Three-hours after the curtain raised upon the Canadian prog-rock trio Rush, they're basking in the glow of audience adulation inside the United Center as they perform the evening's final song, "Working Man" from their self-titled 1974 debut. Vocalist/bassist Geddy Lee, guitarist Alex Lifeson and drummer and lyricist Neil Peart are dispensing an illuminating close to a set that traveled through the peaks and valleys of their forty-year career. The standing-on-top-of-a-mountain metallic dirge swung and swayed like Black Sabbath but soared like a Springsteen anthem. As the final notes wrung from their instruments and they waved to the crowd, I knew I had watched one of the greatest concert experiences of my life. I don't say that lightly knowing I've seen upwards of one-thousand different acts over the last quarter century and yet Rush in 2015 is a band at the peak of their powers. On tour in celebration of their fortieth anniversary ("R40"), they flat-out delivered the goods like a band that had so much on the line.

The Stage & Show

The show opened with an ingenious animation showing the different outfits, haircuts, styles and eras of the band over its four decades. As far as the stage itself, props from all of their previous tours made appearances in sprawling style as the multimedia show and screen at the back of the stage engaged the crowd, educated them and crew them closer to the music. It's easy to get disconnected from music in such a large venue that isn't a karaoke hit and Rush understands this. Despite having some of the most fervent fans of the rock n' roll era, the band found ways to ensure those in the nosebleeds would be engaged. There are bands with bigger and more expensive stages, but few are as effective as those Rush bring out on the road with them.

The most distinctive aspect of the 2015 stage was it began with many of the same props from the Clockwork Angels tour and then the Time Machine tour from 2010-11 and stagehands effectively removed and positioned props throughout the entire show. When the curtain rose for the second set, which opened with "Tom Sawyer", stacks of Marshall Amps were behind Lifeson and Lee had his own stack of amplifiers that served as a wall. With each song, pieces of the amps would disappear until the encores which were designed to look like the band was performing inside of a theater. During the "Working Man" finale artistic renderings of a high school gym were displayed bringing the history of the band full circle.

The Set List & Performance

Opening with "The Anarchist" from their latest album, Clockwork Angels and closing nearly three-hours later with "Working Man" from their 1974 debut, Rush maneuvered through all corners of their career. Not only did they play a set list covering their entire career, but they managed to perform seventeen songs that were not a part of the Clockwork Angels tour in 2012-13, seventeen to be specific. In fact, if you count their last three tour stops in Chicago (2011, 2012 and 2015) the band has performed sixty different and unique songs. They construct a set list that may see changes here and there, but will stay mostly intact for the better portion of the tour. While it limits surprises, the songs are played with such passionate precision, you don't think about what you didn't see, but rather what you discovered. I've seen three Rush shows on three tours this decade and I've seen sixty different and unique songs. For example, I've never seen KISS or Aerosmith perform that many individual songs despite seeing each band more than nearly a dozen times.

Why isn't KISS doing this? How and why does Rush do this so well when other bands falter. I give them credit for acknowledging their fan base for being fanatical. There may have been larger crowds at the United Center and other acts may pull off multiple nights but go outside before show time and scalper a are selling tickets for those acts for a quarter of face value. Outside the United Center before Rush there were no tickets to be had, each and every person in attendance was a fan despite the average ticket price reaching three-figures. It's ironic that bands like Aerosmith and Kiss, who have sold infinitely more records and had dozens more radio hits, can't fill places like the United Center anymore without major promotion or substantial support and yet Rush does it all of their own with minimal fuss?

In interviews in support of the tour, the band has alluded to this possibly being their last big scaled tour but after perceiving the magic that was the R40 show, I hope and pray it's merely exhaustion talking because there was a level of proficiency on display few could touch. If this is their last major scale tour, then they're going out on top and you should run, not walk, to find tickets to witness the magic. Rush is a band at the pinnacle of their powers at this very moment. More importantly, they challenge their audience with every single tour. There's a level of skill few can touch. Lifeson flexes his mastery of the guitar while Peart once again proves to seventeen-thousand fans that he's wraithlike as Lee solidifies the base of their sound.

The performances across the board were exemplary. "Clockwork Angels" featured an arena of arms-to-the-air during the chorus. Geddy Lee's fingers danced across his bass for the opening of "Headlong Flight" while "Far Cry", one of the masterworks from the last decade had carefully placed pyrotechnics while "One Little Victory" from Vapor Trails stirred and shook the arena reminding us we should be seeking out the remixed version of this album from a few years ago. "Distant Early Warning", from 1984's Grace Under Pressure album was greeted with a roar most bands could only stir up for an enormous radio hit, but Rush is anything but a normal band. "Roll the Bones", which was always a tad controversial with its rap breakdown mid-song, was a high light as Paul Rudd, Jason Segal, Pete Dinklage, Jay Baruchel and others lip-synched on the screen behind them. Here's a band that was never afraid to embrace new ideas whether it was synthesizers or rap and despite the controversy surrounding these parts of their career, on the concert stage they owned these sidesteps. Something many overlook is the ability to rewrite history with a concert tour. "Roll the Bones" was a highlight and one the fans will not forget anytime soon.

After a twenty-minute intermission the band went into overdrive opening the second set with "Tom Sawyer" and followed it with half of 1980's Permanent Waves. While I wish I could have found a way to bottle the euphoria in the room during "The Spirit of Radio", it was the nine-minute "Natural Science" that forced us to sit back and notice. Lee shifts between providing a pulsating foundation and complimenting Lifeson's muscular riffs while Peart in the background was pushing his bandmates faster and farther than the human eye could comprehend. If this wasn't enough, the fans became rapturous with the performance of "Jacob's Ladder" which is being performed on the r40 tour for the first time since 1980 and it didn't disappoint. Cracking a dystopian future in lieu of hope, it was a dreamlike moment that transcends the written word; you simply had to be there to feel the exhilaration from the crowd on this one. If this all still wasn't enough we had extended renderings of "Cygnus X-1" and "2112". "Xanadu" featured Lee and Lifeson on double-necked guitars and bass. Lifeson's guitar rang like a siren of song. Somehow they managed to top themselves in the encore with a trio of songs not performed in decades; "Lakeside Park" (last performed 1978), "Anthem" (last performed 1980) and "What You're Doing" (last performed 1977).

By stretching thee limits and embracing their past, this is more than customer service but a pathway to the future. We continually ignore history when it often holds the answer to our problems today and Rush knows that their music is one large body of work full of beauty and warts as well. The key is to acknowledge both and to take younger audiences along for the ride. Those in attendance were taken on a journey like no other. I've always been a believer that less is more but they manage the impossible as they wallop the audience with just the three of them. They are cued into one another like long lost triplets and they perfectly complement one another while never letting one rise above one another. Where so many bands falter is when ego steal the spotlight whereas in Rush the true superstar is the music. Even as the lights in the United Center came on and the crew began to break down the stage, the music was still in the air to be taken for future reference, proving that whether or not Rush ever launch a massive scale tour again, it's beyond the lighted stage where their music always have and always will continue to live and grow in the hearts and minds of its fans.