RUSH IS A BAND

Thursday, November 20, 2008

The future of Rush: farewell tour in 2011?

In a recent interview with Billboard magazine, Geddy Lee said the following regarding Rush's future plans.

... "Snakes & Arrows Live" will have to hold Rush fans over for a while. The trio is currently "on a break" and "a little burnt out right now," though he has every confidence there will be another Rush album in the future.

"I think we're gonna stay quiet for awhile and then start writing -- when we're going to start writing I can't say just yet," Lee notes. "It may be in the fall, maybe the spring, maybe the following spring. But eventually we'll start writing some songs and recording them, and hopefully that will be followed up by another tour down the road a couple years from now."

This essentially squashed any plans for a 2009 tour which we were all hoping for based on the rumor that I had reported in early October. The rumor being that the band had been presented with an offer from Live Nation and were considering it. It turns out that the rumor itself was true - it's just that the band's ultimate decision was not what we were hoping for. :(

I'd first heard this rumor from an industry source back in early October. Evidently concert promoter Live Nation had put an offer to the band on the table for a 35-date tour in 2009 and the band was considering it. Not much else came of this rumor until a week or so later when Geddy and Alex were guests on VH1 Classic's new That Metal Show on October 15th. Reports from the taping stated that Geddy was asked if they would be taking a break for a while and Geddy stated I think we will be doing one more tour. Speculation abound as to what Geddy meant by these words. I now have some new information that sheds some light on all of this (although you may not like what I have to say). Apparently the band had considered the offer from Live Nation to tour in 2009 but ultimately decided to opt out, despite the money. As Geddy stated in the Billboard interview, the band is a little burnt out right now. Both Geddy and Alex want to spend more time with family while Neil wants to focus on several other endeavors including a couple of books he's working on, a possible new instructional DVD and projects related to the newly-launched Drum Channel. The band has informed all of the crew to find other work until 2011 when they should be ready to head back out. So it looks like the band will start the recording process sometime next year or early in 2010, record an album in the 2010 or early 2011 timeframe and tour in 2011 ... and we'll have to wait at least 2 years for another album/tour. And here's the killer ... the bit of very unfortunate news that I heard is that this will more than likely be their last tour. So when Geddy said one more tour it looks like that may just be exactly what he meant. This is one rumor I really hope is not true, although I have a feeling that it is. The driving force behind this decision I hear is Neil Peart, who does not want to be on the road touring at age 60 (he'll turn 60 in 2012) but would rather like to remain active as a writer and as a producer working on various projects related to drumming. Despite wanting to possibly hang up their tour hats after this next time out, the band has expressed no desire to disband or to stop putting out new music. The big question for them is how to release new music. They really don't make much money from album sales anymore. So - as I've reported before - they are therefore mulling the idea of releasing digital tracks or digital eps in lieu of albums. This is still an open question though - no decisions have been made on this front.

So that leaves us with the other rumor that the band has some kind of surprise on tap that should make us all very happy (Donna Halper's words). The exact nature of this surprise is unknown to me at this time (if it was... then it wouldn't be a surprise I guess!). However I have heard of at least one new project that the band is working on. Apparently they are working on a Classic Albums treatment for Moving Pictures. Classic Albums is a TV series made by Eagle Rock Entertainment that are broadcast worldwide (BBC, ITV, VH1, VH1 Classic etc) and also available on DVD. If that's successful they plan on possibly doing the same for 2112 and Signals.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. I'm a bit stunned at this point - it hasn't really sunk in yet. I really hope what I've heard is not true. As always, more as I learn it.