RUSH singer-bassist Geddy Lee dedicated the song “Red Sector A” to his late mother at the band’s show on October 7th at Ball Arena in Denver.
With the date marking the third anniversary of Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel that left nearly 1,200 people dead, including many at a music festival, Lee felt compelled to do something he hadn’t done on the band’s “Fifty Something” reunion tour yet — dedicate “Red Sector A” to his mom Mary Weinrib, a holocaust survivor who died in 2021 at the age of 95.
Lee addressed the audience as follows, “I’d like to do something different before this next song. Something I’ve never done. Because of this date today I’d like to dedicate this song to my mom. It’s relevant because I once told [late drummer] Neil [Peart] a story about my mom’s survival in World War II, and he was so inspired by that he chose to turn that into a sort of sci-fi story that expressed the feelings that she expressed on the day she was living it. This is that song…”
Mary grew up in a Jewish community in Poland, and was forced by the Nazis into concentration camps, including Auschwitz. After she was freed in 1945, she reunited with and married Morris Weinrib, whom she had fallen in love with while at Auschwitz. They eventually moved to Toronto, where Geddy was born in 1953.
RUSH’s North American “Fifty Something” tour runs through a December 17th show in Vancouver, with tickets available here. The band will then embark on South American and UK/European runs in 2027.
Watch Geddy Lee pay tribute to his late mother Mary in the video below.
