The one concert Geddy Lee could never enjoy: “I wasn’t myself”
The entire ending of Rush had to have been incredibly bittersweet for Geddy Lee.
He never liked the idea of the band coming to an end, but he knew he needed to respect the wishes of Neil Peart after years of him giving it everything every single time he played his massive kit every single night. Peart had given absolutely everything he had in the service of performing, so when Lee managed to get back onstage for the last time with all of them together, it had to be gutting when Peart eventually passed away.
Even though Lee and Alex Lifeson took the piss out of Peart by calling him the new guy for so long, they were truly brothers in every sense of the word. They had experienced all of those years touring the world and making sure that every single note was as precise as possible when making their records, so when the heartbeat was taken out of the group, it didn’t feel like the band should have continued on at all.
And while that still stood up until the past few years, Lee didn’t want to see his music become museum pieces, either. He still wanted to make music where he could, even if it wasn’t being called Rush at the time, but the very least that he and Lifeson could do was find a way to play shows that would celebrate their friend. So what better way to do that than by paying tribute to Taylor Hawkins?
The Foo Fighters drummer was one of the biggest Rush fans in the entire world, and while his death left a gaping hole in Dave Grohl’s heart, Lifeson and Lee were more than willing to turn up at shows honouring the drummer’s memory. Grohl was already having one of the hardest nights of his life, going on without his best friend, but while the show at Wembley Stadium was one of the heaviest shows anyone would have to endure, the second tribute show in Los Angeles felt a little too close to home for Lee.
After all, this was the last venue where Rush played as a three-piece, and while Lee was still ready to give everything he had, he remembered feeling a bit out of it when looking at where he stood a few years before, saying, “I didn’t realise at the time. It was only in retrospect because I was so off at the LA show. I wasn’t myself. At the London show, the Wembley show, I was celebratory. But when I got to LA, I didn’t feel the same.”
Adding, “There was something about being in that building that was really disturbing me, and I couldn’t put my finger on it. I couldn’t figure it out until I walked on stage and realised that this was returning to the scene of the crime.”
At the very least, though, that final performance that Rush played there was their own celebration of sorts. The band were in fine form, and even if they had had their health issues flaring up at the time, the fact that the night wasn’t lost on Peart was all that mattered, so much so that he relinquished his drum throne for the first and only time to join his bandmates at the front of the stage for a curtain call.
But Hawkins’s tribute show did make for a turning point in Lee’s career. He didn’t want to spend the rest of his life moping about losing one of his best friends, and if he could see Foo Fighters carrying on while still keeping the memory of Hawkins alive, Lee and Lifeson could definitely do the same thing if they found the right person to step into those unfillable shoes whenever they hit the road again.
It took a long time to get back to where they felt comfortable with going back onstage, but when they go up onstage as Rush for the rest of their lives, the two surviving members are never trying to replace Peart. They’re simply making music that reminds them of the great times they had with their musical brother, but they also know there isn’t a soul on this Earth that could possibly replace what Peart did.
