RUSH Guitarist ALEX LIFESON: 'We Have No Plans To Tour Or Record Any More. We're Basically Done'

RUSH guitarist Alex Lifeson has confirmed that the band is unlikely to play any more shows or make new music. "It's been a little over two years since RUSH last toured," he told The Globe And Mail. "We have no plans to tour or record any more. We're basically done. After 41 years, we felt it was enough."

But the 64-year-old musician added that he has "actually been busier lately than I have been in a while. I'm writing a lot," he said. "I'm writing on four or five different little projects. I get these requests to do guitar work with other people. It's really a lot of fun for me. It's low pressure: I get to be as creative as I want to be and I can work a little outside of the box, which is really attractive to me."

Lifeson also revealed that he was writing for the West End Phoenix, a new monthly newspaper in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, where RUSH is based.

RUSH's chronic tendinitis-suffering drummer Neil Peart hinted during a 2015 interview with Drumhead magazine that he would no longer tour with the band, revealing his daughter had already started referring to dad as "a retired drummer."

A short time later, bassist/vocalist Geddy Lee played down Peart's comments, blaming the media for making too much of his bandmate's remarks.

Geddy said in a 2016 interview that he had "accepted" that RUSH's last batch of live shows was "probably the last one as a tour."

The 65-year-old Peart revealed in RUSH's documentary "Time Stand Still" that he initially had no intention of going on a tour in 2015. "In November [of 2014], we all got together in Toronto and I was quite prepared to say, 'Sorry, I'm done,'" he said in the film. "I realized I was kind of a solitary misfit in that context of being the one that wanted to pull that plug. I left one little window in my mind that if somebody wanted to do it one more time and didn't know if they'd be able to, [I would do it]."

Lifeson and Lee confirmed that the band will never do a show unless all three musicians agree to take part. "It's not like you just get new members of a band and just go for it," said Lifeson. "RUSH has never been a band like that. We'd never, ever do something like that." Lee added: "We always said that if the three of us aren't on board, we don't do a thing. There have been other decisions in our career where the three of us weren't on board and we didn't do it. Nothing as profound as ending our touring life, but fair enough. So one guy doesn't want to do that thing anymore that I love to do. That hurts. But there's nothing I can do about it and that's part of the agreement."