When you’ve been around as long as Rush has, you can pretty well do as you please. If you don’t feel like doing any interviews to support your tour—even though you have a relatively new studio album, 2007’s Snakes & Arrows, to talk about—you don’t have to. And if you want to play a ton of songs off that album—even though most Rush fans could care less about them—you can do that as well. Hell, when you’re Rush, you can cook chickens on-stage in a giant rotisserie if you feel like it!
Apparently, the rotating chickens—which a roadie in a chef’s hat would periodically baste—are devoured by the band, crew, and guests after shows. Rush singer-bassist Geddy Lee, guitarist Alex Lifeson, and drummer Neil Peart are no doubt ravenous when they get off-stage, because their current set is nearly three-and-a-half hours long—including a half-hour intermission—and there’s no screwing around between tunes. The Canadian prog-rock veterans cranked out song after song, with no hesitation, as if aware that—no matter what Mick Jagger says—time is no longer on their side.
The night kicked off with “Limelight”, from 1981’s Moving Pictures, an album Rush would return to later for “Red Barchetta” and the much-loved “Tom Sawyer”. Three large video screens were set up at the rear of the stage (one for each member) so you could clearly see how much they’d aged since the last time they were here, on the Vapor Trails tour of 2002. The thing about Rush, though, is that it doesn’t matter what they look like; it’s always been about the music. And today that music is, incredibly, as vibrant as ever.
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