The two men on the sofa, Rush’s Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson, have known each other for 60 years now. “When we first met in junior high school, we sat beside each other, and we laughed,” says Lee, the elder by a month. “He’s the funniest guy I’ve ever known, and I make him laugh, too.” Lifeson, who has been gazing at his friend happily, nods vigorously. “Yeah!” The two of them gently tease each other, and speak of each other with such happy admiration, that I feel suffused with warmth from the off. “Everybody wants to have a bestie like this guy!” Lee says at one point, beaming.

It’s only because they like each other so much that they’re in this posh London hotel suite. Lifeson came over to Europe for some health checks, and Lee decided to come with him. Once they were here, they decided they may as well talk to some journalists about Rush’s upcoming R50 reunion tour, and the decision to add 24 European and South American shows to the 58 arena dates they’d already announced for North America (they’ll play the UK in March 2027). The interviews were meant to be separate, but they decided it would be more enjoyable to speak together. Honestly, if you ever want to see a model for male friendship, spend time with Rush and feel cleansed.

Their friendship is why Rush exist again. The pair had declared they were done following the death of their drummer, Neil Peart, in January 2020, bringing an end to a band that had created a unique fusion of prog and hard rock in the 70s and continued to evolve for decades, racking up 14 platinum-selling albums in the US without its principals ever falling out. They reformed not because they missed Rush, but because they missed playing together as friends. “It goes back before the origins of the band,” Lifeson says. “When we were in junior high, we would get together and play. Music was what drove us as buddies.”

The decision to become Rush again was born out of jamming, Lee says. “We got sidetracked and started playing Rush songs. When one jam petered out, one of us said, ‘Why don’t we play this song? Can we remember it?’ So we did. And … we couldn’t.”

“We were so bad,” Lifeson adds.

Playing two tribute concerts to the late Foo Fighters drummer, Taylor Hawkins, in 2022 had given them a shot of adrenaline, and they made provisional plans before Lifeson got cold feet and backed out. When the idea of Rush came up again, Lee says, “I told Al: ‘Look, we’re either doing this or we’re not doing it. I can’t talk about it every two years. Because time marches on and I don’t how much time we have. So if we’re going to do it, we do it now. If we don’t, fine, let’s just not talk about it.”

Lifeson: “True story.”

There remained one problem: the drum stool. Peart wasn’t just a notable drummer; he was perhaps the most distinctive and technically adept rock drummer of his and most other generations. He was many fans’ favourite member of Rush. And he wrote the lyrics. Lee and Lifeson nod when I suggest that replacing him is a little like telling a young ball player he’s in for Babe Ruth.

“Go out there and take a swing, kid!” Lifeson says, laughing.

The drummer they have chosen is 42-year-old Anika Nilles, from Germany. Lee’s bass tech had recommended her, after working on a Jeff Beck tour she played on. After a video call, she came to Canada last March for a week of auditions.

Usually, when a band recruits a new member, they talk enthusiastically about the fresh feel the group has, how it has enabled them to shake up the songs. Did Rush want someone to do that, or someone to play photocopies of Peart’s parts?

“It has to start there,” Lifeson says. “They have to be true to the arrangements, because that’s the expectation from the fans. But we don’t place any restrictions on her. When she is comfortable and confident in the arrangements, she’s free to enhance them with her own spirit.”

“And she will,” Lee says. “But I don’t think we knew when she arrived what our expectations were, to be honest. “When we started playing with her, something felt wrong. And I was, of course: ‘This is not gonna work.’ Those seemingly impossible fills were not a problem for her at all. What was difficult was understanding a relationship between snare, bass drum and hi-hat that’s different from her training.

“The first four days were up and down, and she was nervous, and she was jetlagged, and we were unsure. We had a little chat before the last day – ‘I don’t know, Al, is this going to work?’ We talked about all the things we liked about her, and what a work ethic she has, nice person and deep knowledge, deep technical ability. So there’s a lot of positives. So let’s not be hasty. And we went into that last day and she just fucking nailed it.”

“She suddenly understood what we were talking about that whole week,” Lifeson says, “not about the technical aspect, but about the stuff in between the big stuff, that Neil was just so amazing at and those internal dynamics that only another drummer can understand, and it clicked in her.”

She might have all the chops in the world, but she still has to try to fit in with friends who have known each other since childhood. Right until the end, Lee and Lifeson referred to Peart, who only joined Rush in 1974, as “the new guy”.

“Yeah, we excluded Neil like that for years – but he wanted in, he wanted to prove to us he could be as goofy as we were, and he was very funny. He sort of barged his way into our friendship, and it worked. And Anika is very quiet, and she’s sliding into our friendship.”

Rush, in the form the world came to know them, arrived when Peart replaced John Rutsey as drummer and took over the lyrics. On their debut, with Rutsey, they had been a sub-Led Zeppelin heavy blues rock band. But Lee and Lifeson had become obsessed with emulating their prog heroes Yes and Genesis, and needed a drummer who could match their aspirations: that was Peart.

“We wanted to play like people like that,” Lee says. “We wanted to be that precise, to be as grandiose as they were, or as conceptual as they were. We were carried away by those records, and we wanted in.” And thus came the grand series of records – Caress of Steel, the career-defining 2112, A Farewell to Kings and Hemispheres – filled with multi-part suites and lyrics straight out of the fantasy shelves of the bookshop (“By-Tor and the Snow Dog was a joke!” Lee insists, at the suggestion their humour didn’t come through in their music). They were the band that inspired legions of 14-year-old boys to buy Ayn Rand books, and for whom no solo could be too intricate: their instrumental La Villa Strangiato was too complex for them to play straight through in the studio. (Its subtitle: An Exercise in Self-Indulgence.)

As the 70s fell into the 80s, synths and smoother textures came into their music – at Lee’s behest – and Peart’s lyrics moved away from the mythical to the personal and human, in songs such as the hit single Subdivisions, about the loneliness of the suburban teen. Did it become easier for Lee to relate to the lyrics as they became more human?

“Yes and no. There were times when it was too personal and uncomfortable for me – I was the guy pushing for universality in his lyrics. After we came back with Vapor Trails [Rush’s first album following the deaths of Peart’s daughter and then his wife in 1997 and 1998], there were moments that were very confessional. It was almost too intimate for me, and I had to be the audience there and say: ‘Look, I don’t want to change what you’re trying to say. But let me in a little bit so it’s not just about your experience.’ That was a tough conversation.”

Friendship allowed Rush to weather vicissitudes other bands wouldn’t have tolerated. By the end of the 80s, Lifeson was absolutely fed up with the declining role of his guitar-playing in the band. The answer was simple: accommodate him. Go back to being a guitar band, no matter that it meant the end of Lee’s favourite era of the band and the entry into his least favourite.

In the mid-2000s, Peart decided to entirely reinvent his style, taking lessons from the jazz drummer Freddie Gruber: that was what he wanted, so they adapted. “It was uncomfortable at first, because we wanted him to flip the sticks around and just start pounding,” Lee says. “And he was resolute he was not going to shift. So we had to adjust the feel a bit. For me, it was interesting as a bass player, because he had a rounder swing in his playing. And I think it’s part of what our band always was: open. So for us not to be open to this change would have been antithetical.”

That in turn created fresh problems, because when they next toured, Peart had one set of songs to play in the new fashion, and another set that required an entirely different technique. “I think that’s what made him such an amazing monster drummer by the end,” Lee says. “He was more ferocious and at the same time he could swing on a dime.”

When they talk about Peart, it’s not through misty eyes. At times Lee, especially, refers to him in the present tense (“How Neil plays …”). But the loss is profound. “I just miss him,” Lee says. “I don’t know if there’s one thing I miss about him.”

“His laugh,” Lifeson says.

“When he says, ‘Oh, come on!’ and calls your bluff,” Lee says. “He was a mentor to me in many ways. He was a very stimulating person to be around.” Then he giggles and looks at Lifeson. “And I love the way Neil used to punch him so hard in the shoulder. Or he’d just look at me and say: ‘Hit him!’”

In the end, it all comes down to love. Not just the principals’ love for each other, but their audience’s love for them. They note that following the 2010 documentary Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage, there was an upsurge in affection for them. Lifeson thinks people respect their work ethic; Lee that they admire Rush’s unapologetic nerdery.

I suggest it’s more simple: people found their friendship to be very moving. Lifeson nods along. Lee says, “I know that when I do some post on Instagram and I talk about him, or he talks about me, the response is crazy. They just love it.”

The biggest point of difference between them is the way they express feelings.

“He’s really emotional,” Lee says.

“I am,” Lifeson nods. “Too emotional.”

“He can go from zero to 100 at a seemingly innocent remark. ‘Al, calm down. That’s not what we’re talking about.’”

“That helps.”

“He can really explode. A real Serbian. [Lifeson’s parents, Nenad and Melanija Živojinović, came to Canada from the former Yugoslavia.] The only thing that calms him down is to go eat a pig somewhere. And I’m probably too controlling for him.”

“Yeah.”

“And too rational.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

And still, 60 years on, if they and their wives of 50 years are invited out to dinner, it’s best if the hosts don’t sit Lee and Lifeson together, because no one else will interest them. They will sit with their heads together, immersed in their own private party. Lee turns to Lifeson. “We did that at Tim’s one night. They had planned this wonderful dinner party, and we just alienated them.”

Lifeson nods like a big, happy labrador. “That happens a lot!”