All great things have to begin somewhere. For Rush, that somewhere was Willowdale, a suburb of the Canadian city of Toronto. That was where Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee met as schoolkids - the start of an enduring friendship and musical partnership. In 2012, as the band released their swansong album Clockwork Angels, the pair looked back on story of the band’s formative years: their school days and early adventures in music, the struggle to make it, the difficult birth of the first Rush album, the tough decision to fire original drummer John Rutsey, and how the subsequent arrival of Neil Peart – drummer and lyricist – completed the classic Rush line-up that survives to this day.
