During a recent interview with Dan Rather, Rush frontman Geddy Lee was asked about the band’s future and if there is anything the fans can expect to see and hear soon, to which he replied:
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“No plans for touring right now. At all. I’m not sure that Rush as the 3-piece that people know will ever tour again at this point. It’s highly unlikely. But I would say that this is the first time in my life that I’ve spent 6 months in my home and in my hometown without going to an airport. I’ve watched the garden go from being frozen solid in winter, watched the buds come up for the first time, watched all the various nuances of my home garden come to life – and it’s been so good for me. It’s been so edifying to see my hometown and to live as a normal person lives. I know most people take that for granted but for me, it’s been quite special.
“I’m really not in a hurry, and I know there will come a time when I will have to feed the beast – when I have to get down to the studio and write. And I still go down there and put ideas on tape and I know they’re not going anywhere. So when the moment is right, and it feels right, and I’m ready to go out and do battle out there then I’ll put something together and I’ll go do that. It’s a bit early to say [whether I’ll record or tour], but probably a little bit of both. Invariably if I put music together that I’m proud of, I’ll want to play it for someone.”
During the same interview, Lee opened up about one particular event that made him re-think the way he treats his fans. He offered:
“We went through a period… At least I did personally… When I was grappling with fame and trying to figure out how I was gonna handle fame. And it goes back to an incident that happened after a show in Germany. And I remember driving out of that gig and there was a team of fans from Italy holding a big poster and they had come all the way from Milano to see us. And I was just on my way to my holiday, it’s the end of a tour and I was sort of at the fed up stage of the tour where you just gotta get away. I remember going down the driveway, seeing them there and backing the car up, turning around, and driving away.
“I must have felt guilty about that for 200 kilometers. And it stayed with me, it sort of haunted me, and I thought ‘I don’t want to be that guy.’ I don’t want to be the guy that runs away from a fan who’s come so far just to say ‘I love what you do.’
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“I made a decision at that point in my life that I was gonna live my life the way I wanted to. I wasn’t gonna shy away from fans, I was just gonna deal with it, and I was gonna get good at dealing with it. So when someone comes up to me on the street and they’re nervous and they’re shaking, I take over the situation and calm them down, give them an autograph and then they’re on their way. And they’re happy and I’m happy and I don’t have any feelings of guilt left behind. [laughs]
“So it was kind of a pivotal thing for me to go through that. It’s all about learning who you are and how are you gonna handle yourself in a world where you’re sort of a celebrity.”