RUSH surprised fans on Monday morning with the announcement of a 2026 North American tour, marking their first shows in 11 years. Even more surprising may have been their choice of drummer to fill the shoes of the late Neil Peart: the relatively unknown Anika Nilles.
Interestingly, RUSH frontman Geddy Lee first mentioned Nilles’ name in a 2023 interview with The Guardian, saying, “I heard this drummer the other day, I think her name is Anika. She played on the last Jeff Beck tour and I thought was she was terrific.”
On Sunday night, October 5th, at a press event at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland (as transcribed by Ultimate Classic Rock), Lee revealed how Nilles became RUSH’s new drummer.
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“My bass tech, Skully was working with Jeff Beck and he was on tour,” began Lee. “Sadly, before Jeff passed away, he was on tour with him for a few years, and on the last tour, he was playing with this drummer named Anika Nilles, an incredible drummer, and he would come home, he would rave about her, What a brilliant player she was, and great person, blah, blah, blah…”
He continued, “So I kind of looked her up, and she’s all over YouTube. She’s fairly well known in her own world of music. And then we started talking about playing again, so I said, check her out. Maybe that’s an interesting way to go. And so one thing led to another, and when we made the decision, we wanted to see if it would work.”
Lee went on to say that he and guitarist Alex Lifeson didn’t exactly know what their intentions were when they brought Nilles in to jam with them, even likening it to an “experiment.”