Having recently wrapped up the R40 tour as their “final major trek ever”, Rush drummer Neil Peart says that he is retiring from music.

Neil tells Drumhead Magazine: "Lately Olivia (Louise, Neil's daughter) has been introducing me to new friends at school as 'My dad - he's a retired drummer.' True to say, funny to hear.

"And it does not pain me to realize that, like all athletes, there comes a time to... take yourself out of the game. I would rather set it aside then face the predicament described in our song “Losing It” (‘Sadder still to watch it die, than never to have known it’).”

The A.V. Club has published a new interview with Rush’s Geddy Lee to talk about 40 years of Rush and if he would make a follow-up to his solo 2000 album My Favorite Headache.

Lee said he would “definitely” consider making another solo album and talked about what it was like writing an album without his longtime Rush bandmates Neil Peart and Alex Lifeson:

“That was a real interesting period for me. It was tough because I had planned to do some jamming with my dear friend Ben Mink who is an amazing musician, producer, and songwriter in his own right, and a violinist and guitarist. Because we had been friends for so long, and we had never actually made a record together aside from him playing on the song Losing It from our Signals album, we had always planned that some time when the band was on a break, we would just get together and start writing together and see what happened. We were planning to do that, and suddenly tragedy struck Neil’s life. His daughter was taken from him in a car accident, and everything got really weird and it was just a horrible period. So I decided after a few months this idea of working with Ben might be a real tonic for me, because I didn’t know really whether there would ever be another Rush album. I had no idea; it was not something we were focused on, and people get through tragedies in different ways. I was kind of going crazy and needed something to focus on, so this project that was sort of in the back of my mind with Ben suddenly became critical so we started getting together in my home studio in Toronto and I would go to his place in Vancouver and over a series of months we gathered a whole bunch of material together and then we decided to go for it and make the record.”

Rush recently released a new video from their newly released R40 Live concert film. Check out “Mel's Rockpile” / “Lakeside Park” / “Anthem” streaming below:

All roads have led to this. Forty-one years in the making, the R40 Live tour took a very real journey back through time. Beginning with the grand design: a state-of-the-art stage set that pivots, rolls and dives, and brings Clockwork Angels in to bombastic, colorful life before marching stridently back in time (through theatre stages, a panoply of band and fan shots, the accrued memories of a life spent playing live) to a mocked-up school gym and the band playing there; a solitary bass amp set on the chair behind Geddy Lee, a mirror ball spiraling crazily above, casting thin rods of light like a light rain across the crowd, “Working Man” coming to a shuddering halt as the band’s beginning becomes their end.

Rush recorded and filmed R40 Live over two sold-out shows in the band’s hometown of Toronto at the Air Canada Centre on June 17th and 19th, 2015 in the middle of their R40 Live 35-date North American tour.

R40 Live had the trio of Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson and Neil Peart, performing a career-spanning live retrospective, celebrating their 40+ years together. The epic live shows by the Rock Hall of Famers were captured with 14 cameras to present the band feature-film style.

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Tracklisting:

Set One
“The World Is.. The World Is...”
“The Anarchist”
“Headlong Flight”
“Far Cry”
“The Main Monkey Business”
“How It Is”
“Animate”
“Roll The Bones”
“Between The Wheels”
“Losing It” (with Ben Mink)
“Subdivisions”

Set Two
“No Country For Old Hens”
“Tom Sawyer”
“YYZ”
“The Spirit Of Radio”
“Natural Science”
“Jacob’s Ladder”
“Hemispheres: Prelude”
“Cygnus X-1”/“The Story So Far ”(drum solo)
“Closer To The Heart”
“Xanadu”
“2112”

Encore
“Mel’s Rockpile” (with Eugene Levy)
“Lakeside Park”/“Anthem”
“What You’re Doing”/“Working Man”
“Exit Stage Left”

Bonus
“One Little Victory”
“Distant Early Warning”
“Red Barchetta”

“Tom Sawyer”:

"Spirit Of Radio":

"Closer To The Heart":

“Roll The Bones”:

Trailer:

Best Buy Exclusive trailer: