PAUL MCCARTNEY Tried To Convince GEDDY LEE And ALEX LIFESON To Tour Together Again

Geddy Lee says that Paul McCartney did his best to convince him and his RUSH bandmate Alex Lifeson to tour together again.

The 70-year-old Lee told Rolling Stone magazine that he, Lifeson and McCartney had a chance to speak in September 2022 when all three of them were performing as part of the Taylor Hawkins tribute concert in London. FOO FIGHTERS frontman Dave Grohl, who organized the show, as well as another tribute event in Los Angeles that same month, brought the RUSH and BEATLES legends together for the first time.

“Dave was so sweet,” Lee told Rolling Stone. “He comes up to us at rehearsal and he goes, ‘Paul McCartney‘s up next to rehearse, and he’s outside, and he said to me, ‘Dave, I’ve never met anyone from RUSH before.’ And I said, ‘I’ve never met him! Bring him in, please.’ And he came in. He’s just a very lovely man. A very positive person.”

Asked if he got the sense that McCartney knew the RUSH music, Lee said: “No, but I got the sense he knew who we were and had heard about us. He had never listened to us. So at the show, he was there. He watched the set. I think he was really curious because people probably had mentioned us to him.

“But after the show, he was incredible,” Geddy continued. “He was so warm and embracing and positive. He came and sat and drank with us. We all got plastered together. And he was very emphatic, talking about, ‘You know what Ringo [Starr] always says: ‘It’s what we do.” And I said, ‘Talk to Al, because he’s the stubborn one.’ And so he was lecturing Al about how great it is to tour. ‘You have to do it, man. You have to get back out there, man.’ And Alex said something, like, ‘I’ll do it, if you’ll be our manager.’ ‘I’ll manage you, mate!’ It was really fun, really funny, but he had a point. That’s the way he looks at life. He’s ageless because he really, truly believes he was born to do this. That’s what you do. And you just do it. You don’t question it. And I think we all sometimes forget that.”

In a recent interview with The Washington Post, Lee spoke about reuniting with Lifeson for last year’s Taylor Hawkins tribute concerts. They enlisted a few drummers — TOOL‘s Danny Carey, Omar Hakim, RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS‘ Chad Smith and Grohl — to join them at the gigs.

“It had been a taboo subject, and playing those songs again with a third person was the elephant in the room, and that kind of disappeared,” Lee told The Washington Post. “It was nice to know that if we decide to go out, Alex and I, whether we went out as part of a new thing, or whether we just wanted to go out and play RUSH as RUSH, we could do that now.”

Geddy also revealed that in October 2022, for the first time in years, Lee and Lifeson went down into Lee‘s home studio and jammed.

Although Lifeson was “excited as offers rolled in after the Hawkins shows,” he ended up undergoing surgery in July for his long-standing stomach problems.

Asked if he plans on nudging his pal to get back onstage, Lee told The Washington Post: “He needs to feel good and feel healthy and strong. And then maybe we have a discussion.”

RUSH drummer Neil Peart died in January 2020 after a three-year battle with glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer. He was 67 years old.

RUSH waited three days to announce Peart‘s passing, setting off shockwaves and an outpouring of grief from fans and musicians all over the world.