Geddy Lee said when he was done promoting his memoir, My Effin’ Life, he would try and get together with Alex Lifeson to play some music privately .
Well, they’ve been doing just that as Lifeson tells Rolling Stone, “Ged and I are hanging out a lot — and we always do — but now we’re hanging out at his place and we’re playing. And we’re actually playing a lot of Rush songs…
“It’s funny because we sound like a really bad tribute band for the first three or four run-throughs on these things. It’s ‘Oh, my God, what did I play there? Why did I play that so hard?’ And then muscle memory kicks in, and we’re having a ball doing it. It’s good for the fingers. We’re together in a room like we’ve always been. That’s been really good, but there’s no chance that we’re going to get a drummer and go back on the road as the rebirth of Rush or something like that. And if we wanted to write new material, nobody cares about new material anymore. They just want to hear the old stuff from guys like us.”
Why is there no chance? “We’ve talked about it in depth, and I was waffling between maybe considering it and not. And then my health issues came up. I know if we went on the road, it couldn’t be like we used to do it. You need to go out for five or six months. You can’t just go out and play on the weekends. It just doesn’t work that way, especially if it’s going to be a big production. I don’t know. We talk a lot about it. We’re in different worlds…
“This is not about putting something together for a possible tour or a record or something. This is the joy of those two teenagers sitting in a room looking at each other and trying to learn how to play an instrument better…
“I just don’t know if doing something like that would wreck it. Or wreck the legacy that Rush has left… We went out on a high note. That [last] tour [in 2015] was great… I’d rather be remembered for that than something that’s more current.”
Alex, who has a few ailments, including arthritis, is working on a second album with his side project, Envy of None.
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