Last year, Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson announced they would reunite Rush, bringing in drummer Anika Nilles to join them on tour in place of the late Neil Peart. In a new interview with The Guardian, the pair reflected on their first rehearsals with Nilles and discussed whether the goal was for her to replicate Peart’s distinctive sound.
“It has to start there. 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,” Lifeson said. “When she is comfortable and confident in the arrangements, she’s free to enhance them with her own spirit.”
Lee then chimed in: “And she will. 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,” Lee continued. “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 f*cking nailed it.”
Lifeson added: “She suddenly understood what we were talking about that whole week, 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.”
