Rush’s Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson gave an interview to House of Strombo and reflected on dealing with Neil Peart’s death. Lee stated that both of them had different ways to handle it.
On January 7, 2020, Rush drummer Neil Peart lost his three-and-a-half-year battle with brain cancer and, unfortunately, passed away at 67. Peart had already announced his retirement from Rush before his death and gave his final performance with the band on August 1, 2015, during the band’s ‘R40 Live Tour.’ Later on, he stayed in touch with his former bandmates until his death but didn’t take over the drums again.
Following Neil Peart’s heartbreaking death, many musicians paid tribute to him differently. However, dealing with his passing was even more challenging for his surviving bandmates, Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson. They had been in the same group for more than four decades, so the two were naturally devastated by his passing. During an interview, Geddy Lee explained that he and Lifeson had different ways to deal with Peart’s death.
Lifeson found his way by being involved in various small and big projects, and he never stopped working. Lee said that he understands him very well as he also did the same thing by concentrating on his solo album when Peart lost his daughter and wife. The process of surviving after Peart’s death was slightly different for Lee. The bassist expressed that he turned into writing and tried not to confront those hard feelings at that point. Thus, the process was different for both of them, but it wasn’t easy in many ways as they were very close to each other.
Geddy Lee speaking on surviving after Neil Peart’s death:
“I’d say Al and I have different ways of dealing with that. Al threw himself into little projects and bigger projects, and he kept working throughout the whole thing, and that was a real tonic for him. I can relate to that because when we went through our first set of tragedies with Neil back when he lost his wife and daughter, I did that. I threw myself into my solo album, and it saved me in many ways. It fed me, let’s put it like that.
So for myself, I turned to writing, and I turned to book writing. That was a way for me to not compete with that moment and those feelings but a way to take stock, and recharge my batteries in a different way, so we’ve handled it quite differently, but at the end of the day, it was a difficult thing to put aside. I don’t think there are many bands that had a 45-year career that was as close as we were.”
You can watch the full interview below.
