Making Memories

Eleven years after their dissolution, Rush are back on the road with a new drummer to boot. The upcoming Fifty Something tour marks the debut of German musician Anika Nilles filling some impossible boots. Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson tell Prog about the unexpected reunion, the spark that led to their ‘unretirement’ and we even manage to tease out some details about this year’s shows.

Words: Dave Everley

Getting the band back together: Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson.

Portraits: Richard Sibbald

“We thought we’d do a couple of nights here and a couple of nights there. We didn’t think we’d do four shows in each city that would sell out in a matter of days. That’s never happened to us.”

Geddy Lee

A HOTEL ROOM IN LONDON, JANUARY 2026.

Alex Lifeson looks uncomfortable as he sits on the sofa next to the man he fired from Rush more than 55 years ago.

The big schism happened back in 1969. The band – at the time a four-piece led by drummer John Rutsey and also featuring keyboard player Lindy Young – were stuck in a rut. The strong-willed Rutsey decided that they needed to shake things up, and he decided to throw the kid they had singing and playing bass under the bus. Lindy Young was tasked with delivering the news. Lifeson? He says he just went along with it.

“It was nothing to do with me,” he protests today. “It was the other guys.”

“I’m still not over it,” says Geddy Lee, the one on the receiving end of that P45 all those years ago.

He’s joking, of course. After a summer of taking acid, Lee rejoined his former bandmates and they picked up more or less where they left off.

Six decades of friendship and they’re still not bored of hanging out together.

“It worked out OK,” says Lee, with knowing understatement.

It’s January 2026 and a welcome burst of winter sunshine is lighting up the high-end central London hotel suite where the pair are currently holding court. Six months ago, this would have been unthinkable, at least in a professional capacity. Rush were over and done with, their illustrious career as a working band wrapped up and neatly packed away following the triumphant R40 tour in 2015.

That unexpectedly changed last October. The announcement that Lee and Lifeson were resurrecting Rush for a US arena tour, dubbed the Fifty Something tour, in the summer of 2026 was greeted with a mix of shock and euphoria. Shows sold out, more were added. A few weeks after we speak, a run of UK and European dates are announced for 2027. Demand is equally high. It’s the biggest comeback of the decade.

“We thought we’d do a couple of nights here and a couple of nights there,” says Lee. “We didn’t think we’d do four shows in each city that would sell out in a matter of days. That’s never happened to us.”

“We’re an overnight sensation 50 years in the making,” says Lifeson with a grin.

It’s funny watching and hearing Lee and Lifeson in action. They bounce off each other with the easy rapport of men who have known each other since they were 13 and – the odd temporary dismissal aside – have stayed close ever since. They’re often hilarious, too: Lifeson exuberant, Lee wryer and drier. The Two Stooges.

There’s one person missing, of course. Neil Peart was Rush’s drummer and lyricist from 1974 until their retirement, as well as the Third Stooge in their comedy pyramid. His death in January 2020 didn’t just rob the world of a phenomenal musician, it robbed Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson of their best friend.

Paradoxically, if Peart was still here then there’s a high likelihood that this reunion wouldn’t be happening. It was the drummer who precipitated Rush’s original retirement, and he showed no sign of wanting to unretire, even as Lifeson and especially Lee clung to the hope that Rush wasn’t truly over and done.

Lifeson joins Lee for the promotion of the latter’s book, My Effin’ Life , in Toronto on December 7, 2023.

CANADIAN PRESS/SHUTTERSTOCK

TORONTO, THE LATE 1960s.

It was Alex Lifeson who got Geddy Lee stoned for the first time.

The two of them had met in junior high school when they were 13 years old. They had a lot in common. They were both children of Eastern European immigrants – Lee’s parents were Polish Jews and Holocaust survivors (an incredible story detailed in the singer’s phenomenal autobiography, My Effin’ Life), while Lifeson’s parents were from Serbia. Both were aspiring musicians, too, though it would be a while before they played in a band together.