The Rush 40th anniversary tour, R40 is under way. The first show was Friday in Tulsa, Oklahoma and comes to Buffalo June 10th.
Telling the audience at the BOK Center that they were “celebrating way too many years of music,” Geddy Lee led Alex Lifeson and Neil Peart through 24 songs that spanned their 40-year career. The set began with the title track of 2012’s Clockwork Angels and worked backwards to “Working Man,” from the band’s 1974 debut.
Many of the songs, including “The Main Monkey Business” and “One Little Victory,” have not been in the band’s set for years. The biggest surprises were “Jacob’s Ladder,” which was only performed in 1980, the year it appeared on Permanent Waves, and “Lakeside Park.”
We asked Geddy how they compose a set list for a milestone tour and he said, “What we do is curate a song list with alternatives — with options. And until we get into the rehearsal mode and see how successful these songs feel to us…whether we’re doing them justice…that’s when we start making the cuts. [But] we’ll have enough so that we flip songs night-to-night if we need to.”
The opening video for the show is an animated feature displaying their different looks over four decades.
Rush’s opening night set list – May 8th at the BOK Center – Tulsa, OK
- Intro video – The World Is … The World Is
- Clockwork Angels
- The Anarchist
- Headlong Flight (with mini drum solo)
- Far Cry
- Main Monkey Business
- One Little Victory
- Animate
- Roll the Bones
- Distant Early Warning
- Subdivisions
Intermission
- Intro video – No Country for Old Hens
- Tom Sawyer
- Red Barchetta
- The Spirit of Radio
- Jacob’s Ladder
- Cygnus X-1 Book Two: Hemispheres – Prelude
- Cygnus X-1 Book One – The Voyage: Part 1
- Drum Solo
- Cygnus X-1 Book One – The Voyage: Part 3
- Closer to the Heart
- Xanadu
- 2112 Overture/Temples of Syrinx/Presentation/Grand Finale
Encore
- Intro Video: Mel’s Rockpile (starring Eugene Levy)
- Lakeside Park
- Anthem
- What You’re Doing
- Working Man
- Closing video: Exit Stage Left
