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When Rush walked off the stage in California on Aug. 1, 2015 and closed out their R40 Live Tour, fans remained hopeful it wouldn’t be their last live show. After almost a decade, and the passing of their longtime drummer, the surviving members of the Canadian prog-rock outfit have made peace with there not being another Rush show.
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Earlier this month, Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson and bassist Geddy Lee spoke to Classic Rock about the regret they felt about shortening their final tour, apologizing to the British and European fans who didn’t get a chance to see them perform live. “I really felt like I let our British and European fans down,” Lee explained. “It felt to me incorrect that we didn’t do it, but Neil was adamant that he would only do thirty shows and that was it.”
Ultimately, it was drummer Neil Peart that put an end to the chances of more shows, announcing his retirement from music later that year. While Lifeson confirmed the group’s inactivity in 2018, Peart’s passing in 2020 put an end to any potential future for Rush.
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In 2022, however, Lifeson and Lee reunited in public to perform as part of the tribute shows in Los Angeles and London for late Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins. Though these performances were well-received and undoubtedly left fans eager for more, Lifeson has explained to Classic Rock that he’s satisfied where Rush left things.
“The energy was fantastic around that show, I know, and some days I wake up wanting to go out and tour again and some days I don’t,” Lifeson explained. “For forty years Rush included Neil, and I don’t think putting some new version together would have the same magic.
“After those two gigs and the months of prep Ged and I went through, I was excited by the response and to be in the dressing room again with so many fellow artists in Wembley and LA I respected and felt a kinship towards. But after a few weeks that wore off and it occurred to me that despite all the pain of loss, Rush went out on a high note playing as well as ever with one of our best stage shows on R40. I guess I’d rather be remembered for that legacy than returning as the top Rush tribute band.”
Since Rush’s untimely dissolution, Lifeson and Lee have remained active in the world of music. While the former performs as part of the Envy of None supergroup, the latter penned a memoir titled My Effin’ Life in 2023. However, the pair still live close by and regularly get together and jam, though there’s no saying if these collaborations will lead to anything.
“It’s good to jam with friends as you get older,” says Lifeson. “I need to play. Once a week I go to Ged’s – it’s in the calendar – keep my fingers moving, play Rush stuff, new jams. We do record it, but I couldn’t even begin to tell you where it’ll go.”
The surviving members of Canadian progressive rock outfit Rush have reflected on their final tour, sharing their regrets that the tour didn’t extend to the likes of the U.K. and Europe.
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Close to ten years on from their final run of shows, Rush bassist Geddy Lee and guitarist Alex Lifeson spoke to Classic Rock magazine about the group’s last gigs, apologizing to the British and European fans who didn’t get a chance to see them perform live.
“I’d pushed really hard to get more gigs so that we could do those extra shows and I was unsuccessful,” Lee said of the band’s R40 Live Tour. “I really felt like I let our British and European fans down. It felt to me incorrect that we didn’t do it, but Neil [Peart] was adamant that he would only do thirty shows and that was it.
“That to him was a huge compromise because he didn’t want to do any shows. He didn’t want to do one show.”
Rush’s R40 Live Tour kicked off in Tulsa, OK in May 2015, and featured a total of 35 shows across the U.S. and the band’s native Canada, ending in August of that year. Ultimately, while Rush’s dedicated fanbase called out for more dates to be added, these would become the final performances from the veteran band. Despite releasing their final album, Clockwork Angels, in 2012, Rush’s dissolution wasn’t confirmed until the death of longtime drummer Neil Peart in January 2020.
While Lee would detail the band’s final tour in his 2023 memoir, My Effin’ Life, he admitted to being very cautious in regard to how he discussing Peart’s death, but strived to be as candid as he could so as to give Rush’s audience the closure they wanted about the band’s end.
“I just kind of felt I owed an explanation to them, the audience,” Lee explained. “It’s part of why I went into the detail I did about Neil’s passing in the book, was to let fans in on what went down. That it wasn’t a straight line.
“This is how complicated the whole world of Rush became since August 1 of 2015 until January 7th of 2020 when Neil passed. Those were very unusual, complicated, emotional times. Fans invested their whole being into our band and I thought they deserved a somewhat straight answer about what happened and how their favourite band came to end.”
Lifeson also expressed his disappointment about Rush being unable to tour some of their favourite markets as part of their final run, noting that while Peart’s scheduling demands and health issues made further shows impossible, an additional “dozen or so” dates may have made the surviving members “a bit more accepting”.
“There was a point where I think Neil was open to maybe extending the run and adding in a few more shows, but then he got this painful infection in one of his feet,” Lifeson added. “I mean, he could barely walk to the stage at one point. They got him a golf cart to drive him to the stage. And he played a three-hour show, at the intensity he played every single show.
“That was amazing, but I think that was the point where he decided that the tour was only going to go on until that final show in LA.”
Having formed in Toronto in 1968 by Lee, Lifeson, and original members John Rutsey and Jeff Jones, Rush began to find widespread fame throughout the ’70s, with Peart replacing Rutsey following the recording of their 1974 self-titled debut.
While much of Rush’s touring was confined to the U.S. and Canada, the U.K. was their next most popular market, with European countries such as Germany and the Netherlands following behind. Curiously, Rush rarely ventured beyond these territories, with countries such as Australia never hosting the band on their shores.
From comparing his acting skills to that of Lady Gaga and Cher to trolling Kelly Clarkson, Troye Sivan got a lot of things off his chest during his lie detector test with Vanity Fair on Wednesday (Aug. 16).
At the start of his test, which only detected a small number of lies from the Australian pop star, Sivan revealed that a friend is currently dating his celebrity crush, chef and recipe developer Pierce Abernathy. “I think he knows, though,” he quipped.
In classic pop star fashion, Sivan had plenty to say about his fellow musical artists. In April, Sivan posted a TikTok video reacting to Kelly Clarkson’s “Mine,” asking his fans, “What did I do to upset Kelly Clarkson?” He cited lyrics which he misinterpreted as, “Troye Sivan / Who the hell do you think you are?” instead of “Sabotage, your choice of art.” The fictional feud resulted in the pair making nice on Clarkson’s Emmy-winning talk show, and Sivan confirmed that he “did know that” Clarkson was not singing his name, he “just thought it was funny.” When questioned if he enjoyed trolling, Sivan responded, “I do, yeah. That’s one place I really like to lie.”
In addition to conquering the pop music scene with “Rush” this year, Sivan also showed off his acting chops again on the Weeknd-led HBO drama The Idol. When asked if he considers himself a better actor than Lady Gaga, Sivan emphatically said, “No… I think she’s better than me for sure.” When asked the same question about Cher, Sivan confessed “I don’t think I have actually seen a movie with Cher in it,” but not before asking whether or not the Oscar-winning Moonstruck actress appeared in Mamma Mia. “I’ve seen, like, two movies, just in general,” he joked.
Elsewhere in the video, the singer, who has a love for interior design, also shared that “doesn’t like” Drake’s mansion, and that he is “sorry to [that] man,” a sly reference to Keke Palmer’s viral Vanity Fair lie detector test from 2019. He named Ariana Grande as “up there” in his personal ranking of his favorite female pop stars with whom he has collaborated.
Sivan also reflected on the time he appeared in one of the campaigns for Beyoncé’s Ivy Park x Adidas athleisure line. Memory lane soon brought him to a discussion surrounding Queen Bey’s record-breaking Renaissance World Tour. “I would love to go to her Renaissance tour, I’m trying. Her birthday show [Sept. 4] is in L.A., so I wanna go to that,” he said. One of the many viral moments from the Renaissance World Tour has been the “Everybody On Mute” challenge that spawned from the namesake lyric in Beyoncé’s BEAM-assisted “Energy.” Sivan expressed his frustration with those who can’t seem to grasp the “mute” part of the challenge, saying, “People go quiet, and then they clap that everyone went quiet, and I’m like ‘You ruined it.’”
Check out Sivan’s full lie detector test above.
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