Geddy Lee Explains Why Rush Came Back and Why Anika Nilles Was the Only Choice
For years the question followed Geddy Lee everywhere.
Would Rush ever play again?
After Neil Peart passed away in January 2020, most people assumed the answer was no. Rush without Peart wasn’t something anyone could picture, and Lee and Alex Lifeson weren’t in any hurry to change that. The silence made sense.
What changed the conversation wasn’t a business decision or a label pushing for a reunion. It was the mail.
Lee started noticing a pattern in the messages coming from fans. A certain kind of message, from a certain kind of fan. Younger people. Musicians who had gotten into Rush after the band’s last tour in 2015. People who had discovered the catalog but never had the chance to hear any of it live.
“There’s so many fan letters and messages I get from fans that became young musicians after our last gig,” Lee said. “They really would love to hear some of those songs.”
That stuck with him.
The Fifty Something Tour isn’t built around nostalgia, at least not the way most reunion tours are. The way Lee talks about it, there’s a sense of responsibility involved. These songs mean something to people who were never in the room when they were first played, and he and Lifeson are still capable of playing them. That felt like a reason to go out.
Of course there’s also the obvious conversation that nobody can fully avoid.
Neil Peart isn’t there.
Lee addressed it directly. Younger fans won’t get to hear Peart play these songs, and he didn’t try to minimize that. But he also made it clear the goal is to give those fans the best version of the music that’s still possible. The spirit of the catalog matters more to him than protecting it behind glass.
Which brings everything back to the question of who sits behind the kit.
That decision turned out to be simpler than most people expected.
Lee revealed that she was the only drummer they seriously considered. Not one name on a longer shortlist. The only one.
“We’re very lucky because she’s the only drummer we thought of.”
The connection came through Michael Scully, who serves as Lee’s bass tech and had previously worked as guitar tech for Jeff Beck. Scully watched Nilles playing with Beck and told Lee about her. Lee filed that away. When the idea of returning to the stage eventually became serious, Nilles was the first and only name that came up.
What Lee wanted wasn’t a famous name from another band that fans could measure against Peart. He wanted someone who could approach the music without that baggage, someone who brought something fresh to what was already a complete story.
He got more than he expected.
“She’s got the right attitude. She works hard. She’s not afraid to work hard. And she loves to play the same way we love to play.”
The process of getting ready for this tour has been different from anything Rush did previously. In the band’s normal routine, rehearsals focused on new material because the classic songs were already locked in from years of performing them. This time, everything had to be rebuilt from scratch.
Lee and Lifeson started working from a list of around 45 songs, then started cutting as they figured out what they could still do justice to and what they genuinely wanted to play. The problem, Lee said, was that they kept falling in love with songs they hadn’t thought about in years.
“Alex and I started falling in love with all our songs again, and that was a problem.”
They ended up with a pool of roughly 38 songs across the full run. Because the tour includes multi-night stands in some cities, they can rotate songs between shows so no two nights are identical.
Anika Nilles had to absorb all of that material while Lee and Lifeson were themselves relearning songs they hadn’t played in a decade. That unusual situation actually helped, Lee said. Because nobody had everything perfectly memorized, the three of them could rebuild the music together rather than Nilles just trying to catch up to two people who already had it down.
When Lee describes the moment rehearsals started clicking, he sounds genuinely happy about it.
“When all the tumblers fall into place and she gets the vibe and she’s feeling it… it’s going to be so much fun.”
He also didn’t sugarcoat the other side of things. Not every Rush fan has embraced the idea of the band performing without Peart, and Lee knows it.
“Some people will never forgive us for going on with somebody else.”
He said it plainly, without defensiveness. But he also talked about what Nilles brings to this beyond technical ability. She understands what she’s stepping into. She knows who Neil Peart was and what he meant to the music.
“When you hear her talk about Neil, she really understands and appreciates his greatness.”
For Lee, that’s the whole thing. The tour isn’t about replacing Peart or rewriting what Rush was. He said it himself: “None of this that happens is diminishing his greatness by one iota.”
What it is about comes back to those fan letters.
A generation of musicians grew up with this music and never got to be in the room for it. Lee and Lifeson are still here. The songs are still there. And now, for the first time in over a decade, so is the band.
I’m Drew, the founder and editor of Front of the Stage. I have a strong love for music and photography, which started at a very young age. There’s just something I love about experiencing live music and capturing memories that will last a lifetime, and that’s how Front of the Stage came to be.
