Rush had more surprises in store on their fourth night at Los Angeles' Kia Forum, finishing the first run of their Fifty Something Tour

“I never thought I’d see this again,” Rush‘s Geddy Lee said early in night four of Rush’s first tour in 11 years, looking out at the crowd at Los Angeles’ Kia Forum. As they completed their triumphant run in Los Angeles, playing a different set of songs each night, they laid out the blueprint for the rest of the tour — going forward, it appears that the band’s current plan is to choose from one of those four setlists each evening. As with night two, Saturday night’s show featured all seven sections of “2112,” and also debuted three previously unplayed songs:  “The Pass” from 1989’s Presto, “The Anarchist” from 2012’s Clockwork Angels, and, most shockingly, the first performance of the title track of A Farewell to Kings since 1979. A few thoughts on the evening’s show:

After a mere 47-year absence from the stage, “A Farewell to Kings” sounded like it never left. Near the end of the second set, following an ecstatic “YYZ,” Rush debuted the deepest cut of the whole tour without warning. As with the studio version, the track began with Lifeson plucking out a delicate intro on a nylon-string guitar before blasting into monster electric riffs. The band presumably avoided the track for many years largely because the vocal melody starts at the top of Lee’s range and then stays there, but Lee has become perhaps the only rock singer of his generation to actually reverse vocal aging. For this tour, he’s regained some of his old banshee range, apparently thanks to some remarkably effective coaching. So he sounded quite comfortable with the song, which he and Lifeson must have had to re-learn from scratch nearly to the extent that new touring drummer Anika Nilles did. The instrumental break before the final chorus, with Nilles let loose on Neil Peart’s parts and Lifeson soloing like his Seventies self, was one of the many moments of uncanny resurrection on the tour so far — the essence of Rush, in full, despite the tragic absence of a key third of the band. 

A deeply felt version of “The Pass” was another reminder of how deep Rush’s music  — and Peart’s lyrics — can cut. Among non-fans, the band somehow gained a reputation as cerebral and chilly, but that’s far from the truth. “This is one of those songs that goes straight to your heart,” Lee said, introducing “The Pass,” after noting the evolution of Peart’s writing over the years, and he wasn’t kidding. A not-insignificant number of fans have confessed online that its achingly compassionate portrait of a suicidal teen “standing on a rocky ledge/ staring down into a heartless sea” literally saved their lives. Lifeson somehow summed up the song’s entire message in his simple, emotive solo.

Anika Nilles has become a Rush fan. The German drum virtuoso wasn’t deeply familiar with the band’s repertoire when Lee and Lifeson first brought her to Toronto to jam. But over the course of a year or so, she took on the seemingly impossible task of not just learning hours worth of Neil Peart’s parts, but attempting to absorb his overall approach. Somewhere along the way, in addition to achieving those goals, she also clearly learned to love the music she’s playing as much as the audience does. She smiles when she recreates a particularly gnarly Peart fill on “Tom Sawyer” or “Xanadu,” but it’s not just pride and relief: She’s having fun up there. Peart had many phases as a drummer, and his polyrhythmic Eighties stuff can sound like another player altogether — but judging from Nilles’ prior work, that version of him is closest to her own natural style, so her playing on “New World Man” and “Distant Early Warning” sounded particularly effortless Saturday night.

Rush playing “The Spirit of Radio” remains the absolute definition of arena rock. When the last vestiges of the classic-rock era finally fade, many of the moments that made up its truest essence will be impossible to explain to those who missed it. The way Lifeson kicks back into the song’s intro riff as Lee howls about invisible airwaves crackling with life, or the moment the lights blaze when Lee shouts “concert halls” — you had to be there.

The encore’s double-pack of songs from Rush’s debut was a reminder of a path not taken. With original drummer John Rutsey, the earliest, pre-prog, heavily Zeppelin-influenced incarnation of Rush was already great, albeit in a more primal manner.  Lee’s gleeful, life-affirming “yeah, oh yeah” at the beginning of “Finding My Way” Saturday night over Lifeson’s power chords and galloping riffs was somehow nearly as profound as many of the evening’s most philosophical lyrics. 

Setlist:
Set One
“Xanadu”
“Limelight”
“Subdivisions”
“The Pass”
“Freewill”
“Bravado”
“The Camera Eye”
“The Trees”
“The Anarchist”
“The Spirit of Radio”

Set two
“2112 Part I: Overture”
“2112 Part II: The Temples of Syrinx”
“2112 Part III: Discovery”
“2112 Part IV: Presentation”
“2112 Part V: Oracle: The Dream”
“2112 Part VI: Soliloquy”
“2112 Part VII: Grand Finale”
“Far Cry”
“Distant Early Warning”
“New World Man”
“Vital Signs”
“Time Stand Still”
“YYZ”
“A Farewell to Kings”
“The Garden”
“Tom Sawyer”
Encore
“Finding My Way”
“Working Man”