Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson says he has no current plans to collaborate with his fellow surviving band mate, singer/bassist Geddy Lee, but isn’t ruling out working with him on new music in the future.
“We’re not putting any pressure on it or anything,” Lifeson explains in a new interview with Guitar World. “We had a lot of good years together and we still love each other very much. I talk to Geddy every other day — we’re best friends. There’s more to our life together than just writing music. So if it happens, it happens. And it’ll happen when it happens.”
Rush played its final show in August 2015, when the band wrapped up its R40 40th anniversary tour. Any chance for a full reunion ended with the passing of drummer Neal Peart, who died of brain cancer in January 2020 at age 67.
Lifeson currently is preparing for release of the self-titled debut of his new group, Envy of None, which also features bassist/singer Andy Curran of the veteran Canadian rock band Coney Hatch, and a 24-year-old vocalist named Maiah Wynne from Portland, Oregon.
Alex tells Guitar World that Envy of None’s music doesn’t sound like anything he’s previously done.
“There’s lots of straight-ahead guitar, but there’s also mandola and lots of manipulated, sequenced things,” he notes. “And I’ve really become an aficionado of backwards guitar as well. So there’s everything from acoustic fingerstyle stuff to really heavy stuff, trippy kind of backwards things to Hendrix-y melodic parts. I’m really quite pleased with it.”
The Envy of None album, which can be pre-ordered now, will be released on April 8.
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