How Rush Reunion Took Shape in Austrian Health Clinic

Alex Lifeson recalled how Rush’s reunion began taking shape in a strict health clinic.

The guitarist suffered from nausea for about 18 months and endured failed surgery to address his issues before he discovered the Austrian Vivamayr establishment. And when he decided to go there, bandmate Geddy Lee went along to offer moral support.

“I had a couple of surgeries,” Lifeson told Rolling Stone in a recent interview. “They didn’t go particularly well. The first one failed after a few years, and the second one had to cut through all of that failure. And I had terrible nausea for about a year and a half, and really struggled with so many things.”

He added: “[A] really good friend of ours told us about Vivamayr, which is a clinic in Austria, and Ged decided to come along. … [T]hey really set me straight. They taught me how to eat, what to eat, when to eat, all of those things, and a lot of other wellness treatments just to get the body in shape and feeling good.”

He reported that he lost 30 pounds of weight and learned how to deal with any issues that still arise. He also learned how to manage the arthritis he’s been living with for a number of years.

“I make sure that I work on the treatments daily,” he said. “We have a therapist that travels with us. We get my hands in shape and all of those things. So you just work through the problems. Everybody has problems. You just work it out and you move forward.”

Geddy Lee: Rush Rehearsals Began After Starving Sessions

Lifeson’s health concerns, understandably, contributed to his doubts over Rush’s reunion tour. “I really felt like we were done,“ he admitted. “There were aspects of it that I missed, but there were some that I really didn’t miss.

“You could feel like a hotel room is prison when you’re in there and you have no place to go or you don’t have the motivation to go and do things – to go for a walk or go to see a museum or do something outside of that space.

“And after a while, you’re tired and you don’t really want to. So you sit there on the edge of your bed with the remote in your hand going back and forth watching CNN or whatever, and that can be a lonely place. And I didn’t know if I really wanted to do that, and I felt that we had a really great legacy and we could live on that.”

It was only after discussions with Lee that he began to think a return might be possible. “In fact, when we were at Vivamayr, I set up a little studio in my room, and we practiced there. We rehearsed all the songs.”

Lee recalled: “When I heard he was going there with this friend of mine, I said, ‘I’m gonna go with you as moral support.’ But boy, it changed my life, too. That was such a great experience for me.

“It has a few frills, but it’s not a fancy joint or anything. So he said, ‘I’ll just bring my studio gear from home, and we can get some instruments from the local music store. And we can just jam.’ And so we ended up jamming every day at four o’clock after we’d done our treatments and starved all day.”

He added: “[W]e would play for an hour and a half every day. And we started really getting into it. And then when you combine that feeling we were having with the fact that he was feeling good, I think that’s what convinced him that maybe we should think about this [reunion].”