There was a bittersweet quality to the first show of Rush‘s Fifty Something Tour, which began on Sunday (June 7) at Los Angeles’ Kia Forum, the same place the legendary Canadian rock outfit concluded its last tour in 2015. While elements of these two performances were of course similar, including some overlap in the setlists, this time around the group is without a key element: its late drummer and lyricist Neil Peart, who died of brain cancer in January of 2020.
Fifty Something is the first time the group’s remaining members, singer/bassist Geddy Lee and guitarist/vocalist Alex Lifeson, have toured without Peart in more than 50 years, since the trio rocket-launched out of Toronto in the mid-70s. The loss is unimaginable, not only given this half-century together, but because Peart is widely considered one of the best, if not the best, rock drummers in history.
As such it was only right to put Peart at the center of the affair, with the tour billed as a celebration of his legacy and of the band’s half-century of music. Lee himself said that “Alex and I have done some serious soul searching and come to the decision that we f–king miss it … So [we’re] going to hit the road once again to pay tribute to our past and to Neil by performing a vast selection of Rush songs in a handful of cities. No small task, because as we all know Neil was irreplaceable.”
But of course for this to happen, someone would actually have to replace him. That person is German drummer/composer Anika Nilles, whose first public performance with Rush happened during the band’s performance at the 2026 Juno Awards in March and who more than held her own while thundering through some of the most recognizable songs in rock.
The show began at 7:35 p.m., opening with a six-minute intro video that found a trio of young people entering a gothic castle while searching for Rush, encountering characters from the Rush universe, including the sausage-maker introduced during the band’s 2010 Time Machine Tour, the owl from the cover of Fly By Night and Jason Segel and Paul Rudd, who reprised their Rush-loving characters from the 2009 comedy I Love You, Man.
It was a retrospective opening that came before a similarly retrospective show. Check out five standout elements from the tour’s opening night.
