Monday, April 21, 2008

Alex Lifeson Interview

Rush's Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee are on a media rampage right now, doing loads of radio and press interviews for the second leg of the Snakes and Arrows tour, which began a few days ago.

A friend of mine sent me this interview of Alex Lifeson from Saturday's New Orleans Times-Picayune. Lots of good nuggets in there. Check it out.

I thought this Q&A was particularly interesting, from a biz standpoint:

Q. The first leg of the "Snakes & Arrows" tour was your highest grossing tour ever.

A. We were probably up about 20 percent on average on attendance. We always do well, but there were even more people coming out on this last tour. And a lot of younger kids, which was very interesting to see.

This is great news, but also a bit of a surprise. I thought they would have had better attendance on the 30th anniversary tour, or maybe even in their heyday in the 80s. Shows you how much I know.

3 comments:

VoxMoose said...

A couple more yummy elements from the interview:

There's been talk about getting an orchestra together and doing "2112." That's almost Spinal Tap-ish in concept. But at the same time, it might be kind of cool with a great visual presentation.

Also:

We've got so much catalog. I'd love to do a tour where we just play stuff that we've never played before. Don't play anything that we play now and call it the B-track Rush tour. Play some of the stuff nobody has ever heard us play live. That would be a lot of fun. There are lots of opportunities and directions that we can go.

Chris said...

I'm just thrilled to see bands that have been around a long time continuing to do interesting things, whether it is Rush, Maiden, or even Heaven and Hell (Dio-era Black Sabbath, for those who don't know), rather than just becoming tribute bands of themselves (*cough* KISS *cough*).

Is the Rush show in Portland sold out?

Isorski said...

Hi Chris - I don't think the Portland show is sold out. Check Ticketbastard to be sure, of course...