Three days for 'Xanadu' and a caught drumstick: Rush's new drummer talks

Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson sit down with Anika Nilles and Brian Hiatt for Rolling Stone Canada, and the comments arrived by the hundreds, where an interview here usually draws about a dozen on its first day.

Channel: Rolling Stone Story of October 8, 2026Trari Newsroom

Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 186,929 views a day, 29 times a normal first day on this channel (6,357).

Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, and Anika Nilles on Reinventing Rush | Rolling Stone Canada

Rush brought its own crowd. "Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, and Anika Nilles on Reinventing Rush" passed 130,000 views in its first 13 hours. A Rolling Stone video of this length usually ends its whole first day near 6,000, and this one landed in a week that otherwise belonged to Sheryl Crow, Lennon Stella and Miranda Lambert.

The backstory is one most rock fans know. The Toronto trio played its last full tour, R40, in 2015, and drummer and lyricist Neil Peart died in 2020. Lee and Lifeson are now playing again with Nilles, a German drummer who had toured with Jeff Beck, and the description calls her the band's new touring drummer.

The conversation, led by Rolling Stone senior writer Brian Hiatt and made with the magazine's Canadian edition, is built on small, specific moments. Nilles talks about dropping a stick in the opening minutes of night one and catching it. Lee remembers realizing that some Rush songs are almost impossible to explain to anyone outside the fold. Nilles says it took her three days to learn "Xanadu," the long, shifting centerpiece of 1977's A Farewell to Kings. And the two founders explain why they love Steely Dan.

The comment section moved at a pace this channel rarely sees: more than 500 comments in half a day, against a usual first-day count of about 14. Much of it is about how well Nilles seems to fit with two musicians who have played together for half a century. Drummers in the thread keep coming back to the "Xanadu" story and the size of the catalog she had to learn from scratch. Others write about Lifeson's note choices, and Peart's name comes up again and again, remembered alongside the new lineup rather than set against it. Several viewers mention the shows they already have tickets for.

For Lee and Lifeson, that is the other half of the story: a band that once seemed finished, now explaining itself to a new drummer, and finding out which songs still resist explanation.

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The numbers

Here is how an interview about Rush's new chapter compares with the channel's usual first day.

the video's first day

usual first day here

6,357

this video

186,929

subscribers

1,160,000

no significant change in the last 7 days

total views

423,808,079

views per day

432,985

typical day: 467,725

the video

views

135,990

likes

4,428

comments

567

days online

1

compared with similar channels (subscribers)

VibesOnly

1,370,000

hollywoodrecords

1,360,000

Tholo Music

1,360,000

CharlieSloth

1,290,000

BBC Asian Network

1,200,000

Rolling Stone

1,160,000

As of October 8, 2026 · Data source: Trari Social News, Trari Traffic Trends and Ranking Platform, Google YouTube

Subscriber, view, like and comment counts are YouTube's. Rates, usual days, rankings, comparisons and categories are Trari's own calculations.

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