Rush are no strangers to being misunderstood. One infamous NME article in the late 1970s accused the trio of promoting “proto-fascism” with their 2112 album – a claim called “wrong-headed and irresponsible” by bassist Geddy Lee, whose parents survived Nazi concentration camps.
More recently the pendulum has swung the other way. In new interview with The Telegraph, Lee hits back at online suggestions that they’ve followed a “woke agenda” by recruitment a female drummer, Anika Nilles, to replace the late Neil Peart.
While the announcement in September 2025 that Nilles would be joining the duo for their Fifty Something comeback tour was greeted with an overwhelmingly positive response, a handful of detractors criticised Rush for hiring a woman to replace a male musician..
“I ignore them,” says Lee of the commentators. “They’re moronic assertions. We chose Anika because she’s brilliant. We live in a time of empowered idiots, and they’re all over social media. The quickest way to an unhappy life is to pay too much attention to them.”
Asked by The Telegraph to clarify if they had a “woke agenda”, Lee replied: “Definitely not. I wasn’t aware that we had any kind of agenda.”
Nilles’ dazzling performances on the Fifty Something tour have put the online knuckle-draggers back in their boxes (her instant recovery after losing a stick during Tom Sawyer , the first song on the tour’s opening night, has become a thing of internet legend).
Neither has her presence dented the reunited Rush’s pulling power. More than 1.1 million tickets have been sold for the first leg of the Fifty Something tour alone, which began in June and runs through until early December.
The Fifty Something tour continues in 2027, while the band have just announced a 10-date residency at the Las Vegas Sphere in May and June 2027, joining the likes of U2, the Eagles and Metallica in playing the futuristic new venue.
If this is what a “woke agenda” looks like, maybe, more bands should try it.
