RUSH’s Geddy Lee Opens Up About the Last Time He Saw Neil Peart
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The post RUSH’s Geddy Lee Opens Up About the Last Time He Saw Neil Peart appeared first on Consequence.
It has now been over three years since legendary RUSH drummer Neil Peart passed away. During the kickoff for his book tour, Geddy Lee opened up about the last time he saw his longtime bandmate, sharing a tearful anecdote of what would be their final face-to-face conversation with one another.
Geddy launched his book tour Monday night (November 13th) at the Beacon Theatre in New York City. The evening — moderated by actor Paul Rudd — featured readings from Geddy’s memoir, My Effin’ Life, as well as a Q&A session featuring questions directly from the audience.
It was during the Q&A portion of the evening that Lee discussed his final meeting with Peart, who had secretly been battling glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer, for three years.
“[During the final months of his life, Neil] would listen to a different RUSH album and he would be analyzing it and listening to something he hadn’t heard sometimes since we’d made it,” Geddy said [as transcribed by Blabbermouth]. “And by the time that he sadly passed, he had listened to pretty much all the work we had done as a band. And the last time I saw him…”
Choking up, Geddy added, “He wanted to tell me how proud he was of the music we have done together… Some of this stuff is hard to talk about. And it just blew me away that, in that moment, we were sitting on his balcony at his house. And whenever we left him towards the end, we never knew if we’d see him again or not.
The RUSH frontman concluded, “And so we were sitting on his balcony and he was having a smoke, because he loved to have a smoke, like clockwork. And we were talking about what a great moment it was that he was here in this place and we had just seen some parakeets flying into the trees and we both were bird nerds so we could talk about that. But he went on to talk about these songs and what they meant to him and he thought it was very important for me to know that, that our life as a rhythm section together was important to him. So I thought that was beautiful.”
Geddy’s book tour stops Wednesday (November 15th) in Philadelphia and runs through mid-December. Get tickets here, and pick up a copy of his memoir My Effin’ Life here.
Recently, the singer-bassist opened the door to perform as RUSH again with guitarist Alex Lifeson. However, Lifeson has previously said that “there’s no way RUSH will ever exist again.”
Below you can see a photo gallery and watch audience footage from Geddy Lee’s book tour kickoff.
Photo Gallery – Geddy Lee and Paul Rudd at the Beacon Theater in NYC (click to expand and scroll through):
RUSH’s Geddy Lee Opens Up About the Last Time He Saw Neil Peart
Jon Hadusek
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