New Alex Lifeson Interview with Rolling Stone Magazine

Last week Rolling Stone Magazine posted an interview with Neil Peart discussing the band's latest album, the upcoming tour and other topics. Not known for having much love for Rush, that piece was a bit of a surprise. On the heels of that article comes another interview from Rolling Stone Magazine; this time with Alex Lifeson.

Titled Q&A: Rush's Alex Lifeson on 'Clockwork' Tour Setlist, Hall of Fame Prospects, the interview touches upon several topics including the set list for the upcoming Clockwork Angels Tour, the making of the album and the age-old story about Rush's exclusion from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

From the article:

It's got to be tough to make a setlist when you have so much history to draw from.
Yeah, it is. It's very difficult. We want to play the new material. We sort of go back and forth. "Should we play the whole thing? Or should we play most of it, or some of it, and mix it up?" It's always very difficult, and having come off a tour where we featured an album in its entirety, it makes the idea of featuring the whole of Clockwork Angels that much more appealing.

I think for the first leg of the tour, at the very least, we'll do most of the record – not all of it, but we'll do most of it. The material that's coming up amongst the three of us in the e-mails that we're sharing is the older material. There's a lot of stuff in there that we haven't played before, and we haven't played in a long time so it's got a freshness to it this time around. We'll always have to play that handful of songs that we've had the most commercial success with, but mixing it up with some other material that we haven't played in a long time is really great. It's shaping up to be a pretty good set.

I imagine you're tired of this subject, but I know a lot of people are furious that you guys aren't in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. How do you feel about it?
Honestly, we really, really don't care about it. It's someone's thing, and they can do whatever they want with it. They can have whomever they like. It's their thing.

It's a little bit different here in Canada. We've received awards that mean an awful lot more to us than being in the Hall of Fame. We got the Governor General's Performing Arts Award a couple weeks ago. That's really the highest accolade you can get in this country for the performing arts, and it's recognized nationally, and I felt so proud as a Canadian to be in this esteemed group of artists that have been there for the last 20 years.

Check out the entire article via this LINK.

Thanks to Eric from Power Windows for passing along the news.

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