Geddy Lee says Rush isn’t thinking about making new music

Rush is currently touring the world following the reunion of Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee, with drummer Anika Nilles filling in for the late Neil Peart. Since the musician died in 2020, the most frequently asked question was whether Lifeson and Lee would ever play together again or reunite Rush. After that finally happened, the big question they have been getting all the time is whether they might make new music. At least for now, Geddy has ruled that out, saying they have enough songs to remember how to play.

Geddy Lee says Rush isn’t thinking about making new music

“No. We have enough to do. We’re still trying to remember the old songs and play them! (…) I’m ecstatic that we’re playing so well and that the musicians that we’ve chosen to join us on stage have jelled the way they have. … I’m not pretending when you see me smiling up there. It’s a joyous moment for me, and I know there are only so many gigs left in my body, so I’m going to enjoy them while I can,” he told Radio Futuro (Transcribed by Ultimate Classic Rock).

During the same interview, he explained how they helped Anika Nilles to learn more than 40 songs and what he told her before the tour.“She had to learn something like 43 songs in the course of a year, and those are not easy drum parts to learn. She was working as hard, I think, as she’s ever worked on anything. She would work really hard on her own, then she would come to Toronto sporadically and we would work really hard.”

“And I think she found it much easier to work with us in person, because there’s a chemistry that we have, and we can reassure her, ‘This part is right, this part is this long, and no, you have to play this part this way.’ The last month, as Alex alluded to, we played a full show 24 nights out of 27 days. We’ve never worked that hard in our entire lives. And I’m thankful for it, because opening night, we were all a bit of a nervous wreck. And all that rehearsal paid off.”

“I said, ‘Look, these are complicated songs. You are going to make a mistake. It’s not about the mistake – it’s about how you recover from the mistake. So just play; just keep playing and don’t worry. And I think it helped them relax a little bit. … When you write a part, it’s automatically in your DNA; you understand it inside out. But when you’re coming to learn it as an outsider, you try to break it down into the laws of music, and our songs don’t adhere to the laws of music!” Geddy Lee said.