Rush will launch their Fifty Something tour in June, their first since the death of drummer Neil Peart in 2020. In a new interview with The New York Times, frontman Geddy Lee explains why they felt the need to do so.
“In the back of my mind and in the back of my heart, it’s felt like unfinished business, like we owed him a proper thank you and a celebration,” Lee says. “Not a morbid, funereal type of thing. We want to celebrate the wonderful music the three of us spent almost 50 years writing together.”
Sitting behind the drum kit for the tour will be Anika Nilles, who says when she first started working with Lee and guitarist Alex Lifeson they gave her insight into working with Peart.
“I got a really good idea of what Neil was to the guys as a band member, but also as a friend. So you cannot replace that, you know?” she says. “I’m basically here to help them to get their music back onstage and make it feel right for them and make it feel right for the fans.”
Lee and Lifeson have credited their participation in the 2022 Taylor Hawkins tribute shows with planting the idea of them returning to the road without Peart. Lee notes the shows “taught us something really important about music. A band can end, but the music lives on.”
“I think for a while we put Rush in a box and put that box in our closet, and it’s almost like we felt weird to open the closet and open that box,” Lee says, noting after the Hawkins shows, “It’s like we had taken the box out of the cupboard and we had opened it up. And you know what? It was OK.”
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