New Rush drummer Anika Nilles has been grabbing headlines for her light-hearted asides at the end of the band’s concerts.
But this time guitarist Alex Lifeson was the star of the show in a clip from their performance in Montreal on Sept. 4.
As the video below shows, he made the most of a pause in proceedings ahead of playing classic track “Limelight,” presumably while waiting for a technical detail to be addressed.
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After breifly telling the audience about his love for their city – and admitting it sounded like “just something you’d say,” he looked over to Geddy Lee and said, “I think I’d like to… can I start the song now?”
Lee replies, “You’re the boss!” to which Lifeson pulls an expression of surprise. “I’m the boss? This is new!” he says before warming to the theme.
“I’m the boss! Ah, you’re fired, everybody! I’m just going to do a show by myself. I’m going to make hundreds of dollars!
“I’m going to go to the middle of the stage and take a rock star pose and start this, because this is my band now.” He appears to look directly into the camera with a smug expression as he daintily steps to the front to play the opening riff of “Limelight.”
Alex Lifeson Fires Rush
The re-energized band seem more relaxed than ever despite having been on hiatus for 11 years following the late Neil Peart’s retirement in 2015. But as Lee explained in a recent interview, it’s not the first time they came back from a break with a new sense of lightness.
“When we first started we always had a good sense of humor,” he said, “but for some reason – I guess it was youth and just lack of confidence – we kept that humor to ourselves.”
How Rush Decided to Be Themselves
He referred to Rush’s hiatus of 1997 after Peart lost his daughter and wife in separate tragedies. “As time went on,” Lee continued, “and we went through many different phases, and some of these phases were not happy times, by 2002 we had decided that it was okay to be ourselves.”
That’s how the band came to be seen in episodes of South Park, began filming their own comedy sketches to be played as part of their shows, and made a cameo appearance in 2009 movie I Love You Man.
“Before 2002 we said ‘no’ to anything that was outside our comfort zone,” Lee remembered. “After 2002 we just started saying ‘yes’ to things – and I Love You Man was exactly that.”
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We examine Rush’s 19 studio albums, from 1974’s muscular self-titled release to a series of remarkable late-career triumphs.
Gallery Credit: Eduardo Rivadavia
