When RUSH drummer Neil Peart passed away in January, 2020, Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson said they weren’t sure how/if they’d continue playing. They’ve been off the grid since then (mostly in large part to COVID) but it took the South Park 25th Anniversary Concert at Red Rocks in Colorado to reunite the two surviving members of the band.

Now, true, Red Rocks is probably the most beautiful venue in North America and it could probably bring almost any band out of retirement  for the promise to perform there, but it became extra special for the crowd there when they realized what they were about to see.

While this wasn’t an official RUSH reunion, Lee and Lifeson joined Primus along with South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone on stage for a special one-off performance of Closer To The Heart.

Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Comedy Central

 

Lee and Lifeson originally appeared animated on screen “LIVE FROM CANADA” for the Red Rocks crowd in which they talked about getting an invitation from Terrence & Phillip to be a part of the anniversary show. They came up with the only idea they could think of … to jam live. Fans in attendance quickly erupted as soon as the duo appeared in the flesh on stage realizing a reunion was about to go down.

Rush had been included in several episodes of South Park over the year, including one episode when the Princess of Canada gets kidnapped, the band plays a spoof of Candle In The Wind called Fart In The Wind.

At the end of Closer To The Hear, Les Claypool (Primus) asked drummer Matt Stone to “play the greatest drum lick you ever played in your entire life right now!”, he didn’t quite live up to Neil Peart, but then again, who could?

Most videos from the performance have been pulled from online so enjoy this one while you can, and if it gets pulled down, you’ll have to believe us it was amazing and enjoy this classic version of the song performed by RUSH.

 

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Filed under: alex-lifeson, geddy-lee, Rush, south-park