Rush to tour in Toronto, 50 years after their ‘worst’ album

The reunion concerts, described as a celebration of the band's more than 50-year musical legacy, will pay tribute to late drummer and lyricist Neil Peart, who died of brain cancer five years ago.

In Peart's absence, Anika Nills, a German drummer and composer, will play percussion on the 2026 tour.

The Willowdale-born band originally scheduled two shows in Toronto at Scotiabank Arena on August 7 and 9, but just days later Rush said he would play two more shows in the band's homeland, on August 11 and 13. All tickets for these concerts are already sold out.

With most of the first batch of cities sold out, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has added 17 more cities to the tour, including Montreal, Vancouver and Edmonton, Alta. Their musical journey will begin in Los Angeles on June 7th and end in Vancouver on December 15th. Artist pre-sales at the new city stops will begin October 27th.

As fans prepare for Rush's next show, we take you on a walk down memory lane on what many have called the band's “worst” album.

Leaning back and crossing his right leg over his left, Lee asked a question.

“Do you remember filming Weasel of Steel?” he asked.

“When you speak, remember…” Lifeson responded to scattered laughter from the crowd and Lee himself.

“Do you remember how much hashish we smoked while filming Caress of Steel?” Lee asked.

“Yes, then it was like that…” admitted Lifeson.

Lee's question worked on two levels.

He jokingly asked whether Lifeson's drug-fuelled haze allowed him to recall any details, and whether the guitarist had any special memories of writing, recording and producing an album that, even to his most ardent fans, is little more than an unforgettable footnote in a career of progressive and bold excellence.

The album, which turns 50 in September, is one of the most enigmatic in the band's vast and deep catalogue, thanks in large part to its esoteric narratives and expansive, lengthy arrangements. It was criticized upon release and marked the beginning of an era of deep suffering for the group.

It came just seven months after the rising “Fly by Night”, which briefly charted in the US. Their self-titled 1974 debut, which received modest support in Central America, allowed the band to tour the United States.

In his memoirs “My Wonderful Life” Lee admitted that he was concerned about whether the band could continue to follow the Caress the Steel tour, which later became known as the Down the Tubes Tour, concerns that were not apparent during the recording or touring of their first two albums.

“After that album came out, they really thought that was the end of it,” recalled Howard Ungerleider, the band's longtime tour manager and lighting director, who was their de facto one-man team in the beginning.

The album exhibits the ambitious musical scope and epic lyricism for which Rush has become known, but it's a clumsy, somewhat juvenile transition.

It features Lee's quivering, searing vocals (“Bastille Day”), stirring riffs (part of “Plateau of Bacchus” on “The Fountain of Lamnet”) and some of the most technically graceful drumming ever from Billy Cobham (“Necromancer”).

At its core, it chronicles the revolution and the adventures of Tolkien, emulating the breadth of progressive legends Genesis and Yes while embodying the musical spirit of much heavier, rockier bands.

It failed because they couldn't find a way to elegantly transport the straightforward hard rock of their debut (“Working Man”, “In the Mood”) to the stratospheric heights of their later opuses (“Cygnus X-1”, “Xanadu”).

“It has a lot of different strands and you wonder if they fit together,” said Chris McDonald, dean of the School of Arts and Social Sciences at Cape Breton University and author of “Rush, Rock Music and the Middle Class.” “It's not like we're throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks, but it looks like they've been trying to reinvent themselves as a new band. And they haven't quite left some of the old behind (to move) 100 percent into the new.”

However, for critics, the album was an all-too-perfect microcosm of everything there was to hate about Rush.

It was derided as unfocused, meandering and self-satisfying, and its poor reception was such a shock that Peart, also the band's lyricist, told Star music critic Peter Goddard in 1977 that the record represented a “crisis” for a band just coming into its own.

One scathing review in the Kingston Whig-Standard called it “sheer torture,” hampered by Lee's “absolutely disgusting” voice. (The reviewer didn't even bother to get the song titles right, confusing the 12-minute “The Necromancer” with “The Romancer.”)

The album cover is dusty, mythical and dense. The main character, who looks like a wizard, is accompanied on a rocky platform by a flexible snake. The inscription is shiny and golden.

But that's not where it all started, at least not visually.

The original cover was a much more elegant design, drawn entirely in bright, rich pencil. Artist Hugh Syme was inspired by both Escher's illusory sketches and the epic narratives of Peart's lyrics, he told the Star.

The decision to change the cover from slick to smoked was made by the record company itself, rather than by the band, who Syme says have always respected and supported his vision.

“More often than not, with Rush, especially with Neil, I was spoiled rotten,” says Syme, who designed every Rush album cover thereafter, from his studio in New Castle, Indiana. – His names were always very memorable. Even though they were simple, they were quite strong. I was spoiled as hell when he would tell me, “It's a new title,” and I would say, “That's fucking great, I love it!”

“These guys didn’t micromanage at all,” Syme added. “They started to respect and trust what I came up with.”

The album's lukewarm reception was especially crushing because of how much the trio enjoyed the 45-minute, five-song record they had just recorded in a tatty studio in East York.

“I was excited about the album at the time and thought we were going to make a great record,” producer and engineer Terry Brown told the Star. “Personally, I think it’s aged damn well.”

Brown, whom Lifeson once described as the band's fourth member, worked with them from “Fly by Night” to their 1982 album “Signals.”

According to his recollections, the Caress of Steel sessions were fun and carefree.

Contrary to the rock 'n' roll stereotype of internal strife, Rush's career has long been marked by a distinct absence of personal conflict. By all accounts, the three musicians have always been close-knit, brotherly and respectful, both on tour and in the studio.

“I mean, you can hear it on the recording,” Brown noted. “At least, in my opinion, there was no particular difficulty with it. And I remember when we did it, we were delighted.”

On the other hand, the subsequent tour was much less optimistic.

With little support from the press or their label, they played smaller shows for fewer fans, sharing the bill with far less glamorous acts than Aerosmith and Kiss, for whom they opened on the Fly by Night tour.

In the band's inner circle it was known as the “Down the Tubes Tour” or, more accurately, the “Corrosive Steel Tour”.

Rush fan site Power Windows, which compiles more than 1,900 of the band's shows, even brackets the tour with a derogatory moniker.

“It was a very dark turning point in their careers,” Ungerleider said. “Looking forward, they were confident that this was it.”

Still, they persisted, and rather than bow to industry pressure to release a poppy, singles-heavy fourth album, they headed headlong in the opposite direction with 1976's 2112, which Star favorably described as “rock that attacks the senses.”

Brown said “Caress of Steel” represents a natural but important stepping stone for the band, which is just trying its hand at expansive epic narratives drawn from fantasy and science-fiction literature.

“It definitely set the stage for 2112,” Brown said. “There was no way I could make a pop album with these guys and get them to put out a whole bunch of singles. It made absolutely no sense.”

Rush were—and remain—a punching bag for a certain segment of the critical class that quickly dismissed them as self-indulgent, hyperactive Poindexters who spent too much time inventing three new time signatures before the first chorus of a 12-minute song and not enough time making Zeppelin-like radio hits.

Despite Rush's commercial success – they have reportedly sold over 40 million albums and were accepted into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013 – and their colossal influence on generations of musicians, the band's appeal was considered limited compared to some of their contemporaries.

Their crowd was diligent and even obedient. As Goddard wrote of Rush's three Maple Leaf Gardens concerts in 1981, “Only at a Rush concert could the crowd follow orders.”

“It’s actually an audience, not a crowd,” he noted. “It’s quieter, more intense.”

For Brown's group, who stopped touring in 2015had an almost magical atmosphere that was meant to enchant others as much as he did: Lee's voice was brilliant and precise, Lifeson's deft guitar playing swept him off his feet, and Peart's drumming set the standard for countless musicians who came after him.

It was only a matter of time before the rest of the world realized this.

“I used to have this thing,” Brown said. “If I love these guys so much, there must be several thousand people who agree with me.”

In the end, Brown found more than several thousand people who agreed with him, even if not everyone agreed with “The Weasel of Steel.”

Fifty years later, this is clearer than ever, and the band itself is very grateful.

“I’m so glad that we have so much shared memories,” Lee reverberates to a rapt Massey Hall audience. “We're so lucky.”

With files from Savannah Ridley