Omar Hakim has posted a new photo of Rush’s surviving members with Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl, “Getting ready for the first Taylor Hawkins Tribute Show in London! So FUN for Dave and I to rehearse with Geddy and Alex of RUSH!!”
The former Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson recently recalled the time when decided to go to a rehearsal after smoking a joint.
Alex Lifeson reveals the incident
However, as Alex Lifeson recalls in a recent interview with House of Strombo, there was one particular time when he did not care about his work ethic and went to a rehearsal after smoking a joint and as one can understand, it did not go well.
Lifeson said (via UCR):
“It was hard to play. We were very disciplined when it came to shows — not even a beer during the drum solo. … I smoked a joint before a rehearsal once, and we jammed for about 20 minutes, like psychedelic surf music. And it was so great. I was having such a great time, and then it was like, ‘Okay, let’s do the show now.’ We start playing, and it was like… everything sounded crazy, and my hands wouldn’t speak to my brain. Ged kept looking over at me like, ‘What the hell’s going on with you there?’
“We were making mistake after mistake. I couldn’t wait for it to be over. But I learned a very important lesson: Don’t smoke a joint before a gig.”
Although Rush may have looked every bit like a sober band to an outsider, Geddy Lee admitted during the interview that there were periods when he and his bandmates went a bit too hard on substance use, particularly when they were “running on fumes”.
However, the setbacks of the rehearsals never impacted their on-stage performances. Here is what he said:
“We had our moments where we were doing too many gigs in a row, and the drugs were coming at us fast and furious, but somehow or another we kept our shit together through it all. In the end we valued our work. We valued the quality of our gigs. So we never let it interfere.”
When the host George Stroumboulopoulos recalled a story of Gene Simmons’s where the Kiss bassist walked into a room and found all three rush members quietly reading, Lee replied, laughing:
“Yeah, but we were really high.”