Rush reunites for tour 11 years after farewell, honoring late drummer Neil Peart

Eleven years after their farewell tour, Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson are resurrecting Rush, the Canadian progressive rock legends, in tribute to their late drummer and primary lyricist Neil Peart and to recapture the bond that has kept them close since high school.

In an interview, Lee and Lifeson reflected on a journey marked by creative ambition, personal loss, and an unshakeable friendship. The band released more than 20 studio albums between 1974 and 2012, producing several canonical progressive-rock works that cemented their place in music history.

Peart, the virtuoso behind Rush's rhythm section and philosophy-inflected lyrics, had endured profound tragedy. In 1997, he lost his 19-year-old daughter Selena in a car accident, then his wife Jacqueline to cancer ten months later. His 2000 marriage to photographer Carrie Nuttall and the birth of their daughter Olivia in 2009 offered what Lee described as "an unexpected reprieve" for a man "harassed by tragedy."

When Peart chose to end Rush after the 2015 tour rather than continue, Lee was initially disappointed. "Rush is the most impossibly difficult and wonderfully rewarding job I can imagine," Lee recalled. As the tour progressed, Peart grew happier while Lee and Lifeson grew sadder, but they came to accept his decision to be present for his daughter's life. "Knowing he was going to pick his daughter up from school each night, that he had a second chance at happiness, made it absurd to resent him for it," Lee said.

Peart's diagnosis with brain cancer in early 2020 was devastating. He died in January at 67. For Lee and Lifeson, the reunion tour exists in part to honor the man who shaped the band's identity and the friendship that survived decades of intense creative work. When asked whether he knew a year and a half ago that a return was in the works, Lifeson smiled. Lee interjected to explain his bandmate's mercurial emotional landscape: "Alex doesn't move in a straight line. There have been six years of moments where playing felt exciting and others where he doubted, where he told me, 'My body won't follow.' That scared him, and it scared me too. The longer you don't play, the harder it is to start again. Alex didn't lie to you—he told you how he felt that day." Lifeson replied simply: "Now you understand why he's my best friend."