to come out and sit behind her like he did with Neil for all those years.
Anika obviously brings along her own skill set and approach to the songs, but are there touchstones that she has to hit, things like the fills on Tom Sawyer, the tom-tom rolls on 2112?
Lee: It’s interesting, you get a chance to look at those songs through her eyes, and it’s funny the things that come naturally to her, like some of the things that we would have thought would have been impossible for her to play, like some of those fills, no problem, really. But other songs that have a more idiosyncratic sense of arrangement, like Subdivisions, for example, where you have a similar part being played with different things going on, that was confusing for her and that was a song that she did not get right away.
Lifeson: And that is a seemingly simple song for us. That’s been fascinating to watch. So you get a sense of appreciation for the way the song is, but you also get a more acute appreciation for how Neil played. Because when you see someone else trying to capture his feel, you realise what kind of player he was, and the tightness of his attitude, the firmness in attack as well. With Tom Sawyer, or even Limelight, you can’t just shuffle through those songs, you have to be attentive. And, you know, stand up straight. And that’s sort of where the feel comes from.
Lee: She’s working very hard to be true to the essence of what Neil laid down, but of course there’ll be moments where she can do her thing, what she’s comfortable with. But it’s a process. In order to improvise, you have to have a starting point. And that starting point is to make sure that song sounds like that song. When a fan has travelled across America to come see us, you want them to hear Limelight and go: “Fuck yeah!”
And Anika is not the only addition to the band. Keyboard player Loren Gold, who you played with when you sang The Seeker at The Who Hits 50! gig at Shepherd’s Bush Empire in London in 2014, is going out on the tour too.
Lee: Yep, he played with The Who for twelve years, played with Chicago too. Cool guy, good keyboard player, and he can sing too. We sort of talked about that – if we’re going to get a keyboardist, can we get someone that can sing and add to the vocals too? I thought that would bring another dimension to what we do. Just as important, he’s a sweetheart and funny.
And to be honest, Anika was the only consideration for drums, and Loren was really the only consideration for the keyboards. We had one other person we were looking at in Canada, but when Loren came up to play with us for a few days and was singing along with the songs and playing the parts, that was it. I’m not sure what we would have done had they both turned us down.
Was there ever a moment where you weren’t going to call this iteration of the band Rush?
Lee: That did come up, what do you fucking call it? When the band ended, we said it’s only Rush with Neil in it. Which of course is true. Rush as most people know it. But, you know, over five gigs we will be playing forty Rush songs. So what the fuck should we call it, Iron Maiden? They’re still going, you know.
Lee: We were twisting ourselves into a pretzel to try to avoid using the name that we have had for fifty years, and even before Neil came. And since 1969, it’s not my name, it was Al’s name. Well, him and John [Rutsey, Rush’s drummer before Peart] and John’s brother, Phil. But, you know, it just seems silly to go on as Lee And Lifeson Present The Music Of… Let’s cut to the chase, shall we? Let’s just be who we are and have been for over fifty years.
Talking of your legacy, the latest deluxe edition of Grace Under Pressure comes with one disc that’s an entire remix of the album by your longstanding producer Terry Brown, who was let go by the band before you went into the studio. He’s done a great job. Whose idea was it to get Terry back on board to work on what was a tricky album to make at the time?
Lifeson: That was Terry’s decision. He called us up, he wanted to make it happen.
Lee: He said how do you guys feel about it? Would you support it if I remixed it, you know, like a courtesy, I guess. And I just said sure. Regardless of what happened, he’s a great engineer and a great producer.
Lifeson: I think it was a thing for him to do. You know, finally get his hands on the album he didn’t get to work on. I thought he did a terrific job, too, it sounds really good.
It’s early May 2002 in the Cabbagetown neighbourhood of Toronto, and the basement meeting room of SRO management’s offices is cold even at this time of year. On the walls hang various framed gold discs, a large unframed black-and-white portrait of Rush - taken some time towards the end of the 80s, judging by the band’s haircuts and Peart’s bandanna.
Against one wall are two of the giant dice from the Roll The Bones stage set, and directly above the low glass table at which we’re seated is the original artwork for the cover of the Power Windows album - the gawky teenager with a remote control held loosely in one hand.
We were there to talk about the Vapor Trails album, the band’s first record after a five-year hiatus after Neil lost both his daughter and his wife in less than a year. A complete reset for the band that would ultimately result in a period in the band’s life that Geddy would later call his happiest days with Rush. Another hiatus, another reset. That was a tragedy, this is a whole other set of challenges.
Lee: This is completely different, and for so many reasons.
Lifeson: The band essentially ended when Neil retired after R40, and we were in that confused state of emotions – frustrated that it ended, yet understanding what Neil needed. It felt like unfinished business, in a weird way, but it was over.
Lee: With Vapor Trails, through that whole time, even though we’d put any band business out of our minds, there was a lingering ‘will we or won’t we’ get back together again? Is this a break, or is this the end? But after R40 there was no question. It was over for us.
There were the landmark shows: Red Rocks for the South Park: The 25th Anniversary Concert in 2022, the two Taylor Hawkins shows later that year. You always hang out together, but did you play together too, even just jamming?
Lifeson: Once in a while I would go over to Ged’s and we would fuck around, but it was mostly coffee, and we would talk, just catch up. And then Les Claypool [Primus bassist/vocalist] contacted us because they wanted to surprise Matt Stone for that anniversary show, and that gave us something to aim for.
I spoke to you after the soundcheck at Wembley Stadium the day before the first Taylor Hawkins tribute show, and you were both absolutely elated at how the rehearsals had gone. Even Paul McCartney was badgering you to get the band back on the road. The show itself was incredible, and it was the first time in a long time that I thought you might re-form. And then the wheels came off. What happened?
Lifeson: It was. It was going forward, and I was excited about it and the prospect of doing it, but I had some reservations. I just kind of submerged them for maybe a month or two after we got back. And then I started thinking about it, and I had other projects going on and other plans, and I just didn’t know if I wanted to go through the whole thing of going on a road and being, you know, trapped in the prison that a hotel room can be day after day.
Lee: [Looking around the luxurious hotel suite] Oh yeah, sure looks like a prison.
Lifeson: You know what I mean. I just felt trapped. But later, we started working on some other projects together, things like the documentary and getting together to play more. These jamming sessions became more consistent, and then we started playing Rush songs, and it was really fun to play those songs again after all that time.
How did it sound?
Lifeson: Oh, it was terrible.
Lee: Let’s be fair, they were awful.
Lifeson: As I’d said to you, you realise how difficult our songs are. But slowly, and with the help of muscle memory, it began to come back. Though it does mean keeping my fingers moving consistently.
It’ll be a wrench some nights to turn around and realise that Neil isn’t on stage with you.
Lee: Without Neil… I’ll be frank. There are some songs you play where it kind of hits you, it’s bad, and it feels weird. And it’s appropriate that that happens. You know what I mean? If we just picked up and went on without feeling any tug of anything, that would be absurd, that would be a whole other thing. And there’ll be moments in both sets where we’ll pay tribute to him. We’re working hard on that, making sure that it’s appropriate.
Even the artwork on the tour poster, the three birds on the wire, and one flying away, that gave me real pause.
Lee: Let’s not pretend. The emotional and logistical aspect of making this kind of decision is extremely difficult. Yes, there was nothing about this decision that came easily, except when Al looks at me, and I look at him in the studio and we go why the fuck shouldn’t we do this? The laughter that we have in rehearsals, the fun that we poke at each other when we both forget a part, or when my fingers are not going fast enough, and I’m fucking pissed off when he plays a solo for a different song. Really?
Lifeson: Yeah, that has happened, a few times. You were occasionally writing stuff during those weekly jam sessions.
Will that come to anything?
Lee: I do still have those jam tapes.
Lifeson: You do?
Lee: So when this is all said and done, maybe we’ll go back and try to write something if we’re fired up enough. Or maybe not, maybe we’ll just go away.
On a more personal note, your families and partners spent years of you being away on the road. How have they taken the news that you’re coming out of retirement and disappearing for months at a time again?
Lee: It can be hard on wives of musicians on a number of levels. You’ve got this life together, and then you’re the one that splits. And then they’re the ones that have to say what am I all about right now? So staying productive and happy becomes more pressure-filled for them, that’s true. Initially we said, okay, we’ll take the wives on the whole tour, but that was when it was seven cities and one summer. But a whole tour, that’s not going to fly. Neither of them will want to do that. So it’s a big adjustment for everybody on both sides.
Al, I don’t mean to put you on the spot, but when I interviewed you for the R50 box set you told me, and I’m paraphrasing: “For forty years, Rush included Neil, and I don’t think putting some new version together would have the same magic”, and “I guess I’d rather be remembered for our legacy than returning as the top Rush tribute band”. What happened?
Lifeson: I felt like that was Rush, but I have the right to change my mind. I realised that I love playing. You know, working on those other projects, for me personally, it was cathartic. And I just felt like I had something, you know, a renewed a desire to play again. I love playing. I just love playing. And then as this developed, the prospect of really playing challenging music and being with this guy. Our relationship is really unique and really, really special.
At points it did seem very off again and then on again? That must have caused some frustrations.
Lee: Of course. When we started getting serious, we were jamming, we’re having fun, and Al said he wanted to do it again. And he knew I wanted to do it. Were you pushing for it?
Lee: I wasn’t really pushing. But after the last time when Al sort of said let’s do it and then backed away… When I discovered that he really was serious, I said if you’re serious, then we have to do it. Otherwise I don’t want to talk about it again. We’re either going to do it, or let’s just not and be happy with that decision.
We’ll finish with a very 101 question. You haven’t been out on tour for such a long time as a band, as Rush. Is there anything that you are particularly looking forward to – or not – when you set foot on those stages?
Lifeson: Well there’s only one thing you look forward to, and that’s playing. I’m looking forward to that feeling of being on stage and playing and getting lost in the song and hitting every note correctly. There’s nothing else about touring that’s attractive.
Lee: I’ve got one goal, and that’s to be better than I was ten years ago. Which is tough. It’s a real challenge.
Lifeson: But that’s the goal. And honestly, that’s what is driving me in this whole thing. We’re at this stage now where I’ve committed to it. And all I want at the end of the day is for us to be Rush and to be amazing.
Rush’s Fifty Something tour begins on June 7 in Los Angeles, with UK dates beginning on March 8, 2027 in Glasgow.
