Featured in a new interview with Classic Rock History, Rush guitar legend Alex Lifeson was asked once again about the possibility of reorming Rush with a new drummer in place of the late Neil Peart. Lifeson offered the following:
"I’m proud of our body of work. I don’t think that every record was great all the way through; I always felt that there was a song or two that maybe was a weaker addition to record, but that happens. Moving Pictures is probably the only one that I didn’t feel like that with. But there’s so many people that ask about us getting back together, if we’ll find a new drummer, or continue with Rush, and honestly—I’m proud of the fact that we haven’t, and that it was over when it was over."
"We toured for 41 years, and Neil was done. He couldn’t play like he did ten years earlier, and it was very difficult; he did not want to play even one percentage less than perfect. That was understandable, and it was sad when it was over, and all of that, but in retrospect, we went out on a high note, and that’s the legacy of Rush. So many people remember us, and there’s sadness amongst our fans that it ended, and they want more, but you can’t go back. We can’t just go and get another drummer, and go out and play concerts, and make new material; it just would not be the same; it would just be a money ploy."
Read the complete story here.
Lifeson recently spoke with Ultimate Classic Rock and revealed that he discovered a brilliant new practice regimen to keep his chops up: playing Rush songs with former bandmate Geddy Lee. It's something they hadn't done regularly in nearly a decade, as Rush played their final show in 2015 and called it quits after the death of drummer Neil Peart in January 2020.
Lifeson: "We decided that we would play some Rush songs. Because, you know, we haven’t played these songs in 10 years. We started that a couple of weeks ago. We get together one day a week over at his place. We just picked some Rush songs and we started playing them and we sound like a really, really bad Rush tribute band."
"Trying to figure out the songs, I'm thinking, 'Why did we write that so difficult? Why is this so hard to play?' After about three run-throughs of all of these songs, muscle memory kicks in and your hand just goes to where it goes. You sort of get out of the way and you play and you go, 'Thank God, I did make this simpler than it felt.'"
Read the complete Ultimate Classic Rock report here.
Just a few months after the successful launch of the By-Tor overdrive/boost pedal, Alex Lifeson and Lerxst have announced their next pedal collaboration, The Snow Dog.
The Snow Dog is an octave fuzz that utilizes the Lerxst two-in-one pedal format to provide a versatile array of modern and vintage fuzz sounds with a footswitchable upper octave effect. The Snow Dog is available now for $295 as a limited-run of 500 pedals available exclusively through the Lerxst Reverb Store, and also includes a tour pass signed by Alex.
“I use distortion, fuzz, and overdrive pedals and plug-ins when I'm looking for that kind of specific sound for the projects I work on and am having fun with both the By-Tor and Snow Dog pedals,” Alex says. “But it's the Snow Dog that really screams. It can produce the most horrific fuzz in the Universe!”
Learn more here, and check out the Snow Dog in action in this demo video by Andy Martin:
