RUSH Don't Know What comes next

For the first time in well over a decade, RUSH have absolutely no idea what they're doing next, writes Rolling Stone correspondent Andy Greene. 

They just wrapped a long world tour in support of their 2012 LP, Clockwork Angels, and have yet to seriously discuss the future. Their manager wants them to launch a tour next year to celebrate the 40th anniversary of drummer Neil Peart joining the group. 
"That's not going to happen though," says vocalist, bassist and keyboardist Geddy Lee. "My attitude is that as much as I'd like to celebrate 40 years, we need a break more than we need a 40th anniversary celebration. There's nothing wrong with celebrating 42 years." 

Is the band's plan to do a live album for every single tour now? 

"Yeah, I think that's pretty much how we do things now." 

That's really great for the fans. We want to hear what songs sound like after the band has been playing them live for months and months. They start taking on a new power. 

"I think that's true. They loosen up too. And you learn more about them as you're playing them, and we had the added interest on this tour of having a string section on songs that we didn't originally have strings on. That was kind of fun for us too. So we really wanted to get it down on tape. For us, even more than an album, a DVD starts to represent an accurate document of that moment in our lives." 

And if you don't document it, fans will with bootlegs and the quality won't be there. 

"Yeah, exactly, and you can't control that, and God bless them. They're going to shoot on their camera phones and they're going to take their own personal memory away, and that's fine with me. But it's nice to get a properly produced and properly recorded document of the tour, for our own sake and for historical reference too." 

I know lots of artists complain that too many people are using cameraphones at concerts. Does it annoy you? 

"It doesn't really bother me. Sometimes there will be a guy who is holding a camera phone and recording the entire song (laughs) and you just want to look at him and go, 'Really?' But for the most part, that's their own personal thing that they show their friends. I don't have a problem with that."