Rush's last concert with Neil Peart: the R40 tour finale at the Forum, Los Angeles, August 1, 2015

About the artist

Rush formed in Toronto in 1968^[1]. First called the Projection, they took the name Rush at the suggestion of drummer John Rutsey's older brother^[2]. Rutsey, Geddy Lee (vocals, bass) and Alex Lifeson (guitar) released their self-titled debut on their own Moon label on March 1, 1974, in a pressing of only two or three thousand copies. Cleveland DJ Donna Halper put "Working Man" into heavy rotation, and the song caught the ears of American listeners and of Mercury Records^[2]. Forty-one years later, it would be the last song Rush played with Neil Peart.

Rutsey left after the first album, and Peart joined in 1974^[2][3]. He also became the band's lyricist, and his interest in existentialist literature and science fiction shaped music that The Canadian Encyclopedia describes as a blend of progressive art rock and heavy metal^[1]. 2112 followed in 1976^[4], and Moving Pictures, released on February 12, 1981, with "Tom Sawyer," "Red Barchetta," "YYZ" and "Limelight," reached No. 3 in the US and UK and No. 1 in Canada^[5]. "YYZ," an instrumental, takes its title from the airport code for Toronto^[5].

Rush won the 1975 Juno for best new band and entered the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 1994^[1]. Clockwork Angels (2012) won the Juno for rock album of the year^[1], and in 2013 Dave Grohl and Taylor Hawkins inducted the band into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame^[4].

Rush played Japan only once, in November 1984: four shows added at the end of the Grace Under Pressure tour, including a November 16 date at the Seto City Cultural Center in Aichi Prefecture^[6].

Why this was thought to be the end

Rush announced the R40 Live Tour on its website on January 22, 2015: 34 North American cities, opening in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on May 8 and closing in Los Angeles on August 1. The announcement said it would "most likely be their last major tour of this magnitude"^[7]. According to Ultimate Classic Rock, the band never billed it as a farewell tour, partly because its future was genuinely unclear and partly because the members disliked the idea of farewell-tour marketing^[8].

In April, before the tour began, Lifeson told The Canadian Press that 40 years was a long time to be touring the way Rush toured, and mentioned family and health among his reasons. Lee, speaking to Rolling Stone, said that an end to big tours did not have to mean the end of Rush: there could be new projects, or shows that did not involve touring^[9].

The tour drew songs from 16 of the band's 20 studio albums and ran in reverse chronological order, starting with the newest material and working back to the earliest^[6]. The stage changed several times during the night to reflect how Rush's shows had looked at different points in its career^[10]. The two hometown shows at Toronto's Air Canada Centre, on June 17 and 19, were filmed and recorded and released on November 20 as R40 Live^[10].

Peart's own expectations were different from his bandmates'. According to Rolling Stone, he had told Lee and Lifeson that this would be his last gig, and they did not quite believe him; Lee later said they should have known^[11]. Peart's reasons were that the physical demands of touring had become too hard on his body, and that he wanted to be a full-time father to his young daughter^[11]. Lee has also said that Peart struggled throughout the tour to play at his peak, and that as a perfectionist he did not want to give people anything less than they expected of him^[8]. In an interview with The Guardian quoted by Loudwire, Lee described the band as having "split into two camps" by the end of the tour: "Neil was getting happier and Alex and I were getting sadder"^[12].

So the Forum show arrived as the last date of the tour rather than as an announced farewell. JamBase's headline the next day described it as the end of what "may be" Rush's final tour^[13].

What is known about the day

The Forum is the former home of the Los Angeles Lakers and Kings, long nicknamed the "Fabulous Forum." It now serves mainly as a music venue, and since April 2022 it has been called the Kia Forum^[14]. August 1, 2015, was a Saturday, and the last night of the North American tour^[13][7].

As on every night of the tour, the show opened with a video introduction^[13]. The first song was "The Anarchist" from Clockwork Angels, the 2012 album, with a short drum feature from Peart folded into it. "Headlong Flight," from the same record, came next, and the set then stepped back through the years with "Far Cry" and "One Little Victory"^[13][8]. "Roll the Bones" came with a video of celebrities performing the rap section^[13]. The surprise of the night came near the end of the first set: "Losing It," a rarely played fan favorite, performed live for only the fifth time ever according to JamBase, with violinist Jonathan Dinklage joining the band^[13]. "Subdivisions" closed the first set^[13].

During the intermission, the R40 drum kit was swapped for a replica of an older kit^[13]. The second set also began with a video, then moved from "Tom Sawyer" and "Red Barchetta" into the 1970s, with the backdrop changing to suit each era^[11][13]. A drum solo sat inside the "Cygnus X-1" sequence, the double-neck instruments came out for "Xanadu," and the set ended with four parts of the 1976 "2112" suite, from the Overture to the Grand Finale^[13][8][4].

The encore was introduced by a video featuring actor Eugene Levy^[13]. By this point, Rolling Stone noted, the backward journey had turned the stage into something like a high school gym^[11]. The band played "Lakeside Park" and "Anthem," then "What You're Doing" and "Working Man" from the debut album^[13][8]. "Working Man" ended with a brief tag of "Garden Road," an early song the band had never released on record^[13][11]. Near the end of the song, Peart stood up at his kit and took photos of his bandmates^[13].

When the last chords faded, Lee thanked the Los Angeles crowd and began thanking "the greatest crew and organization in the world." At that moment Peart came out from behind the drums and stood between Lee and Lifeson, taking a bow with them. In some 40 years of touring, it was the only time he left his position to greet an audience, and it took his bandmates by surprise^[8][11]. Lee closed by thanking the United States for 40 years: "I do hope we'll meet again some time"^[13][8]. In the documentary released the following year, Peart said he had spent four decades never going out front, because that was "not my territory," and that coming out that night "was totally the right thing to do"^[8][11].

After the band left the stage, a closing video played on the screens. In it the members try to get into their own dressing room, only to find it occupied by characters from their album covers; turned away, Lifeson asks, "Now what?"^[8][13]

What the show left behind

In December 2015, four months after the tour ended, Peart told Drumhead magazine that he had retired, comparing himself to an athlete: there comes a time, he said, to take yourself out of the game^[9]. Lee told the UK magazine Prog that the reports were not accurate and that nothing had been decided about the band's next move; Peart, he said, was simply explaining why he did not want to tour^[15]. According to Rolling Stone, Lee and Lifeson hoped Peart would keep playing in some form and that the band would return after a break, but that never happened. Lee said that if all three were not on board, they would not do it, and bringing in another drummer was not considered^[11].

In November 2016 came Rush | Time Stand Still, a documentary that follows the R40 tour and builds to the final show at the Forum. It had a one-night screening in more than 400 US theaters on November 3, narrated by Paul Rudd in its theatrical version, and came out on Blu-ray and DVD on November 18^[16].

In January 2018, Lifeson told The Globe and Mail that Rush had "no plans to tour or record any more. We're basically done," adding, "After 41 years, we felt it was enough"^[17]. Lee said the same year, on SiriusXM's Trunk Nation, that he felt good about the way the band's body of work had ended^[8].

Neil Peart died of brain cancer on January 7, 2020, in Santa Monica, California, at the age of 67^[3].

Rush 50, a 50-track anthology released on March 21, 2025, closes with a previously unreleased live recording from this night: the medley of "What You're Doing," "Working Man" and "Garden Road," newly mixed from the multitracks by Terry Brown^[18]. A Japanese four-disc edition, limited to 1,500 sets, followed on March 28^[19].

On October 6, 2025, Lee and Lifeson announced Fifty Something, a 2026 tour celebrating Rush's music and legacy and the late Neil Peart. Behind the drums would be Anika Nilles, a German drummer who had played more than 60 shows with Jeff Beck^[20]. The central question, Lee said, had been "how do we replace someone who's irreplaceable?"^[20] The initial run of 12 shows in seven cities grew to 40 dates within two weeks^[21].

The tour opened at the Kia Forum on June 7, 2026: Rush's first tour in 11 years, at the venue where the band had last played with Peart^[22]. With keyboardist Loren Gold added to the lineup, the roughly three-hour show, intermission included, returned to Peart again and again in video tributes^[22][23]. The encore ended, as it had eleven years earlier, with "Working Man"^[22][23]. In August, four hometown nights in Toronto were to be filmed in full for a likely concert film, directed by Lee's brother Allan Weinrib, who had worked on R40 Live^[24]. In Philadelphia on August 21, the night again closed with "Working Man," dedicated to original drummer John Rutsey^[25].

As of November 2026, the tour is still running. When the dates were expanded in October 2025, the 2026 leg was scheduled to end in Vancouver on December 15^[21], and South American and European dates are planned for early 2027^[22]. Because Rush has returned to the stage under the same name, this site files the August 1, 2015 show as "Not the end after all." It remains, all the same, the last concert Neil Peart played with Rush.