R30: 30th Anniversary World Tour

• R30 Overture
  • Finding My Way
  • Anthem
  • Bastille Day
  • A Passage To Bangkok
  • Cygnus X-1
  • Hemispheres
• The Spirit Of Radio
• Force Ten
• Animate
• Subdivisions
• Earthshine
• Red Barchetta
• Roll The Bones
• * Bravado
• * YYZ
• * The Trees
• The Seeker
• * One Little Victory
• Tom Sawyer
• Dreamline
• * Secret Touch
• Between The Wheels
• Mystic Rhythms
• * Red Sector A
• Der Trommler (drum solo)
• Resist (acoustic)
• Heart Full Of Soul (acoustic)
• 2112
  1. Overture
  2. Temples of Syrinx
  3. The Grand Finale
• * La Villa Strangiato
• * By-Tor And The Snowdog
• Xanadu
• Working Man
• Summertime Blues
• Crossroads
• Limelight
• * Blu-Ray only

Bonus Features
(DVD and some regional Blu-Rays only)

• Interviews
  • 1979, Hamilton, lvor Wynne Stadium
  • 1981, Le Studio, Quebec
  • 1990, Artist of the Decade interviews
  • 1994, Juno Hall of Fame induction
  • 2002, Vapor Trails tour interview
• The Anthem Vault
  • Fly By Night
  • Finding My Way
  • In the Mood
  • Circumstances
  • La Villa Strangiato
  • A Farewell to Kings
  • Xanadu
  • The Spirit of Radio (Sound Check - 1979 Ivor Wynne Stadium)
  • Freewill (from Toronto Rocks - 2003)
  • Closer to the Heart (from Canada for Asia - 2005)
• Easter Eggs
• Rush Hits St. John's: on the main menu hit the right arrow 3-4 times, and the menu will reload to include this option.
• Alex's Interview for Artist of the Decade: on the "Interviews" menu, select the sign and push the right arrow 3 times and the janitor with the broom will become a highlighted selection; click him to play.

Deluxe Edition CD One
• R30 Overture
  • Finding My Way
  • Anthem
  • Bastille Day
  • A Passage To Bangkok
  • Cygnus X-1
  • Hemispheres
• The Spirit Of Radio (5:05)
• Force Ten (4:50)
• Animate (5:50)
• Subdivisions (6:09)
• Earthshine (5:42)
• Red Barchetta (6:50)
• Roll The Bones (6:22)
• The Seeker (3:22)
• Tom Sawyer (5:00)
• Dreamline (5:20)

Deluxe Edition CD Two
• Between The Wheels (6:17)
• Mystic Rhythms (5:23)
• Der Trommler (9:02)
• Resist (acoustic) (4:34)
• Heart Full Of Soul (acoustic) (2:45)
• 2112 (8:24)
  
  1. Overture
  2. Temples of Syrinx
  3. The Grand Finale
• Xanadu (6:44)
• Working Man (6:14)
• Summertime Blues (3:41)
• Crossroads (3:14)
• Limelight (4:58)

Digital MP3 Album
• R30 Overture
  • Finding My Way
  • Anthem
  • Bastille Day
  • A Passage To Bangkok
  • Cygnus X-1
  • Hemispheres
• The Spirit Of Radio (5:05)
• Force Ten (4:50)
• Animate (5:50)
• Subdivisions (6:09)
• Earthshine (5:42)
• Red Barchetta (6:50)
• Roll The Bones (6:22)
• The Seeker (3:22)
• Tom Sawyer (5:00)
• Dreamline (5:20)
• Between The Wheels (6:17)
• Mystic Rhythms (5:23)
• Der Trommler (9:02)
• Resist (acoustic) (4:34)
• Heart Full Of Soul (acoustic) (2:45)
• 2112 (8:24)
  
  1. Overture
  2. Temples of Syrinx
  3. The Grand Finale
• Xanadu (6:44)
• Working Man (6:14)
• Summertime Blues (3:41)
• Crossroads (3:14)
• Limelight (4:58)

Notes

• November 22, 2005
• Highest Billboard Chart Position: 2 - Video Certified Gold, Platinum and 3x Platinum by RIAA: December 16, 2005; 5x Platinum: September 1, 2010
• Original release feature run time 130 minutes
• Filmed using 14 hi-definition cameras in 16x9 widescreen format on September 24, 2004, at the Festhalle in Frankfurt, Germany, the original version of R30: 30th Anniversary World Tour(missing eight tracks) was released on DVD November 22nd, 2005 (November 28th in the UK) both as a 2 DVD set, as well as The Deluxe Edition which includes two limited edition RUSH guitar picks, a souvenir backstage pass, and a 2CD version of the show. The Blu-Ray edition featuring the complete show was subsequently released on December 8th, 2009.
• The 2-disc CD release is only available in the Deluxe Edition (CD's are not sold separately but are available via Anthem/Atlantic Records on all digital download services).
• The DVD editions feature extras not found in the Blu-ray release, including a selection of live videos from the vault dating back 30 years, previously unseen interviews, a few sound check snippets, the Canada for Asia performance of "Closer To The Heart" with "Bubbles" from the Trailer Park Boys and Ed Robertson of the Barenaked Ladies, as well as two Easter Eggs:
• On the opening menu hit the right arrow on your DVD remote 3-4 times, and the menu will reload with the "Rush Hits St. John's" bonus feature.
• On the "Interviews" menu: select the sign and hit the right arrow 3 times and the janitor with the broom will become a highlighted selection; click him to play "Alex's Interview for Artist of the Decade".
• Eight songs from the concert, "Bravado", "YYZ", "The Trees", "One Little Victory", "Secret Touch", "Red Sector A", "La Villa Strangiato", and "By-Tor And The Snow Dog", were dropped from the DVD release:

  "Some of the songs were dropped from R30 due to technical reasons but also we didn't want to have too many similarities with Rush In Rio. Why not? Well, I think now that it was a dumb decision of ours. In fact I regret not having put the whole show on those disks. But I promise you, all those songs that were cut will eventually see the light of day, in some shape or form." - Geddy Lee, Aardschok Magazine, March 2006

  As promised by Geddy Lee, these songs have all been subsequently released:

  • "Red Sector A" (video) is a bonus video on Snakes & Arrows Live (DVD & Blu-Ray)
  • "Secret Touch" (video) is on the CD/DVD edition of the 1989-2008 hits compilation Retrospective 3
  • "One Litte Victory" (audio and video) is on the live hits compilation Working Men (CD and DVD)
  • All eight of these songs were restored to the tracklist for the R30 Blu-Ray edition
  
  

  Unfortunately, the North American Blu-Ray edition does not include the bonus features previously released as the second disk of the DVD edition . This means that a fan must possess both the DVD and Blu-Ray editions to have both the full concert as well as the bonus features. A source with SRO/Anthem stated that with the Blu-Ray release the band simply wanted to give the fans the full concert in a great format without being too expensive, and that when initially planning the release it was believed that including the bonus features would have required a second disk at additional cost to the fan. However, the total amount of data on the final Blu-Ray is only 38GB, while the disk itself holds 50GB; that means that there is more than enough room for all the special features originally included on the 8GB DVD. Later blu-ray pressings, such as the Australian release, includes the full concert as well as all the DVD bonus features.

• "Bittersweet Bundle Of Misery", an instrumental piece which plays as the credits roll at the end of the R30 concert DVD, as well as in the "The Anthem Vault" menu on the second DVD, was written and performed by Alex Lifeson.
• The R30 DVD sold 28,000 units during its first week on sale (for the week ending November 29, 2005) as reported by Nielsen SoundScan. R30 ranked second on Billboard's Top Music Video chart after its first week, and fourth after two weeks. After dropping out of the top ten the third week, by the fourth week it was back in the top 10 at #10 and was certified 3 times platinum by the RIAA (i.e. 150,000, 2-DVD sets shipped, which does not include internet sales). After seven weeks R30 was still on Billboard's Top Music Video chart and had moved up to #7. After 17 weeks, the album was at #24 on the U.S. Billboard Music Video Charts.
• R30 won two awards for authoring design and video presentation in the Independent Release catagory, at "The 9th Annual DVD Awards" held in Los Angeles on August 8th, 2006.
• "Der Trommler", the drum solo, later appeared on Neil Peart's Anatomy Of A Drum Solo as well as Hudson Music's Classic Rock Drum Solos. "Hosted by rock drumming innovator/educator Carmine Appice, Classic Rock Drum Solos traces the origins of the rock drum solo with vintage footage of pioneers..."
• Known for their precision, R30 contains a rare Rush "train wreck" during "Roll The Bones", when the keyboard samples from "Tom Sawyer" are heard repeatedly.
• Instead of three dryers as seen on the Vapor Trails tour, there were two dryers and one vending machine (containing some very interesting items...). As was done during the Vapor Trails tour, during the short break before the encore, Geddy and Alex reached into the dryers to remove tye-dyed dryer shirts which they tossed to fans in the crowd (the front has RUSH at the top and FEEDBACK at the bottom, with the starman in the middle with a Peace sign in place of the star, with the back reading HEY MAN on the top "This shirt came from one of Geddy's dryers" below it).
• The R30 tour grossed $21 million in earnings, exceeding other rock tours such as Kiss and Ozzfest. - Rollingstone.com, February 17, 2005
• In October 2006, DW Drums produced thirty limited edition replicas of the drumkit Neil Peart used during the R30 tour, which GuitarCenter.com sold for $30,000 each.
• Click here for the R30 Transcript Archive.

In Their Own Words

"'I approached the band's management SRO about filming Rush on their anniversary tour and they turned me down being so close to their Rush In Rio project. As the tour went on they decided it would be a great idea but it was too late to film Radio City Music Hall and Red Rocks although we talked about it, we just couldn't get crews into the cities at the right time.'" - Pierre Lamoureux, Producer and Director of R30, allheadlinenews, October 12, 2005

"One of the German shows, we're going to be filming. And its not that we have a specific DVD release in mind for it, but just kind of as a historical record of 'this' tour." Geddy Lee, Phill Jupitus Breakfast Show, BBC Music 6, September 8, 2004

"We have a tendency of screwing these decisions up pretty well. At the beginning of the tour, I said, 'Hey, are we gonna film any of these shows? And if we are, let's plan it now, well in advance.' And everybody said, 'Well, we just put out "Rio." Why do we want to do two DVDs back to back? Let's just go out there and have fun.' Then, of course, we were halfway through the tour and were playing really well and the crowds were great and everyone says, 'Hey, let's record this for posterity in case we get hit by a bus or something.' So, we about-face and throw the plans together to film the show in Frankfurt since we were just about done with the American tour." - Geddy Lee, MTV.com, December 28, 2005

"A crew of 14 cameras is shooting footage for what will ultimately become Rush's second DVD music video. The fact that the cameras are HD, shooting in 1080p, indicates the band and its management plan a long and profitable revenue life for this project, well into the arrival of the next generation of high-density disc formats (HD-DVD and Blu-Ray Disc) and the proliferating number of high-def broadcast outlets in the U.S. and elsewhere...The video shoot was financed by the band and its Canadian management company, Anthem Entertainment, and will cost several hundreds of thousands of dollars by the time post-production and 5.1 mixing are finished." - Rushing Into Something New, FOH Meets DVD on the Rush European Tour, FOHonline, January 2005

"Well, basically nobody was in a big hurry to do another live project, because we've got about 60,000 of them out there, but when we were touring Europe on the last tour, we hadn't been to those countries in 10 years - some of them 20 years. And there was such an exuberant response from the crowd; it just seemed like a unique opportunity to capture the band in that kind of environment. The venue is very old. We've played there a couple of times. It's always a strange atmosphere for North Americans to come over there and play in one of these buildings that Hitler used to do speeches in and so forth. So it's always got kind of an ominous vibe for us. But the crowd is always great and a lot of fans hadn't seen us in a long time." - Geddy Lee, Billboard.com, October 12, 2005

"During soundcheck, we played a few extra songs for the cameras and recording truck, and after dinner, I made a quick note about the upcoming event: 'Filming and recording tonight, just to make it 'extra special.' Big pressure on solo particularly, if I go ahead with that instructional video. Oh boy...' Sometimes that kind of pressure inspired us to rise to an exalted level, as had happened the previous tour in Rio de Janeiro, and for other performances we had recorded and filmed over the years. However, other times that kind of pressure had the opposite effect, making us tense and...lousy. Frankfurt, sadly, was the second kind. I had a cold coming on, and felt fuzzy headed, and all of us were edgy, overconcentrating and overanalyzing. It seemed like we had to fight our way through the show. I made a nasty mistake right in the first song, the 'R30 Overture,' and never really recovered. Something bad happened in 'Earthshine,' and again in 'One Little Victory,' and at the time I though they had all been my fault. (The next night, after I had tormented myself all day about it, gone over those parts in my head all day, and even rehearsed that part of 'Earthsine' in the Bubba-Gump room before the show, Alex told me it had been Geddy in 'Earthshine,' and Geddy told me it was Alex in 'One Little Victory.') I also had some technical and mental difficulties in the drum solo, the part I had particularly wanted to be perfect if I was going to use it as the basis for an instructional video. So, I waas feeling pretty low after that show, down on myself about it. (Again, the recorded solo would prove to be fine, objectively, for use in the convert DVD and the instructional one, Anatomy of a Drum Solo. The unexpected changed only amounted to "variations on a theme." Bust still - it hadn't been what I wanted it to be.)" - Neil Peart, Roadshow

"Rio was all about being in that 12th row center seat and feeling the energy of the crowd, whereas R30 is more about the performers and the production. It's a tighter sound - a tighter mix with less ambience and less crowd...this is probably the best-sounding live performance of us I've ever heard." - Alex Lifeson, Sound & Vision, February 2006 issue

"[R30 Overture] was an idea that Neil had. He suggested that maybe we could pay tribute to those songs in some way other than...obviously we can't play as many songs as we'd like to, we're already well over 3 hours. So in rehearsals, actually quite late in rehearsals, we decided to throw a bunch of them together and see if we could make some sort of overture. So we came up with this "R30 Overture" idea and worked on it. It came together quite quickly actually. I think it's a nice way to open the show. It's really easy to pull songs together if you don't have to sing them. It's like a walk in the park." - Geddy Lee, fye.com, July 9, 2004

"Medleys had always been a good tool for squeezing more songs into the time available, and I suggested we might arrange a kind of 'overture,' in which instrumental themes from many songs could be woven together into a powerful opening piece." - Neil Peart, Roadshow

"We always wanted to bring back things like 'Mystic Rhythms', so we just added a wish list. And, of course, we had way too many. 'Closer To The Heart' got retired because we got sick of it..." - Neil Peart, Classic Rock, October 2004

"There was talk about doing 'Second Nature' as an acoustic song - I think that would be a good treatment for a song like that. Again, it's a question of time. I'd love to extend the acoustic thing to be half-an-hour long, but I don't know if we could justify that in the context of all our material." - Geddy Lee, fye.com, July 9, 2004

"[The cover songs are] a blast to play. I love playing them. I wish we could play them all, but there's a fine line, in my view, with what Rush fans want to hear and what we want to play. To lose four songs that people have been waiting to hear from our previous albums, in favor of four cover songs, is a jump enough. To do four more would start boring them. People are digging them. I think they're kind of a breath of fresh air in the set to be honest." - Geddy Lee, FYE.com, July 9, 2004

"We had a few people in mind, and Jerry was very interested in doing it, and he's a real pro. And it was just such a cool idea to have George Costanza's father introducing the band (chuckles), you know? So he was a really, really good sport, and I think he did a great job. (We) get a lot of laughs out of that." - Alex Lifeson on Jerry Stiller's guest appearances, therockradio.com, December 13, 2005

"We opened our show through the last tour with a film, it was a dream sequence, and at the end, Jerry Stiller wakes up, and says, 'Whoa! Did I miss the show?' And then he calls us to the stage. We originally wanted Jack Black to do that. We called his people, and they said he wasn't available. When I met Jack he said, 'I never heard about that! I would have done it, I'm at your service!' So when we played in Irvine Meadows in Southern California, he came to the show. I told him, well, we keep these dryers on stage, we have t-shirts in them, and at the end of the show, Geddy and Alex pass the shirts out to the audience. So we asked him to come out and do that, and he said, 'Oh, yeah!' Well, it turned into performance art. While we're playing '2112,' he somersaults onto the stage, striking rock poses in front of Geddy on stage, he climbs up on the dryer, he starts stripping, he's down to his boxers with the 'plumber's crack, he immerses himself in posing, then he sommersaults off stage, and we're looking at each other going 'What just happened?'" - Neil Peart, Sirius.com, September 20, 2006

"On Vapor Trails, Geddy had been inspired to have a row of three old Maytag dryers up there spinning throughout the show with T-shirts he and Alex handed out later to the crowd before the encore - 'I Got This T-Shirt From Dryer Number 3.' Those dryers had caused considerable wonder from stagehands and fans, and the crew had fun inventing reasons for their use, 'This one's for a "warm" sound, this one's for a "dry" sound,' and the sound crew even set up dummy microphones in front of them. For this tour, Geddy didn't want to give up those dryers, but at the same time, he wanted something new. Eventually he settled on having only two Maytags, but added an old-fashioned Automat dispenser (another part of Liam's job was locating this relics) with rotating shelves that eventually collected all kinds of interesting items, from presidential bobble-heads to superhero dolls. Some days, soundcheck was held up while he found places to display his latest treasures." - Neil Peart, Roadshow

"...That Darn Dragon, would open the second set, with puppet animation of three bobble-head dolls of us (in '70s regalia of long hair and kimonos) doing battle against a puppet version of the dragon from Vapor Trails. It was a little like an old Japanese monster movie, but with puppets - Godzilla meets 'Fireball XL-5' (which Geddy and Alex and I used to watch every morning in the rented house we shared in Chelsea during an '80s recording project)." - Neil Peart, Roadshow

"'Bravado' also gave us breathing space, as it began with a mid-tempo instrumental groove, more textural and gentle than what had gone before. While we played that introduction, I had a good chance to let my gaze wander around the audience, and I couldn't help noticing a scattered few-dozen silhouettes rising and walking away, choosing that song as a good opportunity to get up an wander around-head off to get some more beer, or to 'offload' some. That bothered me more than it should have." - Neil Peart, Roadshow

"I don't really know. We must have just missed it for some reason. I think maybe our minds and memories were going when we did that." - Alex Lifeson on why Presto was the only album not featured in the R30 setlist, Metal Express Radio, May 21, 2012

"Sure, the footage from Exit Stage Left is classic, and you can't beat the wild Brazilian crowd in the Rush in Rio DVD, but if you can only get one Rush DVD it has to be R30. The setlist, sound quality, and camera angles just can?t be beat. The R30 Overture that opens the show has all-instrumental snippets of 'Finding My Way,' 'Anthem,' 'Bastille Day,' 'A Passage to Bangkok,' 'Cygnus X-1,' and 'Hemispheres,' plus a hilarious cameo from Jerry Stiller. The lack of vocals on this medley allows Alex Lifeson's PRS-fueled guitar tones to really stand out. He and the boys run through a whole bunch of Rush favorites including 'Xanadu,' 'Subdivisions,' 'Red Barchetta,' and 'Tom Sawyer' (with a killer Lifeson solo). The show kicks ass from start to finish and Lifeson is in fine form the entire time with his trademark arpeggios, fiery solos, and a humongous tone that fills the arena. If the gig was all you got this would still be a must have. When you factor in all the DVD extras likea bunch of live-in-the-studio performances from back in the day and soundcheck footage, this is an amazing piece of work and a great example of Lifeson working his magic." - "50 Essential Guitar DVDs", Guitar Player, February 2008

Regarding the DVD Bonus Features

"My brother, he's kind of an intermediary between us and our video projects and he just spent some time in the vault just kind of looking at what we had, cataloging what we had. And he found all this old footage that we had kind of forgotten about, and brought it to our attention. Once we knew about it, we said, 'Well, we'll look for the right opportunity to use all those pieces.' And then when we decided to do the R-30 tour and then subsequently made the late decision to film one of the shows on R30, it seemed the perfect opportunity to add another disc with all these pieces." - Geddy Lee, Ultimate-Guitar.com, December 6, 2005

"It wasn't a church, it was a school, in the southern states, I think in Georgia, actually. We were doing a gig that night, and we loaded in, and there was this kind of castle setup in another auditorium. And we just happened to have a guy with us who was a camera guy, I think he was working for the record company...and so we just did the song and he just quickly shot it just for our own kind of use, but of course we never used it [laughs] so that's why it was one of those Easter Eggs on the last DVD." - Geddy Lee discussing the Fly By Night Church Session Video, "Rockline", May 9, 2007

"'Here's an interesting piece of trivia, the guy that filmed the 'Xanadu' and 'Farewell To Kings' stuff that's on there went on to be the director of American Idol,' laughs Geddy". - More Sugar, May 2006

Promos