Alex Lifeson and Geddy had been getting together for casual jams for years. However, they still took everyone by surprise last October when they announced their reunion under the Rush moniker – with Anika Nilles filling the shoes of the late, great Neal Peart.
The pressure was on. In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Lifeson spoke candidly about the challenges he faced ahead of the Fifty Something Tour’s kickoff in Inglewood, California, on June 7.
“14 months of rehearsal – it was difficult,” he admits, “and in the last month of rehearsals, there were times I was sitting on the edge of my bed thinking, at 2 o'clock in the morning, if I made the right decision.”
Lifeson boils these worries down to “rehearsal syndrome,” which caused him to question, “Can I play? Am I good enough?
“It wasn't really until Sunday when we played that gig that it all kind of came down this funnel and spilled out, and it was at that moment that I thought, ‘Yeah, this has all been worth it, and this is where I really am happy to be.’”
Lifeson has been battling a series of health issues in recent years, including recovering from stomach surgery, gastroparesis, Chronic Psoriatic Arthritis, as well as giving up weed at the age of 72.
As his long-time friend and Rush brother-in-arms, Geddy Lee, says, “It was really hard for him to get ready for this tour because he's battling genetics, and he's wrestling with [it] because he's crazy.”
The bassist goes on to say that Lifeson makes things even more difficult for himself by choosing “this fucking incredibly complicated setup of pedals and sounds, just because he wants each moment of the song to be true to the original moment of that song.
“So he really tackled a lot, and we were watching from the sidelines, going, ‘Poor guy.’” There were also instances when Lifeson told him he’d be ready in five minutes, and 30 minutes later, Lee was still patiently waiting for him to finish setting up his pedals so they could rehearse a song.
“We have the technology now to do those sorts of things,” Lifeson says. “So I really embraced it, but it requires a lot of attention and a lot of work.”
Lifeson's new digital rig ditches physical amps in favor of IK Multimedia TONEX and Fractal modelers to replicate decades of recorded sounds live.
“With the advent of AI [machine learning] helping, they sound like the greatest amps ever,” he previously told Rick Beato.
“There’s depth in the bottom-end. There’s real character. It’s not just the fuzziness and the noise that you get from an amp; it responds beautifully.”
Rush's Fifty Something tour continues through the USA and Canada throughout the remainder of 2026, before heading to South America and Europe in 2027.
