Alex Lifeson on upcoming solo projects, Rush's future, Geddy Lee's book project, and more in new Sirius XM interview

Earlier this week I'd mentioned how Alex Lifeson had been interviewed for Sirius XM's Debatable program on the Volume channel just prior to this past Friday's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony. Reader Will C had heard the interview and given us an overview, but now Blabbermouth.net has posted a detailed recap with several direct quotes. Here's what Lifeson had to say about the future of Rush:

... "I would say that it's unlikely that we'll tour again as RUSH. Really, we toured for forty-one years, and I have to say that first year off, I felt like I was grieving for my career and the band, but truly, forty-one years of touring the way we toured, I shouldn't feel badly about that." ... Even though there are no plans for RUSH to regroup in the foreseeable future, Lifeson revealed that "Ged and I will probably do something together. He's been really busy. He's working on his own little book project. He's become quite a bass guitar collector, and he wants to do a little thing on the history of the instrument. So that's keeping him super busy." As for Peart, Lifeson said: "I'm not sure what Neil's doing these days. He's on the West Coast. He's always got something going on." ...

Alex also spoke about some of his own upcoming musical projects:

... "I'm writing a lot of music lately, and I'd like to do some stuff," he said. "I'm gonna play on a couple of other records over the next couple of months, just guesting and things like that. "I'll always play music, I'll always love music," he continued. "I've been playing a lot more guitar lately than I have in a long time and writing a lot of stuff on the acoustic [guitar]. I'm having fun writing trippy kind of atmospheric stuff, a lot of acoustic, some electric stuff, of course. But it's really kind of fun being sort of not the guy that I was, writing at that time with the band. It's all solo stuff. I'll get friends to play on it and things like that." While admitting that he didn't feel a "driving need" to release a solo record, Lifeson said that he had a more relaxed approach about making music these days. "It's funny. One day, it's, like, 'Yeah, this is exactly what I wanna do.' And then the next day it's, like, 'This sucks. Forget it. I'm not doing this,'" he said. "I love those songs, then I hate them, and then I love 'em again. So it's pretty typical, I think. It's a much more focused thing when it's the band. I just need to be more focused and a little more disciplined, I think. But it's something I would like to do."

He also mentioned that there's an A Farewell to Kings 40th anniversary box set in the works - similar to what was done with 2112 last year:

... "right now there's some work being done on a similar thing with [1977's] 'A Farewell To Kings'." ... "We're not really involved in that so much; it's a record-company thing, or a publisher thing. We like to be slightly involved, in just giving approvals and make sure that everything's done in a way that we would like to see it." ...

You can read the entire recap at Blabbermouth.net here.