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Sunday, August 22,
2004

Rush shows no
signs of fading

By JANE
STEVENSON -- Toronto Sun

It's hard to believe it has been 30
years since Toronto prog-power trio Rush released their
self-titled debut.

Sometimes it seems even
longer for guitarist Alex Lifeson, who -- with
singer-bassist Geddy Lee and drummer Neil Peart -- wrap
up the North American leg of their current
30th-anniversary tour with a sold-out show tonight at
the Molson Amphitheatre.

"If feels more like 50
actually," joked Lifeson, 50, in an exclusive Canadian
newspaper interview with the Sun, while seated in his
tuning room backstage just hours before a show last week
in Darien Lake, N.Y.

"At some point in the set
we kind of look at each other and sort of shake our
heads and can't believe that we're still doing this. In
(Geddy's case), he and I, since we were 15 years old --
playing those high schools and those millions of bars
throughout southern Ontario."

Twenty-four albums
and some 35 million in sales worldwide later, Rush seems
to have arrived at a place where they see no end in
sight for their collective music-making.

STRONGER THAN EVER

And a lot of
that has to do with the fact that they came close to
disbanding during a five-year hiatus that ended in 2002
as Peart grieved the loss of his daughter in a car
accident and his wife to cancer.

But it seems
the trio has emerged from those bleak times stronger
than ever -- both as a band and as friends.

"I
think after the whole dark period surrounding Neil's
tragedies, obviously we felt ... there was a good chance
we were through as a band," said Lee, 51, in a separate
exclusive interview with the Sun.

"And when we
were able to reform and move forward in such a positive
way with (the critically acclaimed 2002 release) Vapor
Trails and through the last tour, I think we felt
completely rejuvenated ... (with) a wonderful sense of
having been through such a terrible thing together and
coming out the other side still okay and still friends,
and probably better friends than anything."

When
Rush has run its course musically, the trio will
instinctively know it, Lee said.

"If anything
would stop our band now, it would be just us deciding
that we don't have anything else to say together, which
I find highly unlikely, for awhile, but you never know.
I never assume. If I've learned anything from that
terrible period, it's that you can't assume anything.
You never know what life is going to throw at you."

For example, Lifeson has had his own drama to
deal with the past year following his arrest last New
Year's Eve at the Ritz-Carlton in Naples, Fla., after an
altercation between members of his family and sheriff's
deputies.

After spending two nights in jail with
a broken nose, he currently stands accused of two felony
counts of battery on a law enforcement officer with the
potential of a 10-year prison term if convicted.

Understandably, with the next court date Sept.
13, Lifeson has been advised not to talk about the
specifics of the incident, but he did tell the Sun,
"We're so close to working it out. There's an ongoing
investigation that's looking much more promising. And
they've agreed to hear the trial in October. Hopefully,
we'll get it all resolved before it even goes to trial."

Much better news in the Rush camp is that to
celebrate 30 years together, the group chose to record
an eight-song covers EP called Feedback -- made up of
1966-1967 material by The Yardbirds, The Who, Buffalo
Springfield and others.

Lee said the group
wanted to have a new release in the bank before hitting
the road again and also wanted to pay tribute to those
groups that had influenced them as 13- and 14-year-old
fledgling musicians.

"When a band of our age
category goes out on tour without something new,
sometimes it's categorized as a nostalgia thing. And
we've never considered ourselves having retired. So we
don't want to be considered to be one of those bands
that is trading on our past. The other consideration was
that we wanted to do something fun, something different,
to celebrate our 30 years. And a friend of mine
suggested, 'Well, why don't you look backward, instead
of forward? Why don't you find some songs that you guys
used to play when you were in baby bands? And see about
recording a couple of them just as an EP?' "

Still, it was an idea that almost went away as
Rush got bogged down in 30th-anniversary tour
rehearsals.

"We didn't really have time to go
into the studio and then Alex and I started fooling
around with some of these songs at my home studio and
before you knew it, we had about eight songs," Lee said.
"We were communicating back and forth with Neil, and
everybody kind of got fired up and we got David Leonard
to come in and produce it and we did the whole thing in
three weeks. So it turned out to be really a lot of fun.
And it was so nice to do material that we hadn't
written, 'cause you don't have to worry whether it's any
good! Time has proven that the songs are good, so it's
one less worry. We just had to worry about getting great
performances."

Never usually a problem for the
three virtuoso musicians of Rush, but Lee said it wasn't
always so.

"Thirty years ago, we tried to play
those songs, and they were a struggle. Now we've picked
them up so quickly and we looked at each other, 'Wow, I
guess we've figured out how to do what we do.' And there
was a real sense of time -- how much time had passed."

Lee said he hopes the "relaxed,
performance-based atmosphere" of making Feedback is
repeated on the next Rush studio album, which the band
likely won't start working on until next spring or
summer.

After wrapping up the North American leg
in Toronto tonight, the group still have three weeks of
touring in Europe, starting Sept. 8 with a two-night
stand at Wembley Arena in London.

"I hope we can
take that forward with us into the next writing project
that we do," he said. "We're always relaxed with each
other but the writing gets very intense. And the writing
sessions are quite long. We've become very picky. We
push each other really hard to write the best we can."
(More on Rush)

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