Brian McCollum at the Detroit Free Press recently caught up with RUSH guitar legend Alex Lifeson. An excerpt from the interview is available below:

Q: How is the tour preparation -- physical and mental -- different now from, say, 30 years ago?

A: "This is the longest rehearsal period we've had. We set aside seven weeks, and I started rehearsing a week before that. I know Neil started a month before rehearsals, Geddy a week out. Then we started getting a lot more serious about going to the gym with a workout program about a month before we started, ramping it up a little bit toward the end. I guess it's probably two or three months of preparation total."

"Back then, it was more like ... maybe 15 minutes? (Laughs) It was a whole different thing then. We didn't have the complexity we have now in terms of staging. In the early days, certainly, we were playing a couple hundred shows a year. I don't even recall rehearsing. We sort of made a set list and went out and played it."

Q: Rush continues to benefit from this new, broader mainstream respect that had eluded the band for so long. Does that provide some satisfaction?

A: "It does. It's kind of weird, though. I don't know if it's the fact we've been doing this for 40 years now together, but what we do is so totally normal to us. So I know it's a bit of a big deal, but not to us. We do what we do. We're very engaged in how we put shows together -- we're not affected by the waves we go through. Right now, yeah, we're more popular than we've ever been to a broader audience, that's for sure. But all we're concerned with is how we play on a given night. It's good to have that notoriety, but we just accept it with a modest smile and a thank-you."

Go to this location for the complete interview.

Rush kicked off their long-anticipated Clockwork Angels tour on September 7th at the Verizon Wireless Arena in Manchester, NH.

Rush performed the following set-list:

Set One:

'Subdivisions'

'The Big Money'

'Force Ten'

Grand Designs'

'The Body Electric'

'Territories'

'The Analog Kid'

'Bravado'

'Where's My Thing?' (with drum solo)

'Far Cry'

Set Two:

'Caravan'

'Clockwork Angels'

'The Anarchist'

'Carnies'

'The Wreckers'

'Headlong Flight'

Alex Lifeson solo

'Halo Effect'

'Wish Them Well'

'The Garden'

'Manhattan Project'

Neil Peart drum solo

'Red Sector A'

'YYZ'

'Working Man'

Encore:

'Tom Sawyer'

'The Spirit of Radio'

Check out fan-filmed video below: