Geddy Lee Reveals He Gave Alex Lifeson an Ultimatum to Restart Rush: “We’re Either Doing This or We’re Not”

Rush’s return to the stage is now the most anticipated rock tour of the decade — but it almost didn’t happen. In a candid joint interview with The Guardian published February 27, bassist and vocalist Geddy Lee revealed that he had to deliver an ultimatum to his lifelong friend and bandmate Alex Lifeson before the “Fifty Something” tour became a reality.

“I told Al: ‘Look, we’re either doing this or we’re not doing it. I can’t talk about it every two years,'” Lee told The Guardian. “‘Because time marches on, and I don’t know how much time we have. So if we’re going to do it, we do it now. If we don’t, fine — let’s just not talk about it.'”

Lifeson’s response to the interviewer was characteristically blunt: “True story.”

Years of Indecision

The road back to Rush began not with grand ambition but with the simple act of two old friends playing together. Lee and Lifeson, who have known each other for 60 years since meeting in junior high school, had continued jamming in the years following their final R40 concert at the Los Angeles Forum in August 2015 and the devastating loss of drummer and lyricist Neil Peart to brain cancer in January 2020.

“We got sidetracked and started playing Rush songs,” Lee explained to The Guardian. “When one jam petered out, one of us said, ‘Why don’t we play this song? Can we remember it?’ So we did. And … we couldn’t.”

“We were so bad,” Lifeson added.

A spark came in 2022 when Lee and Lifeson performed alongside Dave Grohl at the Taylor Hawkins Tribute Concert. The adrenaline rush led to provisional plans to regroup — but Lifeson ultimately got cold feet and backed out. It wasn’t until Lee forced the issue with his now-or-never declaration that the guitarist finally committed.

Finding “The New Guy”

With the decision made, Lee and Lifeson faced what may have been the more daunting challenge: filling the drum chair vacated by one of rock’s most technically gifted and distinctive players. They turned to Anika Nilles, a 42-year-old German jazz-fusion drummer recommended by Lee’s bass tech after she had toured with the late Jeff Beck.

Nilles flew to Canada in March 2025 for a five-day audition — and Lee has now admitted the first four days were rocky.

“When we started playing with her, something felt wrong,” Lee told The Guardian. “And I was, of course: ‘This is not gonna work.’ Those seemingly impossible fills were not a problem for her at all. What was difficult was understanding a relationship between snare, bass drum and hi-hat that’s different from her training.”

By the evening of day four, Lee and Lifeson were privately questioning whether to continue. “We had a little chat before the last day — ‘I don’t know, Al, is this going to work?'” Lee recalled. “We talked about all the things we liked about her, and what a work ethic she has, nice person and deep knowledge, deep technical ability. So there’s a lot of positives. So let’s not be hasty.”

On the fifth and final day, everything changed.

“She just fucking nailed it,” Lee said.

“She suddenly understood what we were talking about that whole week,” Lifeson told The Guardian, “not about the technical aspect, but about the stuff in between the big stuff, that Neil was just so amazing at — those internal dynamics that only another drummer can understand, and it clicked in her.”

A 58-Date Celebration

The “Fifty Something” tour — Rush’s first official concerts in 11 years — is set to launch June 7, 2026, at the Kia Forum in Los Angeles, the same venue where the band played its final R40 show. The initial 22 North American dates sold out immediately, and the tour has since expanded to 58 arena shows across 24 cities in Canada, the United States, and Mexico, with more than half a million tickets already sold. European and South American dates have been added for early 2027, marking Rush’s first shows on those continents in over a decade.

Each show will be an “evening with” format featuring two full sets, with Lee and Lifeson drawing from a rehearsed catalog of roughly 40 songs to rotate the setlist nightly. The band has also added keyboardist Loren Gold to expand their sound.

Lee has separately hinted that new Rush music could follow the tour cycle, telling Louder Sound in January that “it would be fun to see what Anika can do in a creative situation.”

But for now, the focus is on the stage — and on honoring Peart’s legacy through the music he helped create.

“Everybody wants to have a bestie like this guy,” Lee said of Lifeson during their Guardian interview, beaming. After 60 years of friendship and over 50 years of Rush, the feeling is clearly mutual.