Drummer Anika Nilles looks back on her first rehearsal with Rush

New Rush frontman Anika Nilles, who performed with the band for the first time at Canada’s annual Juno Awards at the TD Coliseum in Hamilton, Ontario, over the weekend, talked about her first rehearsals with Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson, and about the man she succeeded in, the late Neil Peart.

“I had prepared a few songs before the flight, and we played them,” he says in an interview with the new issue of. Classic Rock. “But during the meeting, we also talked a lot about Neil – about his thoughts on the music and the drums. We talked a lot about the ideas of the songs. The most important thing is to capture the emotions – that it feels right for the two of them to play their music again.

“And in the end, it will feel right for the fans. We talked about that a lot. The first meeting was really about getting to know each other and seeing how we work together.”