UPDATE - 8/26@7:08PM: Rolling Stone Canada has announced that the Summer 2026 Rush issue will be released as the first ever print edition of the magazine!
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UPDATE - 8/17@11:08AM: They also spoke directly with Geddy Lee's vocal coach Mitch Seekins:
... This time, after over five decades of singing professionally, Lee decided to take his first lessons. He began Zoom meetings with a veteran vocal coach, Mitch Seekins, who works remotely from the small town of Ilderton, Ontario. Seekins, a longtime Rush fan, knew right away that Lee was a long way from being ready. " It was shocking," says Seekins. "I mean, it was horribly out of shape. The muscles weren't responding in the top end anymore." But the coach still had very good news for his client: "I could hear that it was there, he just couldn't do it yet. He wasn't sure if he was ever gonna be able to do what he did when he was much younger... But there was no degradation at all, even due to age." The high notes would inevitably lack some of the reckless power of the old days, but they were all accessible. The real trick was convincing Lee that he could do it. " The hardest part of the repair part is the psychological end of the thing," says Seekins, whose techniques can seem Yoda-like. "Because it is subconscious, and if you've convinced yourself that you can't do something, well, guess what? You can't." ...
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UPDATE - 8/15@4:22PM: Anika Nilles was also interviewed for the feature, and Ultimate Classic Rock posted a few excerpts here:
... "Now, I have a little bit of Neil in me. What I learned for myself the most is the compositional part. He was brilliant in that, really. He constantly builds, and builds, and builds the drum part to a point where you think, 'What the hell is going on?'" Her confidence increased when Peart's widow, Carrie Nuttall, made contact ahead of the first show. "I got a nice message from her, a really lovely message," Nilles said. "It was really nice to hear that she is on board and looking forward to this whole journey." She reported that she felt "really energized, and relieved" as the Fifty Something tour continues. Asked what she told herself after her first few performances, she laughed: "I made it through!"
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UPDATE - 8/14@7:40PM: Geddy and Alex also grace the cover of Rolling Stone Canada's Summer edition as seen in this IG post:
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UPDATE - 8/14@7:28PM: Here's an article with transcriptions of large portions of the interview, such as this portion where Ged talks about his vocal coach:
... "It was important to me to do as many original versions for our audience as we could, and I didn't want to have to start changing keys to every song and go into that whole bulls**t. So how do I do that? Well, a friend of ours recommended this vocal coach for me. His name is Mitch Seekins, and he's a terrific guy. He's a great singer, lives in the country now, and that's his job. He coaches all kinds of people. It's really interesting. He coaches opera people. He coaches a lot of rock bands. He coaches one guy who does the play-by-play announcement at a horse racetrack. So, all kinds of people need vocal training, for various [reasons]... He coaches people that, for one reason or another, have started to lose their voice. And so he's very well-versed in analyzing what you got. So I started with him - what? - about a year and a half ago now. And the first few sessions, he was listening to what I had, and he said, 'Okay. Well, you've got a voice that the muscles are out of shape. So you haven't sung in 11 years. That's normal.' So after the first number of sessions, he said, 'Well, the good news is you still have that range in there, but we've gotta strengthen your voice so you can access it.' So that became the beginning of this whole exercise regime. It's no different than going to the gym and getting strong. I go to the gym four days a week, get my body strong. Well, you have to get this muscle [that controls your vocal cords] strong, and that's what I've worked on. And as we went along, he's very good at getting me to stretch my range and also give me confidence in my range. Part of it is learning new techniques to access your range so that you're not working so hard to do it. He would look at videos. Sometimes he'd come to rehearsal, and he would video me. I'd go, 'Well, that's embarrassing.' And he would show me the video and say, 'Look how hard you're working to hit that note.' But yet when we're warming up, you hit that note, and you're not working hard at all. So you have to learn, while you're standing there, to breathe at the right time - that's more than half of it - and to position your vocals and to take a more forensic look at how a voice makes a sound and apply it.' So it's been a year and a half, but it's paying off, and I'm pretty pleased at my progress. I think if I keep working at it, it'll keep getting better, I think. I hope. And I have to stay healthy," Geddy explained ...
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Rolling Stone magazine has just posted (bypass paywall here) a new, hour-long video interview with Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson where they discuss the band's Fifty Something tour. From the YouTube description:
Rush's Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson sit down with Rolling Stone senior writer Brian Hiatt - in collaboration with Rolling Stone Canada - for their most in-depth interview about their miraculous return to the road. They discuss the doubts and tensions behind the reunion, Lifeson's decision to quit smoking weed after nearly six decades, Lee's first-ever vocal lessons at 73, how new touring drummer Anika Nilles won the most daunting seat in rock, the legacy of Neil Peart, their thoughts on new Rush music, and much more. Read the Rolling Stone Canada cover story at ca.rollingstone.com and rollingstone.com.
You can watch the entire interview below or on YouTube (thanks Dean S).
