Alex Lifeson
Pull a thread
Rush's Fifty Something tour has no drum solo
Geddy Lee gets asked the same question every night: is Neil “with” them? His answer involves a bird. The band’s actual answer is an empty spot in the setlist. It’s the rarest solution rock has ever found to an impossible problem.
The bird in the doorway
A Toronto radio DJ, Joanne Wilder of Q107, asked Geddy Lee the question everyone wants to ask and nobody quite knows how to phrase: do you feel like Neil is with you? Have you seen any signs?
2112 at 50: How Rush Answered Mercury's Demand for a Hit Single With a 20-Minute Suite
In 1976, one album away from being dropped, Rush handed their label the least commercial thing they’d ever made, and side one of 2112 bought them the next four decades of doing whatever they wanted.
It’s late 1975, and Rush are playing smaller rooms than they were a year earlier. Their third album, Caress of Steel, has stiffed: two side-long suites, hostile reviews, shrinking crowds. The band’s own name for the supporting run tells you everything: the “Down the Tubes Tour.” Geddy Lee later told MOJO they joked about Neil Peart going back to selling farm equipment, and him and Alex Lifeson going back to painting movie theatres.