<\/p>\n
Rush\u2019s Geddy Lee talked about getting prepared for the band\u2019s upcoming reunion tour<\/a> \u2014 and his beloved Toronto Blue Jays making the World Series \u2014 in a new interview with CBC News.<\/p>\n \u201cWell, I\u2019m a bit overwhelmed right now, to be honest. Alex [Lifeson]\u00a0and I took a long time trying to figure out if we could actually do this ever again,\u201d Lee said of the reaction to the 50 Something tour.<\/p>\n More from Rolling Stone<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cWhen we\u00a0did finally decide, of course people were optimistic, but we really didn\u2019t expect the kind of overwhelming response our announcement has brought forth out of our fanbase. It\u2019s just been a remarkable few weeks around our homes, but very exciting \u2014 very exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n Lee has only sporadically performed live since the death of Rush drummer Neil Peart in 2020, and as the reunion tour continues to expand cities<\/a> and add dates<\/a> due to demand, the bassist told CBC News he\u2019s \u201cgetting ready\u201d for the rigors of touring.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been playing diligently for about a year and a half now. And it wasn\u2019t that we had planned this tour that long ago. I had just decided that after writing all these books and having the experience of doing television shows that I needed to make some music again,\u201d Lee said.<\/p>\n \u201cSo I\u2019ve been working out pretty regularly trying to get my fingers, these little digits, back in shape. And, of course, since we did make the decision to tour, I\u2019m hitting the gym pretty hard, and so is\u00a0Alex. But we\u2019re gonna be ready. We\u2019re working at it. We\u2019re gonna put a lot of hours into that.\u201d<\/p>\n Lee added that Rush won\u2019t be staging three-hour concerts like \u201cin our younger years, but we\u2019re certainly gonna play over two hours. And we\u2019ll get a lot of songs in, for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n For the reunion tour, Rush recruited drummer Anika Nilles<\/a>, who came highly recommended by Lee\u2019s bass tech after the two worked together on Jeff Beck\u2019s final tour, where Nilles served as that guitarist\u2019s drummer.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a very difficult decision to go back on the road, and [Peart\u2019s death] was the main stumbling block, obviously. How do we replace the irreplaceable, so to speak?,\u201d Lee said.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd we have been fortunate to have been introduced to the name\u00a0Anika Nilles\u00a0through one of my road crew \u2014 my bass tech\u00a0Skully, who was on tour with\u00a0Jeff Beck \u2014 and she was the drummer for\u00a0Jeff Beck\u00a0on his last tour. And he came home from that tour raving about her. And so when we made the decision to see what it\u2019s like to play with another drummer, we contacted her, and she\u2019s just a fantastic person. And she came to Canada and we very surreptitiously snuck into a studio and worked out for about a week. And by the end of it, we were convinced that this would be a go for us. Yeah, she\u2019s just a tremendous player.\u201d<\/p>\n Lee continued, \u201cWhen she first came over here [to Canada], we started playing some of the songs, trying to translate\u00a0Rush\u00a0music to someone who didn\u2019t really grow up as a\u00a0Rush\u00a0fan; she was not a\u00a0Rush\u00a0fan. She knew, of course, of\u00a0Neil\u2019s playing \u2014 every drummer knows who\u00a0Neil\u00a0is, or\u00a0Neil\u00a0was, I should say \u2014 so it was a bit of a daunting task. And we had to go through each song and explain the nuances of the song and the idiosyncratic nature of how our songs are put together. So at times she was a bit overwhelmed, but she\u2019s an incredibly hard worker. She\u2019s got great technical facility and she\u2019s just got a really positive attitude, and that\u2019s really good for\u00a0Alex\u00a0and I to be around right now.\u201d<\/p>\n It hasn\u2019t been all tour prep for Lee as the bassist was photographed sitting behind home plate and enjoying a pivotal moment the Blue Jays\u2019 run to the World Series earlier this week. \u201cI\u2019ve never heard a crowd that loud, that electric, and that on cue,\u201d Lee said of when the Blue Jays\u2019 George Springer hit a series-deciding home run to advance Toronto to the World Series.<\/p>\n Best of Rolling Stone<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for RollingStone’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Rush\u2019s Geddy Lee talked about getting prepared for the band\u2019s upcoming reunion tour \u2014 and his beloved Toronto Blue Jays making the World Series \u2014 in a new interview with CBC News. \u201cWell, I\u2019m a bit overwhelmed right now, to be honest. Alex [Lifeson]\u00a0and I took a long time trying to figure out if we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2115037,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[388689,388575,376101,388688,347026,313132],"class_list":["post-2115036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-anika-nilles","tag-geddy-lee","tag-george-springer","tag-neil-peart","tag-reunion-tour","tag-toronto-blue-jays"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/\u2018I-Needed-to-Make-Some-Music-Again.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2115036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2115036"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2115036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2115038,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2115036\/revisions\/2115038"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2115037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2115036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2115036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2115036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}