This year marks five years since Rush drummer Neil Peart passed away. While his death permanently marks the end of the band in both Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee’s eyes – with them both recently confirming they’ll never tour as Rush again – the two still regularly get together to jam.
In a new interview with Tom Power on Canada’s CBC Radio One, Lifeson said that he and Lee hang out and play music together at least “once a week.”
“Geddy’s my best friend. We do so much stuff together. We play tennis together. Often we drink a little too much wine together. He definitely drinks too much coffee sometimes. So I’ll go over to his place, and we’ll just hang around. Invariably we’ll go downstairs into his studio and we’ll play and for fun we play some Rush songs — just the two of us, just jamming, really,” he said.
“In fact, just playing. And it’s so much fun for the two of us to play. We’ve been writing music together for 50 years. And honestly, he’s my best friend. Why wouldn’t I wanna hang around with him? So that’s our relationship. And the rumors fly and all of that stuff — of anything, a new album and whatever. But we just really, really enjoy each other’s company. I talk to him almost every day and have forever,” he added.
Lifeson went on to admit, however, that after his longtime friend and bandmate Neil Peart passed away, there was a period of time where he didn’t want to play any music.
“When Neil lost his daughter in ’97, I didn’t play guitar for a year,” Lifeson recalled. “I was just so drained of any desire, I guess, to enjoy the beauty and love of music. And the same thing happened when [Neil] passed away. I didn’t really wanna play, and it wasn’t the same.
“I have this thing — I grieve for a year, and I try to go beyond that and then reset myself. And that’s what I did with [my new project] “Envy of None” after [Neil] passed.”
