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Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson, left, with vocalist/bassist Geddy Lee during an event to promote Lee’s book My Effin’ Life in Toronto in 2023.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
On Aug. 1, 2015, at the Forum in Los Angeles, Rush performed the final show of its last tour, walking away as a video short called Exit Stage Left played on arena screens. Next year, on June 7, the band will kick off its just-announced North American Fifty Something Tour at the same venue, picking up right where they left off, as if nothing had happened.
A lot has happened. Rush surprised everybody, including people close to the band who spoke to The Globe and Mail, by resurrecting the group. Joining vocalist/bassist Geddy Lee and guitarist Alex Lifeson will be German drummer Anika Nilles and potentially a keyboardist.
“The decision did not come easily, and it did not come quickly,” Lee told The Globe. “Alex and I had discussed it a couple of times over the last 10 years, but we never got very far because he would change his mind or something would occur.”
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In 2022, Lifeson and Lee performed three Rush songs with guest drummers including Dave Grohl at a tribute concert for the late Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins at London’s Wembley Stadium. And while lifelong friends Lee and Lifeson have been jamming for “quite a while” at Lee’s home studio in Toronto, there was no reunion in sight.
“I think there was a moment when we played together so much that the question was just hanging in the air – should we take it further?” he said. “But Alex was very vocal about not wanting to do that.”
The pair, both 72, have kept themselves occupied. Lee published his memoir, My Effin’ Life in 2023, followed this September by the baseball book 72 Stories. Lifeson has released two albums and an EP over the past four years with his band Envy of None.
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Lifeson and Lee perform during Rush’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in Los Angeles in 2013.Reuters
At the Gordon Lightfoot tribute concert at Massey Hall in 2024, the two joined Blue Rodeo for a supergroup version of the late singer’s The Way I Feel. The appearance was completely out of the blue. As was the recent reunion announcement.
Lifeson contributed guitar to the forthcoming Rheostatics album The Great Lakes Suite. During the recording sessions, he gave no hint of reviving the dormant Rush.
“I was totally surprised,” said Rheostatics singer/guitarist Dave Bidini, who worked as a writer on the 2016 rock doc Time Stand Still, from Rush’s 2015 tour. “If anyone has any deep, dark family secrets they never want revealed, I suggest they tell them to Geddy or Alex. Combined, they are a vault.”
The vault was opened earlier this month at an invite-only “evening of conversation” at Cleveland’s Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Donna Halper, a Boston-based media historian and professor who, as a Cleveland radio DJ in the 1970s, championed Rush when others did not, was asked to introduce Lifeson and Lee.
She received no clues in advance.
“I received an e-mail asking me if I could be in Cleveland on Sunday night and could I keep a secret,” Harper said. “I replied, ‘Yes’ and ‘Yes,’ and they flew me to Cleveland. All I knew was that Alex and Geddy were going to be there and that it was hush-hush. Even when I arrived, I had no idea why I was there.”
Before a tour could be considered, there were issues to clear up, including Lifeson’s digestive problems, which required surgery in 2023. Concerned about the touring grind after so many years away, the pair went to a health clinic in Europe. Lifeson came back to Toronto “fired up,” according to Lee.
“That’s when we decided to take it to the next step.”
Despite the band and its infrastructure having been mothballed for a decade, the people they contacted to gauge the appetite for a reunion were “very bullish,” Lee said.
Cliff Burnstein and Peter Mensch of the U.S. management company Q Prime will run the tour. Live Nation is on board as the promoter. It was envisioned as a series of multinight residencies at arenas in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Toronto, Cleveland, Mexico City and Fort Worth, Tex. Due to robust ticket sales, however, dates were added to the residencies, and more cities (including multiple nights in Montreal, Vancouver and Edmonton) were put on sale.
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If anyone wondered whether Rush could still sell out big rooms, the tour’s promoter did not share in the concern.
“There was no doubt on our part,” said Riley O’Connor, chairman of Live Nation Canada. “None whatsoever.”
One last problem: The band had no drummer. The virtuoso percussionist and band lyricist Neil Peart died of brain cancer in 2020. Enter Nilles, a former member of the late Jeff Beck’s touring band. This spring she secretly came to Toronto to play with Lifeson and Lee. She’s been back more than once to work on a repertoire of 35 songs.
The tour has yet to begin, but already there is no end in sight, with concerts in Europe, South America and Asia being considered.
“We’re wrestling with extending the tour into 2027,” Lee said. “I really don’t know. We’ll see how that all shakes down.”
