Will Rush fans ever get to hear "Tom Sawyer" or "YYZ" performed live again?
The legendary Canadian rock band's guitarist Alex Lifeson and bassist/singer Geddy Lee have resumed playing Rush songs together, following the 2020 death of drummer Neil Peart.
Rush last played as a band in 2015, and officially called it a day following Peart's death five years later. But in a new interview with Ultimate Classic Rock, Lifeson says that he and Lee have been rehearsing songs on a weekly basis.
"We decided that we would play some Rush songs. Because, you know, we haven’t played these songs in 10 years," Lifeson says. "We started that a couple of weeks ago. We get together one day a week over at his place. We just picked some Rush songs and we started playing them and we sound like a really, really bad Rush tribute band."
Lifeson admits that Rush aren't as easy to play as they once were, when the members wrote their classics. But once they shook off the rust everything came back to them pretty quickly.
"Trying to figure out the songs, I'm thinking, 'Why did we write that so difficult? Why is this so hard to play?'" he adds. "After about three run-throughs of all of these songs, muscle memory kicks in and your hand just goes to where it goes. You sort of get out of the way and you play and you go, 'Thank God, I did make this simpler than it felt.'"
Still, the guitarist admits they didn't make things easy for themselves or fellow musicians trying to (re)learn the songs. The band's reputation for their technical prowess still precedes them.
"I'm 70. It's not as easy to get my fingers to do what my brain tells me to do," Lifeson admits. "They're much lazier than they used to be and they have a poor memory. Doing this really helps a lot, and it's fun. That's it.
"By the way, Rush songs are hard!" he adds. "So our fingers are getting limber and our calluses are building up again."
As exciting as this all sounds though, Lifeson is quick to say that there are no plans to perform the songs outside of their rehearsal space.
"The whole thing was that in the beginning, it was just fun," he concludes. "We're having a riot together doing that. There's no rhyme or reason. We're not planning on going back on the road, finding a new drummer or anything like that. It's just fun to do it."
So to all of the aspiring drummers out there: it's still inappropriate to ask if you can join the band.