R40 Live

Set One
The World is .. The World is ...
The Anarchist
Headlong Flight
Far Cry
The Main Monkey Business
How It Is
Animate
Roll The Bones
Between The Wheels
Losing It (with Ben Mink)
Subdivisions
Set Two
No Country for Old Hens
Tom Sawyer
YYZ
The Spirit Of Radio
Natural Science
Jacob's Ladder
Hemispheres: Prelude
Cygnus X-1/The Story So Far (drum solo)
Closer To The Heart
Xanadu
2112 [Parts I, II, IV and VII]
Encore
Mel's Rockpile (with Eugene Levy)
Lakeside Park
Anthem
What You're Doing
Working Man
Exit Stage Left
Bonus Tracks
One Little Victory
Distant Early Warning
Red Barchetta

CD One
The World is .. The World is ...
The Anarchist
Headlong Flight
Far Cry
The Main Monkey Business
How It Is
Animate
Roll The Bones
Between The Wheels
Losing It (with Ben Mink)
Subdivisions

CD Two
Tom Sawyer
YYZ
The Spirit Of Radio
Natural Science
Jacob's Ladder
Hemispheres: Prelude
Cygnus X-1/The Story So Far (drum solo)
Closer To The Heart
Xanadu
2112 [Parts I, II, IV and VII]

CD Three
Mel's Rockpile (with Eugene Levy)
Lakeside Park
Anthem
What You're Doing
Working Man
Bonus Tracks
One Little Victory
Distant Early Warning
Red Barchetta
Clockwork Angels
The Wreckers
The Camera Eye
Losing It (with Jonathan Dinklage)

Notes

• Released November 20, 2015, in five different packaging options: DVD, Blu-Ray, CD, CD+DVD, and CD+Blu-Ray.
• The first single, "Roll The Bones", was released September 25, 2015. The second single, "Closer To The Heart", was released October 23, 2015, and "Tom Sawyer" was released November 6, 2015.
• A one-off advanced screening of R40 Live was held November 17th at Gibson Showrooms, London.
• Bonus video tracks "One Little Victory," "Distant Early Warning," and "Red Barchetta" were filmed the first night in Toronto; also performed that night was "Clockwork Angels," which we assume was not included due to technical issues known to have occurred with Geddy's bass during the live performance.
• Although not specified in the linernotes, Jonathon Dinklage's performance of "Losing It" is from the final show of the tour in Los Angeles on August 1, 2015 (Rush's final show ever).
• Click here for the 'R40 Live' Transcript Archive.

• Cinema Strangiato, an edited version of the R40 Live concert film with "exclusive new interviews with Tom Morello, Billy Corgan, Taylor Hawkins, producer Nick Raskulinecz, violinist Jonathan Dinklage" interspersed between songs, aired one night only as a world-wide theatrical event on August 21, 2019. This was followed by a "Director's Cut" showing on September 9, 2021.

In Their Own Words

"Rush recorded and filmed R40 Live over two sold-out shows in the band's hometown of Toronto at the Air Canada Centre on June 17 & 19, 2015 in the middle of their R40 Live 35-date North American tour...The concert film also includes the the band's renowned tour videos, highlighted by 'Roll The Bones (R40 Live),' that features an array of special guests in the rap part of the song: Jay Baruchel (She's Out Of My League), Les Claypool (Primus), Peter Dinklage (Game of Thrones), Tom Morello (Rage Against The Machine, Audioslave), Chad Smith (Red Hot Chili Peppers), The Trailer Park Boys, and Jason Segel & Paul Rudd (I Love You, Man). It is the first time the band put the song back in the setlist since the R30 tour, a full decade ago. During the R40 Live tour, 'Roll The Bones' gained new life and became a fan-favorite with an arena sing-along to the chorus 'Why are we here? Because we're here - Roll The Bones.' Singer/Bassist Geddy Lee explained how the large group of cameo appearances came about: 'We had this older video of an animated skeleton doing the 'rap' part of 'Roll The Bones,' and felt it was time to update the concept for this tour. So after a lot of joking around with our show design team, we thought it would fun if we called upon some of our well-known pals and see if they wanted to have some fun with the lyrics. There were so many good and funny moments that it was hard to choose, some really hilarious and outrageous stuff! I'm so glad it worked out as it brought a big smile to the faces in the audience (and to us) every single night!'" - Rush.com, October 8, 2015

"Rush racks its third No. 1 on Billboard's Top Rock Albums chart, and first leader with a live effort, as R40 Live, the classic rock trio's three-disc set chronicling its 40th anniversary tour in spring/summer 2015, debuts atop the list (dated Dec. 12) with 24,000 copies sold, according to Nielsen Music. R40 Live follows previous chart-toppers Clockwork Angels in 2012 and Snakes & Arrows in 2007. While Top Rock Albums launched in 2006, Rush's history on the Billboard 200 dates back four decades. The new album debuts at No. 24 on the Billboard 200, marking the band's 24th top 40 title. Rush first reached the region with another live release: All the World's a Stage: Recorded Live (No. 40, 1976). R40 Live is also the first live album to crown Top Rock Albums since the Beatles' On Air: Live at the BBC Volume 2 on the Nov. 30, 2013, chart. Additionally, Rush's new release opens atop Hard Rock Albums, where it's the band's second leader, following Clockwork Angels. (Could R40 Live be the final live album of Rush's storied career? When the band announced the R40 Live Tour earlier this year, its accompanying press release stated that the trek "will most likely be their last major tour of this magnitude.") - Billboard.com, December 12, 2015

"We thought maybe we'd do another Feedback thing of cover tunes. Never got motivated for that. And then when we started talking, it was about playing live." - Neil Peart, RollingStone.com, June 30, 2015

"The concept for this tour began with an idea I had about devolution. And I thought it would be kind of neat to do a retrospective at some point, where we began in the present day and went back in time. Last July [2014] I shared this concept during a creative meeting with [art director] Dale Heslip, and he started expanding upon it, and suggested the idea if we were going to go back musically in time, why don't we go back physically in a more theatrical sense." - Geddy Lee PasteMagazine.com, December 18, 2015

"Before every Rush tour, the artistic team, including creative director Dale Heslip, producer Allan Weinrib, lead singer/bassist Geddy Lee (Allan's older brother) and Howard Ungerleider start by getting together for some new ideas. Prior to their latest brainstorming session, Dale came up with an idea of going backwards in time. His idea was to stage a show that started where they left off in 2013, with the Clockwork Angels tour and all its high tech visuals, and take the audience back in time all the way to when Rush played their first gigs with a few PARs on sticks and a mirror ball. Dale pitched the idea to Geddy, who immediately called a meeting to discuss the concept further. There, everyone looked to Howard to come up with ways to make the concept come to fruition...The time periods represented in the show include: 1) Current Big Technology Era (2007-present); 2) Large Arena Looks (1990s-2000s); 3) Small Arena Looks (1980s); 4) Theater Looks (late 1970s); 5) Gymnasium Period (early 1970s)." - PLSN.com, July 21, 2015

"To most, the end of the theatre component would feel like the end of the show; however, it's followed by a short break and another humourous video clip, this one with Eugene Levy reprising his classic SCTV character Rockin' Mel Slirrup in a 'new' edition of Mel's Rock Pile. Recalling the shoot, [creative director Dale] Heslip shares how excited he was to watch Levy revisit the character. 'He knows his character so well; it's not the kind of thing where you could say, "Hey, why don't we try it this way?" We just let him go, and in six or seven takes, we had it.'" - Professional Lighting And Production, Fall 2015

"My attitude was: This is an anniversary tour, so we should really celebrate our most popular songs. And in order to do that, you have to have the discussion: Well, popular by whose metric? ... If you look at some of the hardcore fans and their requests, they want the more obscure, deeper tracks. So we tried to strike a balance." - Geddy Lee, Montreal Gazette, June 12, 2015

"We've dug deep. We've pulled out some songs that we haven't played in a very long time. We've pulled out some real fan favourites. And we're enjoying playing them. We've revisited every era except maybe the mid-eighties era, which we covered in a good portion of the set on the last tour. We've not included anything from Power Windows or Hold Your Fire, but there's something from just about every other record. We're bringing the 'Hemispheres Prelude' and 'Jacob's Ladder' and 'Cygnus X-1'. It's fun and exciting to play these old songs. 'Jacob's Ladder' sounds amazing! For years we've discounted it, although it was always a fans' favourite. We've got three sets - A, B, C - which we'll be rotating throughout the tour." - Alex Lifeson, ClassicRock.com, May 2015

"Some of the decisions were based on albums that didn't fit the design of the show. We were covering our career in these broad strokes, so that left out records like Presto and Hold Your Fire. The present transforming into the near-present into the early Eighties in set one didn't leave time for records that we deemed less essential. And we also considered what we'd presented on the last tour. We did a lot from Permanent Waves in that show, so we didn't do so much from it on this tour." - Geddy Lee, Guitar World, March 2016

"One day during pre-tour rehearsals we were goofing around, riffing on our oldest songs - the truly 'prehistoric' ones from before I joined, that were never recorded. Just for fun we decided to end the night with a few bars of one called 'Garden Road.' It had been in the band's repertoire before I joined, and we had played it on the first tour, but it didn't make the cut for Fly by Night. That snippet would also be a humorous nod to the reverse chronology of the show that took us back to the first album - now we went back even farther." - Neil Peart, Far And Wide

"I am playing two separate sets on this tour - one 'modern' arrangement like I have been using for the past twenty-five years, and one like the setup I played for almost twenty years before - double bass drums, open concert toms, ride cymbal hard right. Its look is modeled after the black-chrome Slingerlands I played in the late '70s, but DW's version far surpasses those in tone, resonance, playability, and 'shininess!' The hardware is plated in black nickel..." - Neil Peart, R40 Live Tourbook

"An important feature of that second Toronto show was the first performance of 'Losing It.' The three of us had been working on that song since our band rehearsals back in April, and played it at every soundcheck since. Our part of the song was as ready as it could be - without being properly 'road-tested' like the rest of the night. Over thirty years after violinist Ben Mink had joined us at Le Studio in Quebec to record that song, we would perform it together live for the first time. During soundcheck before the first show, then again that afternoon, we ran through it a few times with Ben, and that night we pulled it off pretty well. (As the concert DVD shows me - I couldn't be totally sure at the time.)" - Neil Peart, Far And Wide

"Jonathan Dinklage used to jam in his bedroom to the song when he was a teenager and once - between shows on the Clockwork Angels tour - he told the band it was his dream to join them onstage and play it live. And as Geddy Lee told us earlier that day, 'We thought, fuck it, let's make his dream come true'. It's a moment of intractable, pure joy, filled with both highs and lows, inexpressibly beautiful, the violin's high, keening song reaching out to the distant, circular ceiling. It does something to an already charged crowd who are suddenly moist-eyed and hopeless, as if they suddenly realise what they're about to lose or have already lost." - ClassicRock.com, August 2, 2015

"It's funny, some of those old songs sound so strange to me now, but when you start playing them you get back into that head-space you were in when they were written and recorded. It's really all about your sense of perspective. A few years ago we brought back 'The Camera Eye'. I never wanted to play that song. I never thought it was particularly worthy. And yet it was one the most requested Rush songs. I couldn't understand it. How could people be so wrong? I realised I underestimate the moment in time - the context of that moment. When we started playing 'The Camera Eye', I thought, okay, there are a lot of pretentious moments in this song. It hasn't aged well. But then I started re-learning the keyboard parts and putting together a slightly different version - instead of eleven minutes it clocks in at nine-and-a-half. And in the playing of it, yes, I fell in love with it again. And that's where it becomes very subjective, and not objective. I stopped being able to tell if it was a pretentious song, and I just enjoyed playing those chords and I remembered why the song got recorded in the first place - I liked the chord progression and the vocal melodies. You can go back to that time and appreciate what you were trying to do. This song - it was a point in your life, and fans want to relive that point in your life and you can have fun playing it. I dig the hell out of that song now." - Geddy Lee, ClassicRock.com, May 2015

"['Jacob's Ladder'] sounded really naive to me, and the lyrics are not our best. You could see Neil playing with alliteration, which is kind of an exercise really. And I really was afraid of doing that whole keyboard middle part. But when you start playing it, you start remembering what it was like when you wrote it, what you were thinking when you wrote it, and you can kind of get into it - because if we committed it to record it meant we were digging it. 'Cause we always said if there's a song we write that we didn't dig we wouldn't keep it on a record. It reflected who we were then. That's exactly who we were. We were struggling with trying to be more concise and yet still in love with the long instrumental passages." - Geddy Lee, RollingStone.com, June 30, 2015

"I was rehearsing ['Fly by Night' for the R40 Live tour]. I thought it would sound great, like a modern version that would be much heavier and more powerful. I think Geddy felt that he'd really have a problem singing it. He has a challenge with 'Lakeside Park' as it is. 'Fly by Night' was just in that range, and we didn't want to drop the key on that one. So the consensus was, let's just pass on that." - Alex Lifeson, RollingStone.com, June 30, 2015

The idea of performing a time traveling retrospective was originally planned for the Counterparts tour in 1994:

"The next tour that we do is going to be more of a retrospective tour; it's our 20th Anniversary. We'd like to go out and do an evening with, and break up the set; do the first 10 years, in chronological order from the first album up to, I guess Grace Under Pressure and then take a short intermission and have some film stuff on the band, on the history of the band. I think that a lot of our fans would kinda like to see some candid stuff; and, and then come back and do the second set, from that point up to the present. So it'll be a really great presentation of the history of the band, of that whole 20 year period. And hopefully it'll be the start of the next 20 year period." - Alex Lifeson, Rush: Up Close, Media America Radio, January/February 1994,

Promos

Live It All Again

By Neil Peart

Exactly two-thirds of my already surprisingly long life has been spent as a member of Rush. Thus our forty years of making music together is not only a large part of the soundtrack of my life, but the longest collaboration - the longest friendship - I have ever known. I once tossed off a quote that now seems deeper than I knew, about how such a relationship best survives: "Because surely the essence of collaboration is making each other happy, yes?"

Regular readers will know that "live it all again" is a phrase from "Headlong Flight" that was inspired by my late drum teacher, Freddie Gruber. Toward the end of his long, haphazard life, friends and students gathered around him in his quirky little house in the San Fernando Valley. Even as his vitality faded, Freddie would sometimes have a burst of energy and launch into tales from New York in the 1940s, or Los Angeles in the 1960s and '70s. Then he would shake his head and smile, "I had quite a ride. I wish I could do it all again."

Recently I picked up a trendy abbreviation, "irl," for "in real life." That is the distinction I would make here. For myself, I have no wish to actually live it all again "irl" - but reliving it, through memories and music, is quite a ride.

I could not attempt to recount even the high points of that journey - from early tours as an opening act to decades as a headliner; the songs and albums, the people and places - but one location and our experiences there might stand as a symbol of our lives together all these years, the work and the play.

In the summer of 2014 I revisited the ruins of Le Studio in Quebec to film an interview. Alex, Geddy, and I recorded there many times from 1979 until 1995, but the place had been abandoned and crumbling for about fifteen years, and I had never been back.

At the moment of arriving, and even on the way there, I felt some emotions bubbling up. At first I pushed them down - unsure exactly what I was feeling, or would feel. Later I realized that the experience was just too much to process all at once - because no other place on Earth had been more important in my life. So that's big.

Glancing back at all the days and nights, the weeks and months, the summers and winters, the songs, the albums, the laughs - it was a long emotional parade of memories. Yet at least the ghosts there were happy ones, so it was enjoyable to wander among them.

As I stood in front of the low, weathered building with the film crew, I described the recording of the intro for "Witch Hunt" on those very steps. On a night in early winter, with a few snowflakes in the air, we set up a microphone outdoors and acted out the vigilante scene. The rabble-rouser was played by yours truly, shouting out stuff like, "We've got to stand up for law and order!" and "We have to protect our children!" The mob I was inciting to mayhem was made up of the Guys at Work - band, crew, and studio guys.

Another memory emerged as I led the crew around to the back of the studio building, where the lake appeared through the trees. I described the recording of the intro for "Natural Science," down by the Lakeshore. On a cold night late in 1979, Alex and I stood at the water's edge with rowboat oars and canoe paddles, stirring the water. A microphone on a stand beside us captured the sound effects for the "Tide Pools" section.

Our first visit to Le Studio was in the fall of 1979, to record the basic tracks for Permanent Waves. In subsequent years we returned to record and mix Moving Pictures, then to mix a live album, Exit: Stage Left, in the summer of 1981. On that project there wasn't much for us to do except occasionally approve performances and balances, so we started messing around with other things. Alex built and crashed radio-control float planes; Geddy learned everything in the world about baseball (his new passion then), and I did a painstaking nut-and-lug restoration of an old set of Hayman drums that were laying around the studio basement. Apparently they had belonged to Corky Laing, drummer with Mountain, and when my work was done, I liked the way they sounded. Each of us eventually started fooling around with words and music and put together "Subdivisions" - I remember Alex and Geddy coming up to me in the driveway of the guest house and playing the demo for me on a cassette player. (Later I played those Haymans on a demo of that song.)

After completing Signals at Le Studio in 1982, we returned through the long winter of 1983-84 to struggle with the making of Grace Under Pressure. From then on our visits to Le Studio became more sporadic - as we experimented with "settings" again, recording and mixing in the English countryside, in London, on the tropic isle of Montserrat in the Caribbean, and in Paris. (Because we could.) In the '90s we returned to Le Studio with Rupert Hine and Stephen W. Tayler to record the basic tracks for Presto, and a few years later with Peter Collins and Kevin "Caveman" Shirley for the same on Counterparts.

So, a lot of my life had been centered on Le Studio. It felt good to reflect on it all now, with pride, and a feeling of having been fortunate to have lived all that once - never mind again. Many, many good memories are attached to those days, and I do treasure them. (Perfect word - "the treasure of a life.")

The following passage was written for a bio and tourbook essay for Presto, in 1990. (Funny that I first referred to us as "Rash" in that story - a joke that would recur over twenty years later, in comedic films to accompany the Time Machine tour.) Just as Le Studio can be considered a symbolic place of work for us, this description of our after-work volleyball games might be emblematic of our leisure hours together.

My feelings were running high during that 2014 visit, but I could not quite define them - words failed for a time. Some people described the place's abandonment as "sad," but wandering through those rooms did not make me feel that way. What I felt was more like lucky, and an overriding sense of gratitude - that we had been fortunate enough to live and work in a place like that, all those times, in every season. And others like it: Air Studios in the tropical paradise of Montserrat, the "quaint" British residential studios like Rockfield, the Manor, and Ridge Farm, and Bearsville and Allaire in New York's Catskill Mountains. Will a rock band ever again enjoy and be nourished by such artistic and playful retreats?

That, to me, is the really sad part.

But never mind all that - let's think happy thoughts!

Like, just consider the statistical absurdity of the three of us, all these years and decades later, still around, and still ... doing it. Still playing those very songs, from a time when, as I described in a recent interview, "we were young and foolish and brave and fun." (If we are no longer young, the other qualities still apply!)

A few years ago the band received a couple of lifetime-achievement-type awards, and in response to one of them I remarked - only half-jokingly - that it was our fans who deserved a lifetime achievement award. Because if we have hung in there, they surely have too.

We never forget that reality, and often celebrate it - just as we are planning to do "irl," on this fortieth anniversary tour. As the three of us discussed the songs we would play, it was all about how we and the fans might be able to live it all again - just this once.

Because it was quite a ride, wasn't it?

TOUR STAFF
Liam Birt - Tour Manager & Accountant
Donovan Lundstrom - Road Manager
Craig Blazier - Production Manager
Lydia Bourgeau - Production Assistant
Brad Madix - Concert Sound Engineer
Howard Ungerleider - Lighting Director
Tony Geranios - Keyboard Technician
Lorne Wheaton - Drum Technician
John McIntosh - Bass Technician
Scott Appleton - Guitar Technician
George Steinert - Stage Manager
Bruce French - Nutritionist
Anthony Fedewa - Venue Security
Michael Mosbach - NP Road Manager, Security
Kevin Ripa - Artist Tour Liaison
Cliff Sharpling - Head Carpenter
John Renner - Carpenter

AUDIO
Clair Global, Jason Heitmann
Anson Moore - Audio System Engineer
Brent Carpenter - Monitor Mixer
Corey Harris - Monitor Systems Engineer

LIGHTING
Solotech, Richard Lachance, Hugo Tardif
Yanick Blais - Lighting Crew Chief
Vincent Cadieux - Lighting Technician
Andrew O'Toole - Lighting Technician
Denis Ayotte - Lighting Technician
Benoit Paille - Lighting Technician

LASERS
Production Design Intl., Brian Beggs
Laser Technician - Scott Wilson

RIGGING
Five Points Production SVCS, John Fletcher
Jerry Ritter - Head Rigger
James Harrelson Jr. - Rigger
Sebastien Richard - Motion Control

PYROTECHNICS
Pyrotek, Bob Ross
John Arrowsmith - Pyro Technician

MERCHANDISING
Showtech
Patrick McLoughlin, Don Johnson

VIDEO SCREENS
Solotech, Richard Lachance, Hugo Tardif
David Davidian - Video Director
Dominic Moreau - Video Crew Chief
Frederic Fournier - CCU & Controls
Philippe Casutt - Projections
Philippe Valade - LED / Camera Operator
Jonathan Gagnon-Roy - LED / Camera Operator

VIDEOGRAPHER
Matthew Miller

REAR SCREEN FILMMAKERS
Allan Weinrib - Executive Producer
Dale Heslip - Creative Director

"The World is .. The World is ..."
Crankbunny - Design and Animation

R40 Screen Animations
Julia Deakin/Smith - Graphic Designer/VFX Artist

Clockwork Angels
Moment Factory - Design and Animation

The Anarchist
Christopher Mills - Director

The Wreckers
Pyramid Attack - Design and Animation

Headlong Flight
Josh Vermeulen & Chris Moberg - Design and Animation

Big Money
Retrospective 1 & 2 (2nd set)
Fort York - Design and Animation

Far Cry
Steven Lewis, Spin Productions - Design and Animation

Fan Film & Montage
Banger Films - Original Footage
Mark Morton, Aaron Dark, School & Miller - Editorial

One Little Victory
Spin Productions - Design and Animation

Animate
Julia Deakin, Smith - Graphic Designer/VFX Artist

Roll The Bones
4U2C - Design and Animation, Randy Gonzalez - Artistic Director
Aaron Dark, School - Editorial

Distant Early Warning
David Mallet - Original Video Director
Drew MacLeod - Re-editing

Subdivisions
Grant Lough - Original Video Director
Drew MacLeod - Re-editing

No Country for Old Hens
Mark Morton, School - Editor

Tom Sawyer
School - Editorial

Red Barchetta/YYZ
Crankbunny - Design and Animation

Camera Eye
Andrew MacNaughtan - Photography
Jackie Roda, School - Editorial

Spirit of Radio/Natural Science/Closer to the Heart
Christopher Mills - Director

Jacob's Ladder
4U2C - Design and Animation, Randy Gonzalez - Artistic Director

Prelude to Hemispheres/Cygnus X-1
CuppaCoffee - Animation

Ask Al
Pyramid Attack - Design and Animation

2112
4U2C - Design and Animation, Randy Gonzalez - Artistic Director

Mel's Rockpile
Special Thanks to Eugene Levy

Exit Stage Left
Director - Dale Heslip
Kelly Norris - Producer
Mark Morton, School - Editor
Pyramid Attack - Animation
Fort York - Compositing
Special Thanks - Rob Cohen

Stage Re-Creations
4U2C - Design and Animation, Randy Gonzalez - Artistic Director
Drew MacLeod, Lauren Piche, Mark Morton & Aaron Dark/School - Additional Editorial

Geddy's Backline Video
Randy Knott & Jamie Kaiser - Design and Animation

Research
Andrew Bergant

Geddy and Alex's Back Line Amps
Dale Heslip - Design Mood Inc. & Mojo Musical Supply - Construction

Special thanks to Marshall and Ampeg

MANAGEMENT
SRO Management Inc.
Ray Danniels, Pegi Cecconi, Meg Symsyk, Andy Curran, Sheila Posner, Emma Sunstrum, Bob Farmer, Cynthia Barry, Tyler Tasson, Veronica Sinnaeve, Jeremy Biderman, Izzy Martin

BOOKING AGENCY
USA - Artist Group International - Adam Komfeld, June Chaiyasit
International - The Agency Group - Neil Warnock, Samantha Henfrey
Canada - Feldman - Vinny Cinquemani, Olivia Ootes

TOUR PROMOTER
Live Nation Global Touring, Gerry Barad
Susan Rosenberg, Carla Jespersen
Keith Keller - Live Nation Global Tour Rep
Colin Womack - VIP Nation Rep

CUSTOM BROKER
B. Zee Brokerage Ltd., Barry Zeagman, Neil Zeagman

BY-TOUR, INC
Provident Financial MGT., Amy Cetron

TRAVEL AGENCY
Frosch Travel, Marla Wax-Ferguson, Joe Mauceri

AIRCRAFT CHARTER
Chartright, Justin King
Darren Soley - Pilot
John Bunston - Pilot
Jennifer Merten - Flight Attendant

BUSES
Hemphill Brothers Coach Company, Mark Larson
Dave Burnette - Bus Driver
Lashawn Lundstrom - Bus Driver
Marty Beeler - Bus Driver
Joe C. Bush - Bus Driver
John Morgan - Bus Driver

TRUCKING
Ego Trips, Jim Bodenheimer
Arthur "Mac" McLear - Lead Truck Driver
Jon Cordes - Truck Driver
Mike Kindler - Truck Driver
John Lyon - Truck Driver
Juli Mennitti - Truck Driver
Steve Mennitti - Truck Driver
Bob Wright - Truck Driver

AUSTRIAN CURTAIN
Tait Towers, John 'Freddie' Frederick

SCISSOR LIFT
Acass Systems, LLC, Aaron Cass

PASSES
Otto Entertainment, Mark Alger

RADIOS
Point To Point Communications, Ken Micks, Kevin Kett

ITINERARIES
Smart Art, Donna Hair, Lon Porter

TOUR BOOK
Hugh Syme - Art Direction, Design and Illustration

PHOTOGRAPHY
Craig Renwick, Richard Sibbald, Fin Costello, Neil Zlozower, Patricia Seaton, Randy Johnson, John Arrowsmith, Donovan Lundstrom, Brutus, and Andrew MacNaughtan

Meg Symsyk - Photo Curation
Meg Symsyk and Richard Sibbald - Photo Editing

Dedicated to the Memory of Tom Hartmann

Alex Lifeson

We are just completing the first week of rehearsals and have gone from sounding like a terrible Rush tribute band to a crappy Rush tribute band. I wish we sounded like a mediocre Rush tribute band, but you can't have everything. Hey, it's amazing we can still play at all, after over 40 years together, but each day brings some level of progress and reminds me of how much fun it is to play music, and how blessed we've been to do it together, year after year.

It's funny - as I look around the rehearsal room I see cases and cases of basses (rhyme!), two full kits of drums and my own bloated collection of guitars and I can't imagine how we'll play all this stuff in one night. Geddy and I have been trying out lots of different combinations and I can't tell you how much fun it is to revive many older instruments that haven't seen a stage in some time. Geddy, who is a crazy maniac, has been seriously collecting vintage basses and some guitars as well. He is the consummate collector: serious, knowledgeable, passionate and dedicated. In fact, I was over at his place recently (no, not to borrow his amp!) and he made me play every guitar he acquired in the past year, which I have to admit was really interesting and helpful for both of us, not to mention the delicious coffee, rich and robust with just a hint of, um, coffee. I'm also playing his 1957 Les Paul Goldtop on this tour. I sent him an invoice but still haven't seen a cent.

Neil, who is a crazy maniac as well, is mostly just a crazy maniac, a trait common to all drummers and even those who are just thinking of becoming drummers, but in his case he's like multiple crazy maniacs rolled into one. I didn't quite get the count, because I didn't have a calculator, but he's got something like eleven hundred drums he's playing mostly at once, or at least that's what it sounds like to me. I could do that but I don't feel like it, okay? Anyway, I'm sure they'll "fill" (hilarious drummer joke) you in on all that equipment junk on their pages.

I had dinner with Liam the other night and we took a trip down memory lane. It was remarkable how well we remembered these bright moments in time, sort of like snippets of dreams that fire from memory, considering we were in a critically challenged recall state. We went way back to club dates and crappy hotels we stayed in, sometimes four to a room, and bar owners who'd "buy" us drinks and meals only to present a bill at the end of our weeklong gig that happened to equal our fee. And the time we all took up pipe smoking on a long drive for the entire ride, and the car we rented for a short several-day tour but returned six weeks later with 11,000 more miles on it and a cooler of lobsters in the trunk that we forgot about. And the time we played a union benefit gig at a mental institution, and the time we opened for Sha Na Na at a greaser Sadie Hawkins dress-up gig in Baltimore on Neil's birthday and were lucky to get out alive... I guess it didn't help when we turned up to 12!

There were also all those bands and musicians we played with - some we got to know better than others, and I could hardly believe how many they were once we started to name them: The Projection, Water-Logged Gorilla Fingers, The Cigarettes featuring Peter Stuyvesant, The Crap ... to name a few. And where are they now?

The stories flowed for a couple of hours and as we wiped our laughing tears it occurred to me that we are so fortunate to have lived during such a great period in music history and to have traveled a road not available to many, in the company of madmen. It is now another time to celebrate all that Rush was and is, and get lost in the happy memories we all shared of the special moments spent together.

I know I will.

Neil Peart

MONSTERS FROM THE DEEP

These R40 drums are a time machine that spans an incredible fifteen hundred years. Around 500 CE was the beginning of the Dark Ages in Central Europe, when the Roman Empire was crumbling and overrun by ... what sounds like a bunch of heavy-metal bands - the Visigoths, the Ostrogoths, the Vandals, the Byzantines, the Saxons, the Bulgars, the Huns.

Meanwhile, along the banks of the Olt River in present-day Romania, a mighty oak tree toppled into the water and was gradually buried in silt. Centuries, generations, and historical epochs passed, while that oak's wood gathered supernatural density from the pressure of its airless tomb.

In 2014 that log was raised, and its wood was acquired by Drum Workshop. I tried a few prototype shells, and knew I wanted my new drums made from that log - the wood offered exceptional tonality and projection.

Through the development of DW's "Icon" snare series, I learned about laser-cut inlay work, and we applied that technology to an update of the R30 drumset design. Each of the logos and even the red oblong frames around them (deliberately evoking Keith Moon's "Pictures of Lily" kit, my teenage dream) are made of inlaid hardwoods. The hardware is gold-plated, as seemed appropriate for an "anniversary" tour.

It will soon be no secret that I am playing two separate sets on this tour - one "modern" arrangement like I have been using for the past twenty-five years, and one like the setup I played for almost twenty years before - double bass drums, open concert toms, ride cymbal hard right. Its look is modeled after the black-chrome Slingerlands I played in the late '70s, but DW's version far surpasses those in tone, resonance, playability, and "shininess!" The hardware is plated in black nickel, for a murdered-out look that will be perfect when I am asked to play for the Ostrogoth Vandals or the Byzantine Huns...

Each drumshell in both sets was made from that single Romanian River Oak (DW uses the slogan "1500 Years in the Making," I prefer "Monsters From the Deep.")

The cymbals are all Sabian Paragons, with a couple of new sizes in the mix - 19-inch and 17-inch crashes. Sticks are by Pro-Mark, the heads an ever-changing variety of DW and Remos (always experimenting in that area). The Roland V-Drums (with custom DW shells), MalletKat, KAT trigger pedal, and Dauz pad go through Ableton Live running on a MacBook Pro.

Lorne "Gump" Wheaton continues to keep all that good stuff working and looking wonderful, as he has for almost fifteen years now. Recently a friend asked the two of us who was the bigger "pain" to work with, and after a pause, I replied, "We don't really have trouble with each other - just other people!"

Gump laughed and agreed...

Geddy Lee

"All About That Bass."

Vintage basses ... custom colour basses ... weird-looking basses ... basses and more basses ... that's my theme for this tour!

They are fascinating and beautiful to look at (IMHO), and the evolution of how they are made and how their sound has developed through the years is very compelling to me.

Okay ... yes, I know - I can be a little obsessive, but I have never collected anything that was more appropriate to who I am and what I do and have done with my life.

So here is the rundown...

Somewhere around the rehearsal phase of the Clockwork Angels Tour I managed to acquire a couple of vintage basses. One was a bit of a conceit as it was a Fender Precision Bass from my birth year - 1953 (the electric bass was only invented in 1951) and the other was a rather whimsical and striking 1968 Fender Telecaster Bass covered in Pink Paisley "wallpaper" - to celebrate the Summer of Love.

As I examined these pieces of Bass History I found that I wanted to know more about them - well, everything about them - and more about how the electric bass came into being. Because as a player, in a sense, it was important to the understanding of my own history.

As a collector of many and various things I have come to recognize when you arrive at "the point of no return!" - where your curiosity begins to drive your passion to the extent that you must know everything about the thing that has come into your focus ... in other words, I was a goner!

So with my esteemed and highly knowledgeable technician John "Skully" McIntosh, we began a two-year journey of searching for vintage basses that told a story to us. I have chosen to share the sound and glory of some of those instruments with you all on this R40 tour. Even though I did not play these exact instruments on the original recordings of these songs, I have tried to choose ones that enhance the music in one way or another. I hope you will enjoy this parade through time, and will dig the experience of hearing these fantastic instruments as much as I will enjoy playing them!

Here they are:
1972 Fender Jazz Bass (Black) My Number One
1972 Fender Jazz Bass (Blonde)
Fender Jazz Bass (Surf Green Custom Shop)
Fender Jazz Bass (Trans Red Custom Shop)
1960 Fender Jazz Bass (Fiesta Red)
1962 Fender Jazz Bass (Sea Foam Green)
1963 Fender Jazz Bass (Black with matching headstock)
1964 Fender Jazz Bass (Lake Placid Blue with matching headstock)
1964 Fender Jazz Bass (Sonic Blue with matching headstock)
1965 Fender Jazz Bass (White)
1966 Fender Jazz Bass (Shoreline Gold with matching headstock)
1966 Fender Jazz Bass (Fiesta Red with matching headstock)
1957 Gibson EB-1 (Walnut)
1964 Gibson Thunderbird IV (Sunburst)
1964 Epiphone Embassy (Cherry)
1967 Gibson Thunderbird II (Polaris White)
1959 Fender Precision Bass (Olympic White) with matching headstock
1965 Fender Precision Bass (Burgundy Mist)
1968 Fender Telecaster Bass (Paisley)
1967 Rickenbacker Model 3261 (FireGlo)
1968 Rickenbacker Model 4001 (BurgundyGlo)
1977 Rickenbacker Model 4001 (JetGlo)
1975 Rickenbacker Model 4080/12 (JetGlo)
1978 Rickenbacker Model 4080/12 (FireGlo)
1961 Hofner Solid Body 2 Pickup (Cherry Red)
1992 Zematis Bass (Black with engraved metal front)

Smartphone Wallpaper

Our RUSH smartphone wallpapers have been modified for a 9:19.5 aspect ratio to fit "most" Smartphones.