“My Effin’ Life In Conversation” Tour: Geddy Lee And Paul Rudd Discuss RUSH And Neil Peart

The “My Effin’ Life In Conversation” tour by Geddy Lee started with a bang at The Beacon Theatre in New York on Monday night (November 13). The RUSH frontman/bassist takes his fans on a journey through his memoir “My Effin’ Life”, which will be out on November 14 from HarperCollins. The tour, produced by Live Nation, will visit 14 cities in North America, including Boston, San Francisco, Chicago and more, and will end in Toronto at Massey Hall on December 7. Lee’s show at The Beacon Theatre was a unique and unforgettable event. He opened the curtain and revealed the essence of his life: from his family and childhood to the history of RUSH; from his passion for music to his personal memories with his lifelong friends and bandmates, Alex Lifeson and Neil Peart. He was joined by actor Paul Rudd, who was the special guest interviewer, and read some excerpts from “My Effin’ Life”; he then shared his thoughts and stories from his experience. Moreover, fans had the opportunity to ask him questions directly in a special Q&A session. During the Q&A part of the night, Lee talked about the last time he saw Peart, who passed away in January 2020 after a three-year fight with glioblastoma, a severe form of brain cancer. Lee said: "[In the final months of his life, Neil] would listen to a different RUSH album and he would be analyzing it and listening to something he hadn’t heard sometimes since we’d made it. And by the time that he sadly passed, he had listened to pretty much all the work we had done as a band. And the last time I saw him… [choking up] he wanted to tell me how proud he was of the music we have done together… Some of this stuff is hard to talk about. And it just blew me away that, in that moment, we were sitting on his balcony at his house. And whenever we left him towards the end, we never knew if we’d see him again or not. And so we were sitting on his balcony and he was having a smoke, because he loved to have a smoke, like clockwork. And we were talking about what a great moment it was that he was here in this place and we had just seen some parakeets flying into the trees and we both were bird nerds so we could talk about that. But he went on to talk about these songs and what they meant to him and he thought it was very important for me to know that, that our life as a rhythm section together was important to him. So I thought that was beautiful."RUSH announced Peart’s death three days after it happened, shocking and saddening fans and musicians all over the world.

Last year, Geddy said that Neil wanted to keep his cancer diagnosis a secret until his death.

“[Peart] didn’t want anyone to know [about his illness],” Lee said on the Canadian talk show “House Of Strombo”. "He just didn’t. He wanted to keep it in the house. And we did. And that was hard. I can’t tell you it was easy, 'cause it was not easy. And it was ongoing. His diagnosis was… he was given 18 months at the most, and it went on three and a half years. And so that was a constant flow of us going to see him, giving him support."Lee also said that he and Lifeson had to lie to fans to protect Peart’s privacy.

“It was really difficult for his family to live through that, so we were going back and forth a lot,” he said. "And when you’re in that state, it’s very hard to function normally, because you can’t talk to anybody about it, 'cause no one’s supposed to know. And so people hear rumblings and they bring things up to you, and you deflect it. And so that feels, on one hand, it feels dishonest, but on the other hand you’re being loyal to your friend. So fuck the dishonesty part. That wins.