My oldest friend, Alec, called me a Rush superfan once, then corrected himself—“No, I’m the superfan. You just got dragged along for forty years.” He’s not wrong. We’ve been chasing this band across the country since we were kids, and last night he handed me a ticket to the fourth and final show of their sold-out stand at the Kia Forum in Inglewood and said the only thing that needed saying: “We have to be there for this one.” He was right. I’ve been to roughly fifteen Rush shows in my life. This might have been the best.
You could feel it before you got through the gates. The lot was a tailgate, a reunion, and a tent revival all at once—men my age in twenty-year-old tour shirts, kids who weren’t born when Moving Pictures came out, and one diehard who told me he’d flown in from Australia for all four nights and had clocked well over a hundred Rush shows in his lifetime. By the time the house lights dropped, the whole arena was humming. No opener, no warm-up act to politely endure. Just the band, two sets, a brief intermission, and three hours and fifteen minutes of the catalog we grew up on—twenty-eight songs, all of them Rush.
When “Xanadu” filled the room and rolled straight into “Limelight,” every single person in that building was on their feet—and I mean every single one. From our seats in the third row, dead center, I had a clean look at Geddy Lee’s face, and the man was beaming. His voice, somehow, sounded the way it did thirty years ago. He hit the high notes as if the calendar had never happened. And that bass tone—the singular, growling, melodic thing only he does—was locked in all night. Legend status, confirmed and re-confirmed.
Then there’s Alex Lifeson, who keeps making the case that he belongs in any honest conversation about the greatest ever to pick up a guitar. Crisp, clean, and pouring raw emotion through every phrase. Watching him and Geddy trade glances felt like watching two brothers who’d genuinely missed one another—the smiles, the little nods, the obvious joy of being back in a room together doing the thing they were built to do. You could tell they missed Neil. You could also tell they were playing their hearts out to honor him.
Which brings me to the fourth chair, and the most impossible seat in rock to fill. Anika Nilles is not trying to be Neil Peart—no one could, and to her enormous credit, she isn’t pretending to. What she is doing is paying homage to him, feel for feel and fill for fill, with a respect you can read in her shoulders. When she dug into “Tom Sawyer,” I got chills. Actual chills. She earned that room, and the room handed it right back to her.
Here’s where I have to be honest with you. Twice during the night, the screens lit with tribute collages to Neil, and when Geddy stepped to the mic to speak about the man who sat behind that kit for four decades, I was not the only one wiping my eyes. The entire production—the lighting, the lasers, the graphics, unmistakably the work of longtime Rush visual architect Hugh Syme—never once let you forget who and what this run is really for. It’s called the Fifty Something Tour for a reason. It is a celebration and a memorial at the same time, and somehow it carries both without buckling under the weight.
My personal peaks: “Subdivisions,” which still cuts straight to the bone for anyone who was ever the odd kid out, and “The Trees,” which I’ve loved since I was too young to understand a word of it. But the moment I’ll be telling people about for years was “Time Stand Still,” when Aimee Mann walked out to sing her part in the flesh. Special and memorable do not quite cover it—having her up there turned a beloved song into something close to sacred.
They sent us home with “Finding My Way” and “Working Man”—all the way back to the very first record, the songs that started all of this. Fitting. And a real tip of the cap to the Kia Forum staff, who kept everyone safe and looked after while letting the building be exactly as loud and joyful as it wanted to be.
So here is my plea, and I do not make it lightly. If you have ever loved this band—or if you’ve only ever heard the name and wondered what the fuss was about—get yourself to one of these shows before the run is over. Bring your kid. Bring your dad. Bring the friend who dragged you to your first concert forty years ago.
Some nights, you walk out of an arena entertained. Last night, I walked out changed. That’s the only word I have for it. Spiritual.
