Earlier this month, the Rush Fifty-Something tour rolled through Denver and I was in attendance (along with my dad). I will never financially recover from this.

Attentive readers will know that I really like Rush. I'd even go as far as to say it's my favorite band, and I'm really bad at picking favorite anythings. Unfortunately for me, I didn't fully appreciate them until after the R40 tour in 2015, so I figured I had missed the boat for seeing them live forever (not the most devastating thing because most of the artists I like are dead or inactive anyway). But I was pleasantly surprised to be proven wrong, so there I was!

I was surprised at the sudden revival of Rush because R40 was set up to be a farewell tour. That decision wasn't legally binding, of course, but the bigger reason I wasn't expecting another tour was the passing of Neil Peart in 2020. Shortly after his death, Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson gave indications that the band wouldn't go on without him, so I concluded that was it. But that changed too, and they announced that Anika Nilles would join the band on drums for the tour.

Rush and Peart specifically are revered by percussionists everywhere for having possibly the most ridiculous drum writing known to man. For me, the percussion writing is the primary reason I love their music so much. It's extremely technically challenging, which is one thing, but it's also very innovative and orchestral in instrumentation. Peart's kit was a behemoth, including but not limited to chimes, bells, crotales, timpani, gong, and multiple cowbells. Also every type of cymbal that exists. And electric drum and synth pads. His replacement would be under immense pressure to execute everything going on:

Of course, we needed to tackle the most difficult decision of them all, trying to find a drummer with the talent and guts to join us on stage and fill the shoes of someone that is irreplaceable. We had no lack of friends who were amazing drummers, but we wanted someone from a different context, someone who'd not beg the inevitable comparisons to their previous bands and, most importantly, who had a story of their own that deserved telling.

Geddy Lee, Fifty Something tour book

I was familiar with Nilles from seeing some of her drumming videos as she was getting started on Youtube in the early 2010s. I remembered her being a very skilled and creative drummer at the time, so I wasn't too concerned about her ability to keep up with Peart's drum parts. I was correct about this. She was incredible, and I had a great time watching her play. The audience hyped her up a lot. The audience energy in general was amazing (not surprising).

Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson were also phenomenal to finally see live. They never took themselves too seriously but still played with the precision they're known for. I think some of the songs were played slightly under-tempo, which was fine. I'd much rather hear a clean and slow(er) performance than a dirty and fast one anyway. (My lukewarm take is that playing stuff faster just to show you can "play it fast" is also an extremely annoying ego-exercise that tells you nothing about someone's actual musicianship and I don't like hearing it at concerts.) It's worth noting that most performances in the Peak Rush era were similarly restrained in terms of tempo.

The setlist included most of the hits along with a good number of 80s-90s deep cuts that I wasn't expecting. According to Cygnus X1, there are a ton of variants of the setlist. There are definitely some songs that I wish I could have heard, but I enjoyed everything we did hear. No songs from Grace Under Pressure at this show (and only one song in a handful of variants), which is understandable but I was still a little bummed because it's my favorite of the weird 80s synth period. But putting together a 2 and a half hour program from a repertoire as large as Rush's is a massive undertaking, especially considering many of the songs are approaching or exceeding 10 minutes long. There were even some hits like Fly By Night that got left off.

The show opened with a very funny and very high production value short film that transitioned right into Xanadu (A Farewell to Kings, 1977)! Concert opener of all time! It's one of the classic 10 minute mostly-instrumental pieces, and it showed very quickly that everyone could still play (and that Anika Nilles was not there to play games). The cowbell lick!!! The bells!!! The chimes!!! The bongos!!! So much percussion already! (This recording of Xanadu from 1981 should give you an idea of the insane chops required to play it.)

The staging was pretty minimal with just a few props placed out of the way. The drums were placed on a raised platform as they always have been, because seeing them is a vital part of the show. In the background, they projected some cool artsy screensaver-looking motion graphics that added some color without being distracting. These projections usually included live feeds with close-ups of each member, including an overhead camera for the drums. This consideration was much appreciated.

Afterwards, we were transported to radio-era Rush of the early 1980s with Limelight (Moving Pictures, 1981) and Subdivisions (Signals, 1982). They were both excellent, as expected. Alex Lifeson really milked the guitar solo in Limelight! It's such a beautiful piece of music! Subdivisions is much more synth-heavy, and historically Lee and Lifeson have dealt with this by triggering the effects with pedals or (in Lee's case) frantically switching between synth and bass. That didn't happen in this performance because the band also added another touring musician, Loren Gold, who took over most of the synth parts. He wore a lot of hats and was really fun to watch. It was also fun to watch Lee and Lifeson get to dance around the stage and interact with each other now that they didn't have to worry about constant pedal timing.

(Another aside: At this point I noticed a lot of the people around me were air drumming. I don't want to generalize to the entire 20,000 person stadium, but the percussionist ratio in my specific section was bananas. See the paragraph about percussionists being Rush fans.)

The first deep cut was The Pass from Presto, a 1989 album that usually gets lost in the Rush discography. I still like Presto a lot, and this song offered a nice break (for the audience and the band) from the dense note-playing of the first three songs. The rest of the concert was similarly paced, with mellower songs buffering the high-energy ones (which is most of them) as a palate cleanser.

The energy picked up again with Freewill (Permanent Waves, 1980), the first Rush song I've ever heard, even before Tom Sawyer. I love the song from a musical standpoint even if the lyrics are a little on-the-nose (no disrespect to the late also-lyricist Neil Peart). The drum part is so catchy that even I, not a drummer, have it memorized, and the 6/8 part in the bridge lives rent-free in my head. There is an awesome bass lick that happens underneath the also-awesome guitar solo (did I mention all of this is happening in 6/8) and it was delightful finally getting to see it in person.

Neil Peart's absence was felt very strongly. Lee and Lifeson spoke at length about what he meant to them after 46 years of playing together, there were videos, everyone was crying. The first song played for him was Bravado, another deep cut from Roll the Bones (1991). I love this song, and the performance was a lovely tribute.

They followed up the tears with what I consider to be my quintessential Rush song, La Villa Strangiato (Hemispheres, 1978). If you ask me why I like Rush so much, I will play this song for you. It is a 9-minute instrumental with strong orchestral composition sensibilities; I consider it to be a theme and variations at its core even if nobody else describes it that way. All the different solo sections also make it flow a bit like a jazz song. There are so many meter changes. It is everything to me. Seeing it performed live was transcendent. You could even have some of the Villa experience right now (and you can find very recent recordings pretty easily).

The last two songs before intermission were Natural Science and Spirit of Radio (Permanent Waves, 1980). I'll be real, Natural Science is not high up on my list of Rush songs, but I appreciate the idea of it. Science! We are all tiny creatures! Yay! Spirit of Radio is another classic and a nice way to round out the first half. It's a radio mainstay, with lots of fun musical bits to keep it interesting.

I took a quick power nap during intermission because I am not built to stay up this late anymore. The band returned with the whole-ass 20 minute entirety of 2112 (another opener of all time and great way to start the second half). 2112 is a 7-movement piece that is peak Rush prog, with all the weird sci-fi lyrics that entails. I don't listen to it a ton because of the runtime, but there are so many fun musical bits that I was reminded of during the performance.

The next deep cut was Animate from Counterparts (1993). I wasn't expecting it at all, but it's a fun song. Lyrically it makes no fucking sense though. It was followed by Closer to the Heart, another staple song. I don't listen to it very frequently, but I still enjoy it. There are a lot of great percussion bits in there (crotales! chimes!), and the guitar solo is wonderful.

They played Passage to Bangkok (2112, 1976) next and it was very memorable. I say this because the projection for this was a golden age-style cartoon animation of blunts riding a train. I'm pretty sure this is the only Rush song that is exclusively and explicitly about weed, so this was extremely entertaining.

The next Neil Peart tribute was the song Time Stand Still, from the somewhat polarizing 1987 album Hold Your Fire. There was a video recording of Aimee Mann that played on the back screen during the chorus, which brought to mind the incredible green screen technology of the music video. Jokes about the video aside, this song will still never get old for me, and it was another sweet dedication to Peart.

The next three songs were some more staple songs. First was YYZ (Moving Pictures, 1981), which is the second song I will show you if you ask me why I like Rush. This was a long-ass concert as it was and there were still many more songs to play, so no extended drum solo version (this is the specific video I would show), but still a treat to see! There's just so much going on with it musically and I love all of it.

Next we went back in time to Anthem (Fly by Night, 1975), which is just triplets, triplets everywhere. Fly by Night was back when Rush was still mostly a classic rock band, but you could tell they were starting to dabble in the prog dark arts (the triplets). Unfortunately it is also named after and inspired by the Ayn Rand book, so I reserve the right to roast for that.

To round out the trio, we returned to the 80s with Red Barchetta (also Moving Pictures). Red Barchetta is great, did I mention every song on Moving Pictures is great? Geddy Lee's voice obviously isn't the same as it was 40 years ago, but he still sang the hell out of it. It's one of those whole package songs where nothing is that complex in isolation, but it all just works.

Afterwards was The Garden, the final track of Rush's final album Clockwork Angels (2012). This song has a lot of emotions tied up in it. At the time of writing, it was a farewell from the band, and now it's a last goodbye to/from Neil Peart. Its inclusion here also felt like it signalled the end of the band, for real this time. Then again, they didn't even play it in all the setlist variants... so who can say? Either way, I was probably crying at this point.

The band walked off the stage after this, but it was fairly obvious that they would return soon after because they still hadn't played Tom Sawyer. So then they came back and played Tom Sawyer (Moving Pictures, 1981)! There was a silly South Park introduction video with it and everything. I'm not sure what to say here because it's Tom Sawyer, it's The Rush Song, and it was fantastic.

After that fake encore there was the real encore featuring two songs, Finding My Way and Working Man, from the 1974 self-titled debut album. The self-titled album occupies a weird place in the discography because Peart wasn't a member yet and it was fully a hard/classic rock album, but it was also a massive hit. They don't really go with anything stylistically (even with all the bouncing around between styles that Rush did), so saving them for the encore made sense. It was a great time, even though I listened to the last third of Working Man while we were trying to beat the crowd out the door. And that was the show!

I'm very pleased to have finally seen 2/3 of Rush and two amazing touring musicians in person. The small fortune I paid for the experience was worth it and I even paid another small fortune to get a shirt. It was also just nice seeing the guys continuing to play music and have fun in their 70s, since the dominant societal programming is that fun becomes illegal once you hit a certain age. I was born way too late to see peak Rush but this was still pretty good.