Photo by Richard Sibbald
A note before I start: I can’t pretend to be neutral here. Rush is my favorite band of all time, full stop. The very first album I ever owned was Moving Pictures — so “Tom Sawyer,” “Limelight” and “YYZ” aren’t just songs on a setlist to me, they’re where my whole relationship with rock music began. Keep that bias in mind as you read.
Eleven years after what everyone assumed was their last show, Rush is back on the road. The Canadian trio’s “Fifty Something” tour opened Sunday at the Kia Forum in Los Angeles, and it rolls into Boston’s TD Garden for two nights this fall: Saturday, September 12 and Monday, September 14.
If you want to go, here’s the part Boston fans should notice. Most of this tour sold out fast — both L.A. shows, all four nights in Fort Worth, the entire Chicago and New York runs, both Cleveland dates. The two TD Garden shows are, as of the band’s June 10 announcement, among the relative few that aren’t yet marked sold out. Tickets and the full routing are at rush.com/tour/fifty-something.
The elephant in the room
Rush is, and isn’t, Rush. Drummer and lyricist Neil Peart — the third leg of the band and one of the most revered drummers in rock — died of brain cancer on January 7, 2020. For years afterward, surviving members Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson said plainly that there was no Rush without him.
So this comeback comes with an asterisk, and the band isn’t hiding it. The drum stool now belongs to Anika Nilles, a German drummer brought in to handle Peart’s famously demanding catalog, with Loren Gold on keyboards. The press release leans hard on a wall of rave reviews — Rolling Stone, Billboard, USA Today and others all praising Nilles — and you should take a publicist’s quote-stacking with the usual grain of salt. That said, replacing Peart is about as tall an order as exists in rock, and the early notices suggest the band took it seriously rather than coasting on nostalgia.
What the show actually looks like
These are billed as “an evening with” dates — two sets a night, no opener. According to the release, the band is building each setlist from a pool of about 40 songs spanning their five decades, and the two opening-night L.A. shows shared only part of their setlists.
Night one in L.A. reportedly opened with an 11-minute “Xanadu” and worked in “Limelight,” “The Spirit of Radio,” “Tom Sawyer,” “YYZ” and the deep cut “By-Tor and the Snow Dog.” Night two swapped in “Freewill,” “The Trees” and “Closer to the Heart,” and opened its second set with the entire first side of 2112. Both nights brought out singer Aimee Mann for “Time Stand Still” — one of two on-stage tributes to Peart — and both closed with “Working Man” from the band’s 1974 self-titled debut. Worth knowing if you’re deciding whether to catch both Boston dates: the band is clearly mixing things up night to night.
For context on the gap, Rush’s last tour, R40, wrapped in 2015 — fittingly, also at the Kia Forum. The “Fifty Something” name nods to the band’s 50-plus years; Rush formed in Toronto in 1968 and Lee and Lifeson have been playing together since they were teenagers.
The bottom line
Rush were Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees in 2013 and have sold tens of millions of records. Their appeal was the musicianship and a fanbase that treats the catalog like scripture. Whether a Rush without Peart can carry that is the question the band is putting to audiences every night. It looks good so far.
Boston gets its turn September 12 and 14 at TD Garden. For a tour this hard to get into elsewhere, the fact that local tickets are still available is the most newsworthy thing on the page.