RUSH shocked followers on Monday morning with the announcement of a 2026 North American tour, marking their first exhibits in 11 years. Much more shocking might have been their selection of drummer to fill the footwear of the late Neil Peart: the comparatively unknown Anika Nilles.
Apparently, RUSH frontman Geddy Lee first talked about Nilles’ identify in a 2023 interview with The Guardian, saying, “I heard this drummer the opposite day, I believe her identify is Anika. She performed on the final Jeff Beck tour and I assumed was she was terrific.”
On Sunday night time, October fifth, at a press occasion on the Rock & Roll Corridor of Fame in Cleveland (as transcribed by Final Basic Rock), Lee revealed how Nilles grew to become RUSH’s new drummer.
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“My bass tech, Skully was working with Jeff Beck and he was on tour,” started Lee. “Sadly, earlier than Jeff handed away, he was on tour with him for just a few years, and on the final tour, he was taking part in with this drummer named Anika Nilles, an unimaginable drummer, and he would come house, he would rave about her, What an excellent participant she was, and nice particular person, blah, blah, blah…”
He continued, “So I sort of seemed her up, and she or he’s throughout YouTube. She’s pretty well-known in her personal world of music. After which we began speaking about taking part in once more, so I stated, test her out. Perhaps that’s an fascinating solution to go. And so one factor led to a different, and once we made the choice, we needed to see if it could work.”
Lee went on to say that he and guitarist Alex Lifeson didn’t precisely know what their intentions have been after they introduced Nilles in to jam with them, even likening it to an “experiment.”