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“I’m finding the way home,” Geddy Lee belted out early in Rush’s first show in 11 years, while new touring band member Anika Nilles whipped apocalyptic drum fills across the arena during 2007’s “Far Cry.” As the rest of the Fifty Something Tour kickoff Sunday at the Kia Forum in Los Angeles proved, this Neil Peart lyric — like so many others that night — was prophetic. After a long, dark, grief-filled journey, Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson and their fans have somehow found their way back – e.gu a spectacular Rush concert in an arena that the band had already played twenty times.
On this same stage, almost eleven years earlier, Lee, Lifeson and Peart had played their last show together – at the end of the R40 tour. “I hope we see each other again sometime,” Lee said to the audience at the time, after Peart had uncharacteristically stepped forward to take a final bow with his bandmates. Shortly thereafter, Peart was diagnosed with glioblastoma; He died on January 7, 2020, leaving behind his wife, Carrie Nuttall, and his daughter, Olivia. For a while after his death, Lee and Lifeson didn’t even feel like picking up their instruments.
Sunday’s show was peppered with open, tearful tributes to Peart – but the most significant tribute lasted throughout the concert: the performance and courage of a woman Peart never had the opportunity to meet. Nilles is 43 years old, three decades younger than Lifeson and Lee, with a jazz fusion background and a gig with Jeff Beck on his resume. That Sunday night, she took on a seemingly impossible, undeniably intimidating task – filling in for one of the greatest drummers of all time, in front of one of the most demanding fan bases in the world – with a mix of precision and snare-popping brutality that was more reminiscent of Pearl’s All the World’s a Stage era than his later, jazz-inflected approach.
Nilles: Mind and Presence
She didn’t always choose to copy Pearl’s parts down to the last beat – on “Subdivisions,” for example, she subtly reinvented the piece with her own groove – but she invoked his spirit throughout. And in the catalog’s most indelible percussion moments – the intro to opening track “Xanadu”, the fills in “Tom Sawyer”, every tricky, ultra-syncopated trick in “La Villa Strangiato” and “YYZ” – everything was just right, right down to the last thirty-second note. At times the musical resemblance was so striking that it was reminiscent of Whoopi Goldberg in “Ghost”: the spirit of the deceased guiding her limbs. If Nilles was possessed, it certainly seemed to be a pleasant experience: she was all smiles at the end of “Tom Sawyer” and even seemed to enjoy the challenges of the three parts of “2112.”
It was – unsurprisingly – one of the most emotional Rush concerts of all time. One of the many legacies Peart left behind is a catalog capable of bearing the weight of grief. For all of Rush’s stage humor – also represented on Sunday by pre-filmed sketches with “South Park” scenes and new appearances by Paul Rudd and Jason Segel as their Rush-loving “I Love You, Man” characters – the songs contain Pearl’s attempts to wrestle with life’s big questions. One of those tracks, “Bravado,” was the first direct tribute of the evening, introduced by interview audio from the drummer.
“If the dream is won, though everything is lost,” Lee sang, as archive footage of the drummer reduced an arena full of seasoned men – and more women than on many previous Rush tours – to tears. “We will pay the price / But we will not count the cost.” At times, Lee himself sounded as if he was on the verge of losing his temper. Lifeson’s final guitar solo, unfolding in arpeggios, took all that emotion and multiplied it.
In keeping with the gesture of defiance against mortality that permeated the entire show, Lee and Lifeson seemed to have aged almost backwards since 2015: Lifeson visibly slimmer and more agile in his playing skills, Lee, who abused his bass while sprinting across the stage, faster than one would expect from a 71-year-old. The fact that they started with “Xanadu” said it all – proof that their spines can still handle double-neck instruments and their fingers can still handle prog riffs from 1977.
No light food
“When we started thinking about this tour, we thought, well, we can’t play as many songs as we used to,” Lee said. “We’re not spring chicks anymore. But you know what? We’re still going to play a lot of songs.” With that they fired up “Freewill”, not played since 2011, and Lee ventured into the stratospheric final passage – while Lifeson opened the piece with a cosmically unleashed solo. Lee’s recent singing lessons haven’t quite taken him back to the glorious heights of his Seventies screaming, but his voice is undeniably stronger than it was eleven years ago, the top octave register accessible again. Handing over keyboard parts to new touring musician Loren Gold (formerly of The Who) was obviously liberating for Lee – although he still couldn’t keep his hands off some key synth riffs.
As the band played a furious “Red Barchetta,” the image inevitably came to mind: Rush himself as the titular car – a souped-up relic of a “better managed time” still thundering down the street long after that should have been possible. On another song, 1991’s “Dreamline,” Lee sang one of Pearl’s best, most poignant lines: “We’re only immortal for a limited time.” But as the rest of the show – and the life and work of Neil Peart – proved: boundaries are there to be broken.
Rush Fifty Something Tour Setlist
Set 1
“Xanadu”
“Limelight”
“Far Cry”
“Subdivisions”
“Freewill”
“Bravado”
“Caravan”
“La Villa Strangiato”
“Vital Signs”
“The Spirit of Radio”
Set 2
“2112 Part I: Overture”
“2112 Part II: The Temples of Syrinx”
“2112 Part VII: Grand Finale”
“Distant Early Warning”
“Red Barchetta”
“Dreamline”
“Natural Science”
“Time Stands Still”
“Red Sector A”
“YYZ”
“The Garden”
“Tom Sawyer”
Encore
“By-Tor & The Snow Dog”
“Working Man”