title: Forward (association football)

text: In early 2–3–5 formations the inside-forwards would flank the centre-forward on both sides. With the rise of the "WM" formation, the inside forwards were brought back to become attacking midfielders, supplying balls to the centre-forward and the two attacking outside forwards – known as the "outside right" and "outside left". In Italian football jargon, the inside forward was initially occasionally known as a "mezzala" (literally "half–winger," not to be confused with wing-half); however, the use of this particular term to describe inside forwards is now obsolete, as the "mezzala" label was later reapplied to describe the role of offensive–minded central midfielders in Italian football, while the inside forward role was instead labelled as "interno" ("internal," in Italian) in Italian football in subsequent years.


title: Forward (association football)

text: In today's game, inside forwards have been pushed up front to become either out-and-out attackers or false-9s, or out wide to wingers (in a 4–3–3 formation), or they have even been switched to a deeper position in which they are required to drop back to link-up with the midfield, while also supporting another striker playing alongside them up front (in a 4–4–2 formation). Many teams still employ one of their strikers in this latter more withdrawn role as a support forward for the main striker, in a role broadly similar to the inside forward.


title: Forward (association football)

text: An outside forward plays as the advanced forward on the right or left wing – as an outside right or outside left, typically as part of a 2–3–5 formation or one of its variants. As football tactics have largely developed, and wingers have dropped back to become midfielders, the terminology has changed and "outside forward" has become a historical term. Many commentators and football analysts still refer to the wing positions as "outside right" and "outside left". Such players in the modern era have been labelled "wing forwards", particularly when the two wingers play high up the pitch in a 4–3–3 or similar formation, where the front 3 attacking players have 3 central midfielders behind them. A wing forward who is known for cutting inside and shooting can have the term "inverted winger" used interchangeably.


title: Forward (association football)

text: A winger is an offensive player located in a wide position near the touchlines. They can be classified as forwards, considering their origin as the old "outside-forward" position, and continue to be termed as such in most parts of the world, especially in Latin and Dutch football cultures. However, in the British game (in which the 4–4–2 formation and its variants are most commonly used) they are usually counted as part of the midfield.


title: Forward (association football)

text: It is a winger's duty to beat opposing full-backs, deliver cut-backs or crosses from wide positions and, to a lesser extent, to beat defenders and score from close range. They are usually some of the quickest players in the team and usually have good dribbling skills as well. In Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese usage, the defensive duties of the winger have been usually confined to pressing the opposition fullbacks when they have the ball. Otherwise, a winger will drop closer to the midfield to make themself available, should their team win back the ball.


title: Forward (association football)

text: In British and other northern European styles of football, the wide-midfielder is expected to track back all the way to their own corner flag should their full-back require help, and also to track back their marker, as well as tucking into the midfield when the more central players are trying to pressure the opposition for the ball. This is a large responsibility for attack-orientated players, and particularly those like Joaquín (winger/wide midfielder), or Ryan Giggs (winger/striker), and John Barnes (winger/central midfielder), who lack the physical attributes of a wing-back or of a more orthodox midfield player. As these players grow older and lose their natural pace, they are frequently redeployed as "number 10s" between the midfield and the forward line, where their well-honed ball control, technical skills, ability to create chances, and improved reading of the game in the final third can serve to improve their teams' attacking options in tight spaces. An example is Inter Milan's use of veteran Luís Figo behind one or two other attackers, either as a second striker or in a playmaking role as an attacking midfielder.


title: Forward (association football)

text: In recent years there has been a trend of playing inverted wingers – wide players stationed on the 'wrong' side of the pitch, in order to enable them to cut inside and shoot on their stronger foot and sometimes provide in-swinging crosses. This tactic was used by Frank Rijkaard, who, whilst at Barcelona, moved Lionel Messi from the left flank onto the right wing, initially against the player's wishes. This allowed him to cut into the centre and shoot or cross with his left foot. Another example of a successful inverted winger partnership was Bayern Munich's pairing of the left-footed Arjen Robben alongside the right-footed Franck Ribéry, on the right and left flanks respectively.


title: Forward (association football)

text: A description that has been used in the media to label a variation upon the inverted winger position is that of an "attacking," "false," or "goalscoring winger," as exemplified by Cristiano Ronaldo and Gareth Bale's roles on the left and right flank during their time at Real Madrid in particular. This label has been used to describe an offensive–minded inverted winger, who will seemingly operate out wide on paper, but who instead will be given the freedom to make unmarked runs into more advanced central areas inside the penalty area, in order to get on the end of passes and crosses and score goals, effectively functioning as a striker. This role is somewhat comparable to what is known as the "raumdeuter" role in German football jargon (literally "space interpreter"), as exemplified by Thomas Müller, namely an attacking–minded wide player, who will move into central areas in order to find spaces from which he can receive passes and score or assist goals.


title: Forward (association football)

text: The "false winger" or "seven-and-a-half" is instead a label which has been used to describe a type of player who normally plays centrally, but who instead is deployed out wide on paper; during the course of a match, however, they will move inside and operate in the centre of the pitch, in order to drag defenders out of position, congest the midfield and give their team a numerical advantage in this area, so that they can dominate possession in the middle of the pitch and create chances for the forwards; this position also leaves space for full-backs to make overlapping attacking runs up the flank. Samir Nasri, who has been deployed in this role, once described it as that of a "non-axial playmaker."


title: Forward (association football)

text: On occasion, the role of an offensive winger can also be occupied by a different type of player. For example, certain managers have been known to use a "wide target man" on the wing, namely a large and physical player who usually plays as a centre-forward, and who will attempt to win aerial challenges and hold up the ball on the flank, or drag full-backs out of position. Jostein Flo epitomizes this role so much so that a tactic was named after him – Flo Pass. Egil Olsen, while managing the Norway national football team, positioned Flo, usually a centre-forward, on the right flank to exploit the opposition full-backs' lack of aerial abilities. Another example is Mario Mandžukić, a natural centre-forward, who was used on the left flank under manager Massimiliano Allegri at Juventus during the 2016–17 season, as well as the following season. Unlike wide target men of earlier eras, Mandžukić was also tasked with pressing opposing players. Romelu Lukaku has also been used in this role on occasion.


title: Forward (association football)

text: A "False 9", in some ways similar to a more advanced attacking midfielder/playmaker role, is an unconventional lone striker or centre-forward, who drops deep into midfield. The purpose of this is that it creates a problem for opposing centre-backs who can either follow the false 9, leaving space behind them for onrushing midfielders, forwards or wingers to exploit, or leaving the false 9 to have time and space to dribble or pick out a pass. The term comes from the traditional number for centre-forwards (nine), and the fact that normally a centre-forward traditionally stayed near the line of defenders until they got an opportunity to move past them toward goal. Key attributes for a false 9 are similar to those of a deep-lying striker: dribbling ability to take advantage of space between the lines, good short passing ability to link up with the midfield and vision to play through teammates making runs from deep to goal.


title: Forward (association football)

text: The first false 9 in a World Cup was Juan Peregrino Anselmo in the Uruguay national team, although he could not play the match against Argentina in the 1930 World Cup due to injury. Matthias Sindelar was the false 9 of the "Wunderteam", the Austria national team, in 1934. In South America, in 1941, River Plate's La Máquina team started using the left winger Adolfo Pedernera as a man of reference. When Pedernera transferred to Atlanta, a young Alfredo Di Stéfano took his place. A false 9 was also utilized by Hungary at the beginning of the 1950s, with striker Nándor Hidegkuti acting in the role as a deep-lying centre forward. In 1953, English football was astounded by the Hungarian team which beat England 6–3 at Wembley Stadium. The Revie Plan was a variation on the tactics used by the Hungarians, involving Don Revie playing as a deep-lying centre-forward. Revie started attacks by coming into the centre of the field to receive the ball, drawing the opposing centre-half out of position. The role can also be compared to the false role in which Hidegkuti operated. The system was first implemented by the Manchester City reserve team, who using the system went unbeaten for the last 26 games of the 1953–54 season. Before the start of the 1954–55 season, Manchester City manager Les McDowall called his team into pre-season training two weeks early to try the new tactic. Manchester City lost their first game using the system 5–0, but as the players became more used to the system it started to become more successful. Using the system Manchester City reached the 1955 FA Cup Final, but lost to Newcastle United 3–1. The following year City again reached the final where they played Birmingham City, this time winning 3–1.


title: Forward (association football)

text: Throughout his career, Johan Cruyff was often deployed in a free role as a centre-forward with Ajax, Barcelona, and the Netherlands in the 1970s in Rinus Michels's fluid 1–3–3–3 formation, which was a key and trademark feature of the manager's "total football" system; although Cruyff was a prolific goalscorer in this position, he also frequently dropped deep to confuse his markers and orchestrate attacks, or moved out onto the wing in order to create space for other teammates' runs, which has led certain pundits to compare this role retroactively as a precursor to the modern false 9 role.


title: Forward (association football)

text: Michael Laudrup was occasionally used as a lone centre-forward in Johan Cruyff's Barcelona "Dream Team", a role which was similar to that of the modern false 9 role.


title: Forward (association football)

text: Roma under manager Luciano Spalletti used Francesco Totti, nominally an attacking midfielder or "trequartista", up-front in an innovative "4–6–0" formation in the mid–2000s; this was met with a run of 11 consecutive victories.


title: Forward (association football)

text: At Euro 2012, Spain manager Vicente del Bosque, although sometimes deploying Fernando Torres as a traditional striker, often used Cesc Fàbregas as a false 9 in several matches, including the final. By the end of 2012, the False 9 had gone "mainstream" with many clubs employing a version of the system. Barcelona's Lionel Messi has been an epitome of the false 9 position to much success in recent years, first under coach Pep Guardiola and later under his successor Tito Vilanova. Brazilian forward Roberto Firmino was later also successfully used in the false 9 position under manager Jürgen Klopp at Liverpool.


title: Forward (association football)

text: One approach to stop false 9s has been to create congestion in the midfield by bringing several players back into a more defensive role in an attempt to deny them space needed to create plays, notably in José Mourinho's "parking the bus" strategy.


title: Forward (association football)

text: In Italian football jargon, this role is historically known as the "centravanti di manovra" (which literally translates to "manoeuvring centre-forward").


title: Forward (association football)

text: The term "target forward" or "target man" is often used to describe a particular type of striker or centre-forward whose main role is to win high balls in the air, hold up the ball, and create chances for other members of the team in addition to scoring goals themselves. These players are usually tall and physically strong, adept at heading the ball, and capable of playing with their back to goal in the final third of the pitch. Some of the most high-profile examples of this type of players in modern football include Olivier Giroud and Fernando Llorente, both World Cup winners, with the former having played the entire tournament as a starting line-up forward tasked primarily with pressing, counter-pressing, winning high or loose balls, and providing key passes to quicker and more agile teammates, namely Antoine Griezmann or Kylian Mbappé. Another example of a striker who played in this position is Didier Drogba. However, not any tall and/or physically strong player feels comfortable in the role of a "target man", despite having all the necessary features. Such forwards as Zlatan Ibrahimović, Romelu Lukaku, and Erling Haaland have all rejected the term when applied to specifically them, with Ibrahimović preferring to be described as an attacking all-rounder, while Lukaku and Haaland have said to favor poaching goals rather than physical play.


title: Forward (association football)

text: Strike teams consist of two or more strikers who work together. The history of football has been filled with many effective combinations. Three-man teams often operate in "triangles", giving a wealth of attacking options. Four-man packages expand options even more. Strikers must also be flexible, and be able to switch roles at a moment's notice, between the first ("advanced penetrator position"), second ("deep-lying manoeuvre") and third ("support and expansion, e.g. wings") attacker roles.


title: Forward (association football)

text: Another example was the Total Football played by the Dutch team in the 1970s, where the ability of their players, and in particular Johan Cruyff, to swap positions allowed a flexible attacking approach which opposition teams found difficult to effectively mark.


title: Forward (association football)

text: In a two–player front-line, it is common for two forwards who complement one another to be paired together; for example, former Italy manager Cesare Maldini often used a large, physical, and prolific player as a traditional centre-forward – such as Christian Vieri – alongside a smaller, faster, creative and more technical player as a second striker – such as Roberto Baggio or Alessandro Del Piero.


title: Forward (association football)

text: Another similar example of an effective partnership at international level was that of Alex Morgan and Abby Wambach with the United States national team, who scored a combined 55 goals in 2012, matching a 21-year-old record set in 1991 by Michelle Akers (39 goals) and Carin Jennings (16 goals) as the most goals scored by any duo in U.S. WNT history.


title: Forward (association football)

text: One of the most prolific forward combinations in the history of the game was the front three of Barcelona, Lionel Messi, Luis Suárez and Neymar, dubbed "MSN". On average they scored a goal every 45 minutes – two goals per game from the three forwards. The trio scored a record-breaking 131 goals in one season for Barcelona during 2015–16. In 2017, Kylian Mbappé, Neymar, and Edinson Cavani scored a record-breaking number of goals for Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League group stage. The next year, the Liverpool attacking quartet of Roberto Firmino, Mohamed Salah, Sadio Mané and Philippe Coutinho, dubbed the "Fab Four" (in reference to The Beatles), contributed to a record-breaking 47 goals for a single Champions League season.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: Ruby Ridge was the site of an eleven-day siege in 1992 in Boundary County, Idaho, near Naples. It began on August 21, when deputies of the United States Marshals Service (USMS) initiated action to apprehend and arrest Randy Weaver under a bench warrant after his failure to appear on firearms charges. Weaver refused to surrender, and members of his immediate family, and family friend Kevin Harris, resisted as well. The Hostage Rescue Team of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI HRT) became involved as the siege developed.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: During the USMS reconnaissance of the Weaver property, six U.S. Marshals encountered Harris and Sammy, Weaver's 14-year-old son, in woods near the family cabin. A shootout took place. Deputy U.S. Marshal William Francis Degan, Sammy Weaver, and the Weavers' dog, Striker, all died as a result. In the subsequent siege of the Weaver residence, led by the FBI, Weaver's wife Vicki was killed by FBI sniper fire. All casualties occurred in the first two days of the operation. The siege and standoff were ultimately resolved by civilian negotiators. Harris surrendered and was arrested on August 30, while Weaver and his three daughters surrendered the next day.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: Randy Weaver and Kevin Harris were subsequently arraigned on a variety of federal criminal charges, including first-degree murder for the death of Degan. Harris was acquitted of all charges, and Weaver was acquitted of all charges except for the original bail condition violation for the firearms charges and for having missed his original court date. He was fined $10,000 and sentenced to eighteen months in prison, credited with time served plus an additional three months, and released after sixteen months.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: During the federal criminal trial of Weaver and Harris, Weaver's attorney, Gerry Spence, made accusations of criminal wrongdoing against the agencies involved in the incident, in particular the FBI, the USMS, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF), and the United States Attorney's Office (USAO) for Idaho. At the trial's end, the Department of Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility formed the Ruby Ridge Task Force (RRTF) to investigate Spence's charges. A redacted HTML version of the RRTF report, publicly released by Lexis Counsel Connect, raised questions about all the participating agencies' conduct and policies. The Justice Department later posted a more complete PDF version of the report.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: Both the Weaver family and Harris brought civil suits against the federal government over the firefight and siege. The Weavers won a combined out-of-court settlement in August 1995 of $3.1 million. After numerous appeals, Harris was awarded a $380,000 settlement in September 2000.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: To answer public questions about Ruby Ridge, the Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Government Information held hearings between September 6 and October 19, 1995, and later issued a report calling for reforms in federal law enforcement to prevent a repeat of the losses of life at Ruby Ridge and restore public confidence in federal law enforcement. It was observed that the Ruby Ridge incident and the 1993 Waco siege involved many of the same agencies (FBI HRT and ATF) and some of the same personnel (the FBI HRT commander). The Government Accountability Office (GAO) also conducted a review of federal policies about use of deadly force, publishing it in 1995.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: In 1997, the Boundary County prosecutor indicted FBI HRT sniper Lon Horiuchi for manslaughter before the statute of limitations for the charge could expire; the case, "Idaho v. Horiuchi", was moved to federal court, which has jurisdiction over federal agents. The case was dismissed because of the supremacy clause. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled in 2001 that Horiuchi could be tried on state charges. A new county prosecutor, Brett Benson, had been elected in 2000 and dismissed the case, saying it was unlikely the state would be able to prove the criminal charges. Benson's decision was controversial.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: The events that took place at Ruby Ridge, and the law enforcement response during the Waco siege roughly six months later, have been cited by commentators as catalysts for the Oklahoma City bombing by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: Ruby Ridge is the southernmost of four ridges that extend east from the Bottleneck/Roman Nose mountain range toward the Kootenai River. Caribou Ridge lies north of it, and the area between them drains into the Ruby Creek. Weaver insisted that his cabin, located north of the creek, was on Caribou Ridge, and that "Ruby Ridge" was a press invention. Both ridge names were in use before the Weavers moved to the area, as in a Forest Service report on the 1967 Sundance Fire. The standoff occurred approximately from the nearest incorporated city of Bonners Ferry and approximately south of the border with Canada (British Columbia).


title: Ruby Ridge

text: Randy Weaver, a former Iowa factory worker and U.S. Army Green Beret, moved with his wife and four children to northern Idaho during the 1980s so they could "home-school his children and escape what he and his wife Vicki saw as a corrupted world." In 1978, Vicki, the religious leader of the family, began to have recurrent dreams of living on a mountaintop and believed that the apocalypse was imminent. After the birth of their son, Samuel, the Weavers began selling their belongings and visited the Amish to learn how to live without electricity. They bought of land on Ruby Ridge in 1983 and began building a cabin; the property was in Boundary County on a hillside on Ruby Creek opposite Caribou Ridge, northwest of nearby Naples.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: In 1984, Randy Weaver and his neighbor Terry Kinnison had a dispute over a $3,000 land deal. Kinnison lost the ensuing lawsuit and was ordered to pay Weaver an additional $2,100 in court costs and damages. Kinnison wrote letters to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Secret Service, and the county sheriff in which he alleged that Weaver had threatened to kill Pope John Paul II, President Ronald Reagan, and Idaho Governor John V. Evans.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: In January 1985, the FBI and the Secret Service launched an investigation into allegations that Weaver had made threats against Reagan and other government and law enforcement officials. On February 12, Weaver and his wife were interviewed by two FBI agents, two Secret Service agents, and the Boundary County sheriff and his chief investigator. The Secret Service had been told that Weaver was a member of Aryan Nations (an antisemitic, neo-Nazi, white supremacist terrorist organization) and that he had a large weapons cache at his residence. Weaver denied these allegations, and the government filed no charges. On three or four occasions, the Weavers had attended Aryan Nations meetings at Hayden Lake, where there was a compound for government resisters and white supremacists/separatists.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: The investigation noted that Weaver associated with Frank Kumnick, who was known to associate with members of the Aryan Nations. Weaver told the investigators that neither he nor Kumnick was a member of the Aryan Nations but he stated that Kumnick was "associated with The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord." On February 28, Randy and Vicki Weaver filed an affidavit with the county courthouse alleging that their personal enemies were plotting to provoke the FBI into attacking and killing the Weaver family. On May 6, the Weavers sent President Reagan a letter claiming that their enemies may have sent Reagan a threatening letter under a forged signature. No evidence of such a letter surfaced, but in 1992, the prosecutor cited the 1985 letter as an overt act of the Weaver family conspiracy against the federal government.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) first became aware of Weaver in July 1986, when he was introduced to a confidential ATF informant at a meeting at the World Aryan Congress. The informant portrayed himself as a weapons dealer working with motorcycle gangs. Weaver had been invited to the meeting by Kumnick, the original target of the ATF investigation. It was Weaver's first time at this Congress. Over the next three years, Weaver and the informant met several times. In July 1989, Weaver invited the informant to his home to discuss forming a group to fight the "Zionist Organized Government", referring to the U.S. government.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: In October 1989, the ATF claimed that Weaver sold the informant two sawed-off shotguns, with the overall length of the guns shorter than the limit set by federal law. In November 1989, Weaver accused the ATF informant of being a spy for the police; Weaver later wrote he had been warned by "Rico V." The informant's handler, Herb Byerly, ordered him to have no further contact with Weaver. Eventually, FBI informant Rico Valentino outed the ATF informant to Aryan Nations security.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: In June 1990, Byerly attempted to use the sawed-off shotgun charge as leverage to get Weaver to act as an informant for his investigation into Aryan Nations. Weaver refused to become a "snitch", and the ATF filed the gun charges in June 1990. The ATF alleged that Weaver was a bank robber with criminal convictions. (Those claims were false: at that time Weaver had no criminal record. The 1995 Senate investigation found: "Weaver was not a suspect in any bank robberies.") A federal grand jury indicted Weaver in December 1990 for making and possessing, but not for selling, illegal weapons in October 1989.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: The ATF concluded it would be too dangerous for agents to arrest Weaver at his property. In January 1991, ATF agents posed as broken-down motorists and arrested Weaver when he and Vicki stopped to assist. Weaver was told of the charges against him, released on bail, and told that his trial would begin on February 19, 1991. On January 22, the judge in the case appointed attorney Everett Hofmeister as Weaver's legal representative. The same day, Weaver called probation officer Karl Richins and told him that he had been instructed to contact Richins on that date. Richins did not have the case file at that time, so he asked Weaver to leave his contact information and said he would contact him when he received the paperwork. According to Richins, Weaver did not give him a telephone number. Hofmeister sent Weaver letters on January 19, January 31, and February 5, asking Weaver to contact him to work on his defense within the federal court system.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: On February 5, the trial date was changed from February 19 to 20 to give participants more travel time following a federal holiday. The court clerk sent the parties a letter informing them of the date change, but the notice was not sent directly to Weaver, only to Hofmeister. On February 7, Richins sent Weaver a letter indicating that he had the case file and needed to talk with Weaver. This letter erroneously said that Weaver's trial date was March 20. On February 8, Hofmeister again attempted to contact Weaver by letter informing him that the trial was to begin on February 20 and that Weaver needed to contact him immediately. Hofmeister also made several calls to individuals who knew Weaver, asking them to have Weaver call him. Hofmeister told U.S. District Court Judge Harold Lyman Ryan that he had been unable to reach Weaver before the scheduled court date.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: When Weaver did not appear in court on February 20, Ryan issued a bench warrant for failure to appear in court. On February 26, Ken Keller, a reporter for the "Kootenai Valley Times", telephoned the U.S. Probation Office and asked whether Weaver did not show in court on February 20 because the letter Richins sent him had an incorrect date. Upon finding a copy of the letter, the Chief Probation Officer, Terrence Hummel, contacted Ryan's clerk and informed them of the incorrect date in the letter. Hummel also contacted the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) and Weaver's attorney, informing them both of the error. Judge Ryan, however, refused to withdraw the bench warrant.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: The USMS agreed to put off executing the warrant until after March 20 in order to see whether Weaver would show up in court on that day. If he were to show up on March 20, the Department of Justice claimed that all indications are that the warrant would have been dropped. But instead, the U.S. Attorney's Office (USAO) called a grand jury on March 14. The USAO did not inform the grand jury of Richins's letter and the grand jury issued an indictment for failure to appear.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: When the Weaver case passed from the ATF to the USMS, no one informed the marshals that the ATF had attempted to solicit Weaver as an informant.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: As the law enforcement arm of the federal court, the USMS were responsible to arrest and bring in Weaver, now considered a fugitive. Weaver simply stayed in his remote home, threatening to resist any attempt to take him by force.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: Weaver was known to have an intense distrust of government. The erroneous Richins letter is believed to have compounded this sentiment and may have contributed to Weaver's reluctance to appear for trial. He was suspicious of what he thought were inconsistent messages from the government and his lawyer; he began to think there was a conspiracy against him. Weaver came to believe that he would not receive a fair trial if he were to appear in court. His distrust grew even further when Hofmeister erroneously told him that if he lost the trial, he would lose his land, essentially leaving Vicki homeless, and that the government would take away his children.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: USMS officers made a series of attempts to have Weaver surrender peacefully, but he refused to leave his cabin. Weaver negotiated with U.S. Marshals Ron Evans, W. Warren Mays, and David Hunt through third parties from March 5 to October 12, 1991, when Assistant U.S. Attorney Ron Howen directed that the negotiations cease. The U.S. Attorney directed that all negotiations go through Hofmeister, but Weaver refused to talk with him. Marshals began preparing plans to capture Weaver to stand trial on the weapons charges and his failure to appear at the correct trial date.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: Although marshals stopped the negotiations as ordered, they made other contact. On March 4, 1992, U.S. Marshals Ron Evans and Jack Cluff drove to the Weaver property and spoke with Weaver, posing as real-estate prospects. At a March 27, 1992, meeting at USMS headquarters, Art Roderick code-named the operation "Northern Exposure". Surveillance teams were dispatched and cameras set up to record activity at Weaver's residence. Marshals observed that Weaver and his family responded to vehicles and other visitors by taking up armed positions around the cabin until the visitors were recognized.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: Beginning in February 1991, the USMS developed a Threat Source Profile on Weaver. Agents' failure to integrate new information into that profile was criticized in a 1995 report by a subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee:


title: Ruby Ridge

text: The Subcommittee is ... concerned that, as Marshals investigating the Weaver case learned facts that contradicted information they previously had been provided, they did not adequately integrate their updated knowledge into their overall assessment of who Randy Weaver was or what threat he might pose. If the Marshals made any attempt to assess the credibility of the various people who gave them information about Weaver, they never recorded their assessments. Thus, rather than maintaining the Threat Source Profile as a living document, the Marshals added new reports to an ever-expanding file, and their overall assessment never really changed. These problems rendered it difficult for other law enforcement officials to assess the Weaver case accurately without the benefit of first-hand briefings from persons who had continuing involvement with him.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: Many of the people the USMS used as third party go-betweens on the Weaver case—Bill and Judy Grider, Alan Jeppeson, and Richard Butler—were assessed by the Marshals as more radical than the Weavers. When Deputy U.S. Marshal (DUSM) Dave Hunt asked Grider, "Why shouldn't I just go up there ... and talk to him?", Grider replied, "Let me put it to you this way. If I was sitting on my property and somebody with a gun comes to do me harm, then I'll probably shoot him."


title: Ruby Ridge

text: The Subcommittee said that the profile included "a brief psychological profile completed by a person who had conducted no firsthand interviews and was so unfamiliar with the case that he referred to Weaver as 'Mr. Randall' throughout". A later memo circulated within the Justice Department opined that:


title: Ruby Ridge

text: Following a flyover by a hired helicopter for Geraldo Rivera's "Now It Can Be Told" television show on April 18, 1992, the USMS received media reports that Weaver had shot at the helicopter. That day in Idaho, U.S. Marshals were installing surveillance cameras overlooking the Weaver property. The field report for April 18, 1992, filed by Marshal W. Warren Mays, reported seeing a helicopter near the Weaver property, but not that any shots were heard. In an interview with a Coeur D'Alene newspaper, Weaver denied that anyone had fired at the helicopter. When interviewed by the FBI, the helicopter pilot Richard Weiss said that Weaver had not fired on his helicopter. The "Report of the RRTF to the OPR" (1994) said, when the "indictment [of Weaver] was presented to the grand jury, the prosecution had evidence that no shots had been fired at the helicopter."


title: Ruby Ridge

text: Media reports that Weaver had fired on the Rivera helicopter became part of the justification later cited by U.S. Marshal Wayne "Duke" Smith and FBI HRT Commander Richard Rogers in drawing up the Ruby Ridge rules of engagement on August 21–22, 1992. Also, in spite of Weiss's repeated denials that shots had been fired at his helicopter, Howen charged that, as Overt Act 32 of the Weavers' Conspiracy Against the Federal Government, Randy, Vicki, and Harris fired two shots at the Rivera helicopter.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: Operation "Northern Exposure" was suspended for three months due to the confirmation hearings for United States Marshals Service Director Henry E. Hudson.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: On August 21, 1992, six Marshals were sent to scout the area to determine suitable places away from the cabin to apprehend and arrest Weaver. The marshals, dressed in military camouflage, were equipped with night-vision goggles and M16 rifles. DUSMs Art Roderick, Larry Cooper, and William F. "Bill" Degan formed the reconnaissance team, while DUSMs David Hunt, Joseph Thomas, and Frank Norris formed an observation post (OP) team on the ridge north of the cabin.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: At one point, Roderick threw two rocks at the Weaver cabin to test the dogs' reaction. The action provoked the dogs; Weaver's friend, Kevin Harris, and Weaver's 14-year-old son, Samuel ("Sammy"), emerged and followed the dog "Striker" to investigate. Harris and the younger Weaver said that they were hoping the dog had noticed a game animal as the cabin was out of meat. The recon team (Roderick, Cooper, and Degan) initially retreated through the woods in radio contact with the OP team, but later took up hidden defensive positions.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: Later, the OP team and the Weavers claimed the dogs were alerted to the recon team in the woods after neighbors at the foot of the mountain started their pickup truck. The recon team retreated through the woods to a "Y" junction in the trails west of the cabin, out of sight of the cabin. Sammy and Harris followed Striker on foot through the woods while Randy, also on foot, took a separate logging trail; Vicki, Sara, Rachel, and baby Elisheba remained at the cabin. The OP team were anxious at first, but then relaxed. Randy encountered the Marshals at the "Y"; Roderick claimed to have yelled, "Back off! U.S. Marshal!" upon sighting Weaver, and Cooper said he had shouted, "Stop! U.S. Marshal!" By their account, Sammy and Striker came out of the woods about a minute later. When the Marshals' position was revealed by the dog "Striker", a yellow Labrador Retriever, DUSM Roderick shot the dog dead.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: Seeing this, Sammy Weaver reportedly said to the Marshals, "You've killed my dog, you son of a bitch!", and then shot in the direction of Roderick. DUSM Cooper then shot towards Sammy Weaver and Kevin Harris, who both sought cover. Harris, once finding cover behind a tree stump, then returned fire with one unaimed shot, which eventually killed DUSM William Francis "Bill" Degan. Sammy Weaver, now retreating up a hill was then shot in the back and killed by DUSM Cooper.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: A later ballistics report showed that nineteen rounds were fired during the fight. DUSM Roderick fired one shot from an M16A1 (which killed "Striker", the dog, by entering his body two inches from the dog's anus, and exiting the chest), then Sammy fired three from a .223 Ruger Mini-14 (at Roderick), Degan fired seven from an M16 (at Harris and Weaver, while moving at least ), and Cooper fired six from a 9 mm Colt submachine gun (at Harris and Weaver), Harris then fired two from a .30-06 M1917 Enfield Rifle (striking and killing DUSM Degan). After the federal agents began firing, Sammy was killed by a shot to the back while retreating. Harris fired one unaimed shot and killed DUSM Degan.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: The origin of the shot that killed Sammy was of critical concern in all investigations. At the time of the writing of the "Ruby Ridge: Report" (1996), the Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Government Information, chaired by Senator Arlen Specter, observed that the government's position at trial was that Cooper had fired the shot. The Subcommittee engaged additional experts and ultimately declined to draw a final conclusion. The Justice Department's Ruby Ridge Task Force (RRTF) report to the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR, 1994) states:


title: Ruby Ridge

text: Reporter Jess Walter, in his work "Ruby Ridge: The Truth and Tragedy of the Randy Weaver Family" concludes that Cooper fired the bullet that killed Sammy Weaver.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: In 1997, Boundary County Sheriff Greg Sprungl conducted an independent search of the "Y", and his investigator, Lucien Haag, discovered and confirmed that a bullet found in that search matched DUSM Cooper's 9 mm Colt submachine gun and contained fibers that matched Sammy's shirt, conclusively proving DUSM Cooper shot 14-year-old Sammy Weaver in the back as he retreated.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: Harris's and the federal agents' accounts differ as to who fired first. In the 1993 trial over charges in Degan's death, prosecutors alleged that Harris had fired the first shot. Harris asserted self-defense and was acquitted.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: On cross-examination by the defense, ballistics experts called by the prosecution testified that the physical evidence contradicted neither the prosecution's nor the defense's theories of the gunfight. Martin Fackler testified that Roderick fired the shot or shots that killed Striker, that Degan fired the shot that hit Sammy in the right elbow, that Harris shot and killed Degan, and that Cooper "probably" shot and killed Sammy.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: Roderick and Cooper stated that Striker preceded Harris and Sammy out of the woods. They said Degan challenged Harris, who turned, shot and fatally wounded Degan before he could fire first. They said Roderick shot the dog once, Sammy fired twice at Roderick, and Roderick returned fire. Roderick and Cooper testified that they heard multiple gunshots from the Weaver party. Cooper testified that he fired two three-shot bursts at Harris and saw Harris fall "like a sack of potatoes" with leaves flying up in front of him, presumably from the impact of a round. Cooper sought cover. He testified that he saw Sammy run away and radioed OP team member Dave Hunt that he had wounded or killed Harris.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: As described by Randy and Sara Weaver, in their book "The Federal Siege" (1998), Harris's version of events differed, as follows. Harris told them Striker was followed out of the woods by Sammy and Harris, and that the dog ran up to Cooper. He said the dog ran to Roderick, who shot it in front of Sammy. Sammy yelled, "You shot my dog, you son of a bitch!", and fired a shot at Roderick. Harris said that Degan came out of the woods and shot Sammy in the arm. Harris fired and hit Degan in the chest. According to the Weavers, Harris said that Cooper fired at Harris, who ducked for cover, and Cooper fired again, hitting Sammy in the back, who fell. Harris fired about 6 feet (2 m) in front of Cooper, forcing him to take cover. Only then did he hear Cooper identify himself as a U.S. Marshal. Harris said he checked Sammy and found him dead, and ran to the Weavers' cabin.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: After the firefight at the "Y", Hunt and Thomas went to a neighbor's house to call for assistance from the USMS Crisis Center. Norris, Cooper, and Roderick stayed with Degan's body at the "Y". Randy and Vicki went to the "Y" and retrieved Sammy's body. Randy, Vicki and Harris placed the body in a guest cabin near the main cabin. From 11:15 a.m. onward, Hunt reported to the Crisis Center in Washington, D.C., that no further gunfire was heard.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: In the aftermath of the gunfight on August 21 at 11:20 am PDT, DUSM Hunt requested immediate support from Idaho law enforcement, and he also alerted the FBI by notifying it that a Marshal had been killed. Following Hunt's phone call, the Marshals Service Crisis Center was activated under the direction of Duke Smith, associate director for Operations. The Marshals Service Special Operations Group (SOG) was alerted to deploy. In response to the USMS call, the Boundary County sheriff's office mobilized. Also in response to the USMS request, Idaho Governor Cecil Andrus declared a state of emergency in Boundary County, allowing use of the Idaho National Guard Armory at Bonners Ferry and, after an initial delay, to use National Guard armored personnel carriers (APCs). Soon thereafter, the Idaho State Police arrived at the scene.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: FBI Headquarters in Washington, DC, responded by sending the Hostage Rescue Team (HRT) from Quantico to Idaho. Special Agent in Charge (SAC) Eugene Glenn of the Salt Lake City FBI office was appointed Site Commander with responsibility for all active individuals from the FBI, ATF, and USMS. A stand-off ensued for eleven days, as several hundred federal agents surrounded the house, and negotiations for a surrender were attempted.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: By Saturday, August 22, special rules of engagement (ROE) were drafted and approved by FBI Headquarters and the Marshal Service for use on Ruby Ridge. According to the later RRTF report to the DOJ (1994), the Ruby Ridge ROE were as follows:


title: Ruby Ridge

text: The ROE were communicated to agents on site, including communication to HRT sniper/observers prior to deployment, communications that included the change of "adult" to "adult male" to exclude Vicki Weaver. Some deployed FBI agents, in particular the sniper/observers, would later describe the adopted ROE as a "green light" to "shoot on sight".


title: Ruby Ridge

text: On Wednesday, August 26, four days after Vicki was killed, the ROE that had been in effect since the arrival of the HRT were revoked. Per Glenn's direction, the FBI's Standard Deadly Force Policy replaced the ROE to guide the law enforcement personnel that were to be deployed to the cabin perimeter. The FBI rules of deadly force in effect in 1992 stated that:


title: Ruby Ridge

text: On August 22, the second day of the siege, between 2:30–3:30 pm, the FBI HRT sniper/observer teams were briefed and deployed to the cabin on foot.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: According to the RRTF report to the DOJ, there were various views and interpretations taken of these ROEs by members of FBI SWAT teams in action at the Ruby Ridge site. Denver SWAT team leader Gregory Sexton described them as "severe" and "inappropriate." Two members of the Denver SWAT team said they were "strong" and a "departure from the ... standard deadly force policy", "inappropriate", and of a sort one "had never been given" before. The latter of these two members said that "other SWAT team members were taken aback by the Rules and that most of them clung to the FBI's standard deadly force policy." Another team member responded to the briefing on the ROE with "[y]ou've gotta be kidding."


title: Ruby Ridge

text: But most of the FBI HRT sniper/observers accepted the ROE as modifying the deadly force policy. According to later interviews, HRT sniper Dale Monroe saw the ROE as a "green light" to shoot armed adult males on sight, and HRT sniper Edward Wenger believed that if he observed armed adults, he could use deadly force, but he was to follow standard deadly force policy for all other individuals. Fred Lanceley, the FBI Hostage Negotiator at Ruby Ridge, was "surprised and shocked" at the ROE, the most severe rules he had heard in more than 300 hostage situations. He later characterized the ROE as being inconsistent with standard policy. The 1996 Senate report criticized the ROE as "virtual shoot-on-sight orders."


title: Ruby Ridge

text: Before the negotiators arrived at the cabin, FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi, from a position over north and above the Weaver cabin, shot and wounded Randy Weaver in the back with the bullet exiting his right armpit, while he was lifting the latch on the shed to visit the body of his dead son. (The sniper testified at the later trial that he had put his crosshairs on Weaver's spine, but Weaver moved at the last second.) As Weaver, his 16-year-old daughter Sara, and Harris ran back toward the house, Horiuchi fired a second bullet, wounding Harris in the chest. This bullet killed Vicki Weaver, who was standing behind the door in the cabin where Harris entered. Vicki was holding the Weavers' 10-month-old baby Elisheba.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: The RRTF report to the DOJ's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) of June 1994 stated unequivocally in conclusion (in its executive summary) that the rules that allowed the second shot to have been made did not satisfy constitutional standards for legal use of deadly force. The 1996 report of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Government Information, Arlen Specter [R-PA], chair, concurred, with Senator Dianne Feinstein [D-CA] dissenting. The RRTF report said that the lack of a request by the marshals to the Weavers to surrender was "inexcusable." Harris and the two Weavers were not believed to be an imminent threat (since they were reported as running for cover without returning fire).


title: Ruby Ridge

text: The later Justice task force criticized Horiuchi for firing through the door, when he did not know if anyone was on the other side of it. While there is a dispute as to who approved the rules of engagement which Horiuchi followed, the task force condemned the rules of engagement that allowed shots to be fired without a request for surrender.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: The FBI's HQ and the Site Commanders in Idaho both re-evaluated the situation based on information about what had happened on August 21 which they were receiving from U.S. Marshals Hunt, Cooper and Roderick. On August 23, repeated attempts to negotiate with Weaver via a bullhorn failed; there was no response from the cabin.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: On about Monday, August 24, the fourth day of the siege, FBI Deputy Assistant Director Danny Coulson, who did not know that Vicki Weaver had been killed, wrote a memo with the following content:


title: Ruby Ridge

text: The stand-off was ultimately resolved by civilian negotiators including Bo Gritz, to whom Weaver agreed to speak. Through Gritz's mediation, Harris, who had earlier urged Weaver to end his suffering, surrendered on August 30 (Sunday). He was removed via stretcher, and then he was flown by an Air Force medical evacuation helicopter to Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane. Weaver allowed the removal of his wife's body, which Gritz oversaw.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: The FBI HRT Commander gave Gritz a deadline to get the remaining Weavers to surrender, and if they did not surrender on the day of the deadline, he said he would resolve the standoff by launching a tactical assault. Weaver and his daughters surrendered the next day; both Harris and Weaver were arrested. Harris was in serious condition at Sacred Heart, but U.S. Marshals did not allow his parents to see him (or talk by telephone) until Monday evening, after a federal court order was issued. Weaver's daughters were released to the custody of relatives. Federal officials considered charging Sara, who was 16, as an adult.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: Weaver was transferred by military helicopter to the airport at Sandpoint and from there he was flown by USMS jet to Boise. There he was given a brief medical examination at St. Luke's Medical Center. He was held at the Ada County jail and arraigned in federal court the following day, Tuesday, September 1.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: Weaver and Harris were charged with a variety of offenses; their trial in U.S. District Court in Boise began in April 1993, and was presided over by Judge Edward Lodge. Weaver's defense attorney, Gerry Spence, rested his case in mid-June without calling any witnesses for the defense, instead seeking to convince the jury through cross-examination aimed at discrediting government evidence and witnesses. Weaver was ultimately acquitted in July of all charges except missing his original court date and violating his bail conditions, for which he was sentenced in October to 18 months imprisonment and fined $10,000. Credited with time served and good behavior, Weaver served less than 16 months and was released from the Canyon County jail in Caldwell in mid-December.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: Harris was defended by attorney David Nevin and was acquitted of all charges. Exactly five years after the incident (August 21, 1997), he was indicted by Boundary County prosecutor Denise Woodbury for the first-degree murder of DUSM Bill Degan, but the charge was dismissed in early October on grounds of double jeopardy, because he had been acquitted in the federal criminal trial on the same charge in 1993.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: Defense counsels for Weaver and Harris alleged throughout their 1993 trial that agents of the ATF, USMS, and FBI were themselves guilty of serious wrongdoing. The Department of Justice (DOJ) created the Ruby Ridge Task Force (RRTF) to investigate events. It delivered a 542-page report on June 10, 1994, to the DOJ Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR). (This RRTF report, originally available in a highly redacted form, became available in a much more complete form.)


title: Ruby Ridge

text: Questions persisted about Ruby Ridge and the subsequent Waco siege, which involved the same agencies and many of the same officials. The Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Government Information held fourteen days of hearings on these incidents and allegations of misconduct, ending on October 19, 1995. The hearings were televised on C-SPAN. Both the internal 1994 Ruby Ridge Task Force Report and the public 1995 Senate subcommittee report on Ruby Ridge criticized the rules of engagement as unconstitutional.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: A 1995 GAO investigation was conducted on the policies regarding use of force by federal law enforcement agencies. Its report said: "In October 1995, Treasury and Justice adopted use of deadly force policies to standardize the various policies their component agencies had adopted over the years." The major change was that agencies required a law enforcement agent to have reasonable belief of an "imminent" danger of death or serious physical injury in order to use deadly force. This brought all federal LEA deadly force policies in line with the U.S. Supreme Court rulings "Tennessee v. Garner", 471 U.S. 1, 18 (1985) and "Graham v. Connor", 490 U.S. 386 (1989), which applied to state and local law enforcement agencies.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: In 1997 Michael Kahoe, the chief of the FBI violent crime section, pled guilty to obstruction of justice for destroying a report critical of the agency's role at Ruby Ridge. He was sentenced to 18 months and a $4,000 fine.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: Randy Weaver and his daughters filed a wrongful death suit for $200 million which was related to the killing of his wife and son. In an out-of-court settlement in August 1995, the federal government awarded Randy Weaver $100,000 and it also awarded $1 million to each of his three daughters. The government did not admit that it had committed any wrongdoing in the deaths of Sammy and Vicki. On the condition of anonymity, a DOJ official told "The Washington Post" that he believed that the Weavers would have probably won the full amount if the case had gone to trial.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: The attorney for Harris pressed Harris's civil suit for damages, although federal officials vowed that they would never pay someone who had killed a U.S. Marshal. In September 2000, Harris was awarded a $380,000 settlement by the government.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: In 1997, Boundary County prosecutor Denise Woodbury indicted FBI HRT sniper Lon Horiuchi for manslaughter on state charges, just before the statute of limitations for this crime expired. She appointed a special prosecutor to conduct the case. But in 1998 the trial was removed to federal court because Horiuchi had been acting in the line of duty as a federal law enforcement officer. Judge Lodge quickly dismissed the case on grounds of sovereign immunity.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: The decision to dismiss charges was reversed (6–5) in 2001 by an "en banc" panel of the Ninth Circuit, which held that enough uncertainty about the facts of the case existed for Horiuchi to stand trial on state manslaughter charges. Boundary County prosecutor Brett Benson, who had defeated Woodbury in the May 2000 primary and won the November election, decided to drop the case. He said he believed that it was unlikely the state could prove the criminal charges, and too much time had passed. He also believed his decision would enable the process of healing in the county. Attorney Stephen Yagman, who had been appointed as the special prosecutor, said that he vehemently disagreed with the decision. He suggested that the case could still be prosecuted if the Boundary County prosecutor later changed again.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: Randy Weaver and his daughter, Sara, wrote "The Federal Siege at Ruby Ridge" (1998), about the incident, which was published in paperback.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: The Weaver family, including Randy, later moved to Kalispell, Montana. Sara and the other two Weaver daughters are employed there. After becoming a born again Christian, Sara Weaver said in 2012 that she had forgiven the federal agents who killed her mother and brother.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: American domestic terrorists Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols claimed that revenge for the federal government's poor handling of Ruby Ridge and the Waco siege was their motivation for the Oklahoma City bombing. On April 19, 1995, the second anniversary of the fire that ended the Waco siege, they detonated a massive truck bomb in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, killing 168 people, including numerous women and children; injuring 680 others, and destroying more than one third of the building.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: A CBS miniseries about the Ruby Ridge incident, titled "", aired on May 19 and 21, 1996. It was based on the book "Every Knee Shall Bow" by reporter Jess Walter. It starred Laura Dern as Vicki, Kirsten Dunst as Sara, and Randy Quaid as Randy. Later that year the television series was adapted as a full-length TV movie, "The Siege at Ruby Ridge".


title: Ruby Ridge

text: In 1999, Bluegrass musician Peter Rowan addressed the events at Ruby Ridge in his song "The Ballad of Ruby Ridge."


title: Ruby Ridge

text: Ruby Ridge was the subject of "Criminal Minds", Season Three, Episode entitled "Identity" (2007). Agent David Rossi says that he was at Ruby Ridge during the siege.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: In 2017, it was the focus of the 323rd episode of "American Experience", the 5th episode of its 29th season.


title: Ruby Ridge

text: The standoff, including the shooting of Vicki Weaver, is featured in the first episode of the Paramount Network television miniseries "Waco" (2018).


title: Ruby Ridge

text: Tara Westover, in her memoir "Educated" (2018), referred to this incident, noting her own family's preparations to defend their isolated home against a potential siege by "the Feds".


title: Ruby Ridge

text: The Ruby Ridge incident was the subject of the first season of the narrative podcast series Slate Presents. The 4-episode season, titled "Standoff: What Happened at Ruby Ridge?" ran as a stand-alone miniseries hosted by journalist Ruth Graham.


title: Rush (band)

text: Rush was a Canadian rock band formed in 1968 in Toronto, that was comprised primarily of Geddy Lee (bass, vocals), Alex Lifeson (guitar), and Neil Peart (drums, percussion, lyricist). The band formed in Toronto in 1968 by Lifeson, drummer John Rutsey, and bass guitarist/vocalist Jeff Jones, who was immediately replaced by Lee. After Lee joined, the band went through several lineup configurations before arriving at its classic power trio lineup with the addition of Peart in July 1974, who replaced Rutsey four months after the release of their 1974 self-titled debut album; this lineup remained intact for the remainder of the band's career.


title: Rush (band)

text: Rush achieved commercial success in the 1970s with "Fly by Night" (1975), "2112" (1976), "A Farewell to Kings" (1977) and "Hemispheres" (1978). The band's popularity continued throughout the 1980s and 1990s, with albums charting highly in Canada, the US and the UK, including "Permanent Waves" (1980), "Moving Pictures" (1981), "Signals" (1982), "Grace Under Pressure" (1984) and "Counterparts" (1993). Rush continued to record and perform until 1997, after which the band entered a four-year hiatus due to personal tragedies in Peart's life. The trio regrouped in 2001 and released three more studio albums: "Vapor Trails" (2002), "Snakes & Arrows" (2007), and "Clockwork Angels" (2012). Rush ceased touring at the end of 2015, and Lifeson announced in January 2018 that the band would not continue, which was cemented by Peart's death from glioblastoma, a type of brain cancer, on January 7, 2020 at the age of 67.


title: Rush (band)

text: Rush were known for their musicianship, complex compositions and eclectic lyrical motifs drawing heavily on science fiction, fantasy and philosophy. The band's style changed over the years, from a blues-inspired hard rock beginning, later moving into progressive rock, then a period in the 1980s marked by heavy use of synthesizers, before returning to guitar-driven hard rock at the end of the 1980s. Their final work from 2012, marked a return to progressive rock. The members of Rush have been acknowledged as some of the most proficient players on their respective instruments, with each winning numerous awards in magazine readers' polls over the years.


title: Rush (band)

text: As of 2022, Rush ranks 84th in the U.S. with sales of 26 million albums and industry sources estimate their total worldwide album sales at over 42 million. Rush has been awarded 14 platinum and 3 multi-platinum albums in the US plus 17 platinum albums in Canada. Rush was nominated for seven Grammy Awards, won several Juno Awards, and won an International Achievement Award at the 2009 SOCAN Awards. The band was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 1994 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013.


title: Rush (band)

text: The band was formed in the neighbourhood of Willowdale in Toronto, Ontario, by guitarist Alex Lifeson, bassist and frontman Jeff Jones, and drummer John Rutsey, in August 1968. Lifeson and Rutsey had been friends since a young age and played together in a short-lived band, The Projection (formerly known as The Lost Cause). Afterward the two stuck together and brought in Jones to form a new group; their first gig was in September at the Coff-Inn, a youth centre in the basement of St. Theodore of Canterbury Anglican Church in nearby North York. They were paid CA$25. They had not named themselves at the time of the booking; Rutsey's brother Bill thought they needed a name that was short and to the point. He suggested Rush, and the group went with it. Due to increasing difficulties in getting to Lifeson's house for practice, Jones suggested that Lifeson get his schoolmate Gary "Geddy" Weinrib to step in on lead vocals and bass. Weinrib replaced Jones as Rush's frontman, adopting the stage name Geddy Lee. Rush rehearsed a set mainly formed of covers by various rock artists, including Cream, Jimi Hendrix, and John Mayall and underwent several lineup configurations that included Lindy Young on keyboards and various instruments, and Mitch Bossi on second guitar. Shortly after becoming a four-piece band of Lee, Lifeson, Young, and Rutsey, Ray Danniels was hired to be their manager. As Lee recounted years later, "Ray came along. He had no real reputation yet as a manager or anything. He was just kind of an agent working in Toronto. So he started directing the band and he just thought I wasn’t suitable, for whatever reasons he had. I don’t know whether it was the way I looked, or my religious background – who the f--- knew? Anyway, he influenced them and they went along with it, Alex Lifeson and John Rutsey, and I was out."


title: Rush (band)

text: With Lee kicked out of the band, Rutsey recruited new bassist and vocalist Joe Perna. The group of Lifeson, Rutsey, and Perna named themselves Hadrian. After a disastrous gig with Perna, Rutsey invited Lee back and the group continued as Rush. Lee stated "I started a blues band and I was, frankly speaking, doing better than they were. Then I got a call from John and he said, 'Can we get together?' Basically, 'Can you come back? We're sorry.'" In March 1972, the band stabilized as a trio of Lifeson, Rutsey, and Lee. They kept Ray Danniels, a promoter of Rush's early shows, as their manager with his business partner and agent Vic Wilson sharing duties.


title: Rush (band)

text: Rush honed their skills with regular gigs, initially touring the Ontario high school circuit. In 1971, the legal drinking age was decreased from 21 to 18, allowing the band to play bars and clubs. Lee said it was at this point that Rush turned "from a basement garage band that played the occasional high school gig to a regular working band playing six days a week." A demo tape was then shipped to various record labels, but Rush was unable to secure a deal, leading to the formation of their own label, Moon Records, with Danniels. Rush entered the studio in 1973 to record their first single; their cover of "Not Fade Away" by Buddy Holly was chosen as it had become a crowd favourite. "You Can't Fight It", an original song, was put on the B-side. Released in September, it went to No. 88 on the Canadian "RPM" Top Singles chart. In late 1973, Rush performed their first major gig, opening for the New York Dolls in Toronto, and finished putting down tracks for their first album. The initial sessions produced undesirable results over the sound quality, so tracks were recut and remixed with a new engineer, Terry Brown. Danniels sold his management company to help raise funds to make the record. Rutsey wrote the lyrics, but tore them up on the day Lee was to record them and would not produce a new set. Lee quickly wrote a fresh set based on earlier versions, which was used on the final takes.


title: Rush (band)

text: The debut album, "Rush", was released in March 1974; the initial pressing of 3,500 copies quickly sold out. It went on to peak at No. 86 on the "RPM" Top Albums chart. Most critics considered the album highly derivative of Led Zeppelin. It saw a limited release until it was picked up by Donna Halper, a music director and DJ at rock station WMMS in Cleveland, Ohio. She added "Working Man" to the station's regular playlist and the song's blue-collar theme resonated with hard rock fans in the predominantly working class city. In June 1974, Danniels signed Rush to the American booking agency ATI, of which executive Ira Blacker sent a copy of "Rush" to Mercury Records. The record caught the attention of A&R man Cliff Burnstein, who signed Rush with a $75,000 advance as part of a $200,000 deal.


title: Rush (band)

text: Following a series of Canadian dates, Rutsey played his last gig with the band on July 25, 1974. His preference for more straightforward rock was incompatible with the more complex music that Lifeson and Lee had written, and Lee recalled Rutsey had a general distaste for life as a touring musician. His type 1 diabetes caused further complications, as he required frequent hospital visits to have tests and receive insulin. For several weeks prior to his departure Rutsey's health was too critical for him to perform, leaving Rush to continue with a substitute drummer, Jerry Fielding.


title: Rush (band)

text: After auditioning five drummers, Lifeson and Lee picked Neil Peart who joined on July 29, two weeks before the group's first US tour. They performed their first concert together on August 14 at the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh, opening for Uriah Heep and Manfred Mann's Earth Band to over 11,000 people. Peart assumed the role of lyricist; Lifeson and Lee had little interest in the job and recognised Peart's wider vocabulary range from reading regularly. Lifeson and Lee focused primarily on the music, with the new material displaying their influences from progressive rock bands Yes and Pink Floyd. When the US tour finished in December 1974, "Rush" had reached its peak of No. 105 on the US "Billboard" 200 chart.


title: Rush (band)

text: "Fly by Night" (1975), Rush's first album with Peart, saw the inclusion of the story song "By-Tor & the Snow Dog", replete with complex arrangements and a multi-section format. Lyrical themes also underwent dramatic changes because of Peart's love for fantasy and science-fiction literature. Despite these new styles, some other songs on the album mirrored the simplistic blues style found on Rush's debut. "Fly by Night" was released as a single that reached No. 45 in Canada. The album reached No. 9 in Canada, where it was certified platinum by the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CAN) for selling 100,000 copies and in the US for selling one million copies there.


title: Rush (band)

text: The band followed "Fly by Night" quickly with "Caress of Steel" (1975), a five-track album featuring two extended multi-chapter songs, "The Necromancer" and "The Fountain of Lamneth". Some critics said "Caress of Steel" was unfocused and an audacious move for the band because of the placement of two back-to-back protracted songs, as well as a heavier reliance on atmospherics and story-telling, a large deviation from "Fly by Night". Intended to be the band's break-through album, "Caress of Steel" sold below expectations and the tour consisted of smaller venues and declining box office receipts, which led to the tour being nicknamed the Down the Tubes Tour.


title: Rush (band)

text: In light of these events, Rush's record label tried to pressure the members into moulding their next album in a more commercially-friendly and accessible fashion; the band ignored the requests and developed their next album "2112" with a 20-minute title track divided into seven sections. Despite this, the album was the band's first taste of significant commercial success as it reached No. 5 in Canada, becoming their first to reach double platinum certification.


title: Rush (band)

text: Rush toured "2112" between February 1976 and June 1977 with concerts in Canada, the US, and for the first time Europe, with dates in the UK, Sweden, Germany, and the Netherlands. The three sold out shows at Massey Hall, Toronto in June 1976 were recorded for Rush's debut live album, "All the World's a Stage". Released in September of that year, the double LP reached No. 6 in Canada and became Rush's first to crack the US top 40. "Record World" wrote: "Building its American reputation slowly but steadily Rush stands poised for breaking through all the way via this two record live set [...] All the highly charged electricity is here in an explosive setting." The liner notes includes the statement: "This albums to us, signifies the end of the beginning, a milestone to mark the close of chapter one in the annals of Rush."


title: Rush (band)

text: After the conclusion of the "2112" tour, Rush went to Wales to record "A Farewell to Kings" (1977) and "Hemispheres" (1978) at Rockfield Studios. These albums saw the band members expanding the progressive elements in their music. "As our tastes got more obscure", Lee said in an interview, "we discovered more progressive rock-based bands like Yes, Van der Graaf Generator and King Crimson, and we were very inspired by those bands. They made us want to make our music more interesting and more complex and we tried to blend that with our own personalities to see what we could come up with that was indisputably us." Increased synthesizer use, lengthy songs, and highly dynamic playing featuring complex time signature changes became a staple of Rush's compositions. To achieve a broader, more progressive sound, Lifeson began to experiment with classical and twelve-string guitars, and Lee added bass-pedal synthesizers and Minimoog. Likewise, Peart's percussion became diversified in the form of triangles, glockenspiel, wood blocks, cowbells, timpani, gong, and chimes. Beyond instrument additions, the band kept in stride with the progressive rock trends by continuing to compose long, conceptual songs with science fiction and fantasy overtones. As the new decade approached, Rush gradually began to dispose of its older styles of music in favour of shorter and sometimes softer arrangements, due in part to the band's exhaustion from recording "Hemispheres". The lyrics up to this point were heavily influenced by classical poetry, fantasy literature, science fiction, and the writings of novelist Ayn Rand, as exhibited most prominently by their 1975 song "Anthem" from "Fly By Night" and a specifically acknowledged derivation in "2112" (1976). The first single from "A Farewell to Kings", "Closer to the Heart", was the band's first successful song in the UK, peaking at No. 36, while reaching No. 76 in the US and No. 45 in Canada. "A Farewell to Kings" did not sell as well as "2112", but still went platinum in both Canada and the United States By this time, Rush's record deal allowed them a CA$250,000 advance on each album and a 16% royalty rate.


title: Rush (band)

text: "Permanent Waves" (1980) shifted Rush's style of music with the introduction of reggae and new wave elements. Although a hard rock style was still evident, more synthesizers were introduced. Because of the limited airplay Rush's previous extended-length songs received, "Permanent Waves" contained shorter, more radio-friendly songs, such as "The Spirit of Radio" and "Freewill", which helped the album become Rush's highest charting album to date. "The Spirit of Radio" became the group's biggest hit single to date, peaking at No. 22 in Canada, No. 51 on the US Billboard Hot 100, and No. 13 on the UK Singles Chart. Peart's lyrics on "Permanent Waves" shifted toward an expository tone with subject matter that dwelled less on fantastical or allegorical story-telling and more heavily on topics that explored humanistic, social, and emotional elements. Rush toured "Permanent Waves" for six months through 1980 to over 650,000 people across 96 shows, becoming their first to make a profit. After the tour, Rush joined fellow Toronto-based rock band Max Webster to record "Battle Scar" for their 1980 release, "Universal Juveniles". Their lyricist, Pye Dubois, offered the band lyrics to a song he had written. The band accepted; the song went on, after reworking by Peart, to become "Tom Sawyer".


title: Rush (band)

text: Rush's popularity reached its pinnacle with the release of "Moving Pictures" in early 1981. "Moving Pictures" essentially continued where "Permanent Waves" left off, extending the trend of accessible and commercially friendly progressive rock that helped thrust them into the spotlight. The lead track, "Tom Sawyer", is probably the band's best-known song. Upon release, it reached No. 24 on the Canadian Top 40 Singles Chart, No. 44 on the Billboard Hot 100, and No. 8 on the new US Album Rock Tracks chart. The second single "Limelight" also received a strong response from listeners and radio stations going to No. 18 in Canada, No. 54 on the Hot 100, and No. 4 on the US Album Rock Tracks Chart. "Moving Pictures" was Rush's last album to feature an extended song, the eleven-minute "The Camera Eye". The song also contained the band's heaviest usage of synthesizers yet, hinting Rush's music was shifting direction once more. "Moving Pictures" became the band's first album to reach No. 1 on the Canadian Albums Chart, and also reached No. 3 on the US "Billboard" 200 and UK album charts; it has been certified quintuple platinum by both the Recording Industry Association of America and Music Canada. Following the success of "Moving Pictures", Rush released a second live recording, "Exit... Stage Left", in 1981.


title: Rush (band)

text: The band underwent another stylistic change with the recording of "Signals" in 1982. While Lee's synthesizers had been featured instruments ever since the late 1970s, keyboards were shifted from the background to the melodic front-lines in songs like "Countdown" and the lead-off track "Subdivisions". Both feature prominent lead synthesizer lines with minimalistic guitar chords and solos. Other previously unused instrument additions were seen in the song "Losing It", featuring collaborator Ben Mink on electric violin.


title: Rush (band)

text: "Signals" also represented a drastic stylistic transformation apart from instrumental changes. The album contained Rush's biggest hit single, "New World Man", while other more experimental songs such as "Digital Man", "The Weapon", and "Chemistry" expanded the band's use of ska, reggae, and funk. The second single, "Subdivisions" reached No. 36 in Canada and No. 5 on the US Album Rock Tracks Chart. Both singles reached the Top 50 in the UK. "Signals" became the group's second No. 1 album in Canada, their third straight No. 3 album in the UK, and peaked at No. 10 in the US, while continuing their moderate success in the Netherlands, Sweden and Norway making the Top 30 in each country. Although the band members consciously decided to move in this overall direction, creative differences between the band and long-time producer Terry Brown began to emerge. The band felt dissatisfied with Brown's studio treatment of "Signals", while Brown was becoming more uncomfortable with the increased use of synthesizers in the music. Ultimately, Rush and Brown parted ways in 1983, and the experimentation with new electronic instruments and varying musical styles would come into further play on their next studio album.


title: Rush (band)

text: The style and production of "Signals" were augmented and taken to new heights on "Grace Under Pressure" (1984). It was Peart who named the album, as he borrowed the words of Ernest Hemingway to describe what the band had to go through after making the decision to leave Terry Brown. Producer Steve Lillywhite, who gained fame with successful productions of Simple Minds and U2, was enlisted to produce "Grace Under Pressure". He backed out at the last moment, however, much to the ire of Lee, Lifeson and Peart. Lee said "Steve Lillywhite is really not a man of his word ... after agreeing to do our record, he got an offer from Simple Minds, changed his mind, blew us off ... so it put us in a horrible position." Rush eventually hired Peter Henderson to co-produce and engineer the album instead. Henderson was nominated for a Grammy Award for his work on Supertramp's "Breakfast in America".


title: Rush (band)

text: Musically, although Lee's use of sequencers and synthesizers remained the band's cornerstone, his focus on new technology was complemented by Peart's adaptation of Simmons electronic drums and percussion. Lifeson's contributions on the album were decidedly enhanced, in response to the minimalist role he played on "Signals". Still, many of his trademark guitar textures remained intact in the form of open reggae chords and funk and new-wave rhythms. "Grace Under Pressure" reached the Top 5 in Canada and the UK plus the Top 10 in the US. It became the highest charter to that date in Sweden (No. 18), while becoming their first album to chart in Germany (No. 43) and Finland (No. 14). While "Distant Early Warning" was not a success on Top 40 radio, it peaked at No. 5 on the US Album Rock Tracks chart.


title: Rush (band)

text: With new producer Peter Collins, the band released "Power Windows" (1985) and "Hold Your Fire" (1987). The music on these two albums gives far more emphasis and prominence to Lee's multi-layered synthesizer work, and he switched to an English-made Wal MK1 bass. While fans and critics took notice of Lifeson's diminished guitar work, his presence was still palpable. Lifeson, like many guitarists in the mid-to-late 1980s, experimented with processors that reduced his instrument to echoey chord bursts and thin leads. "Power Windows" went to No. 2 in Canada while peaking at No. 9 and 10 in the UK and US, respectively. The lead track, "The Big Money" made the Top 50 in Canada, the UK and US, plus No. 4 on the US Mainstream Rock Chart. "Hold Your Fire" represents both an extension of the guitar style found on "Power Windows", and, according to Allmusic critic Eduardo Rivadavia, the culmination of this era of Rush. "Hold Your Fire" only went gold in the US whereas the previous five Rush albums had gone platinum, although it managed to peak at No. 13 on the "Billboard" 200. and made the Top 10 in Canada, the UK and Finland. Two tracks from "Hold Your Fire", "Force Ten" and "Time Stand Still", both peaked at No. 3 on the US Mainstream Rock Tracks chart.


title: Rush (band)

text: A third live album and video, "A Show of Hands" (1989), was also released by Anthem and Mercury following the "Power Windows" and "Hold Your Fire" tours, demonstrating the aspects of Rush in the '80s. "A Show of Hands" met with strong fan approval, but "Rolling Stone" critic Michael Azerrad dismissed it as "musical muscle" with 1.5 stars, claiming Rush fans viewed their favourite power trio as "the holy trinity". Nevertheless, "A Show of Hands" reached the gold album mark in the US and the platinum level in Canada. At this point, the group decided to change international record labels from Mercury to Atlantic. After Rush's departure in 1989, Mercury released a double platinum two-volume compilation of their Rush catalogue, "Chronicles" (1990).


title: Rush (band)

text: Rush started to deviate from its 1980s style with the albums "Presto" and "Roll the Bones". Produced by record engineer and musician Rupert Hine, these two albums saw Rush shedding much of its keyboard-saturated sound. Beginning with "Presto" (1989), the band opted for arrangements notably more guitar-centric than the previous two studio albums. Although synthesizers were still used, the instrument was no longer featured as the centrepiece of Rush's compositions. Continuing this trend, "Roll the Bones" (1991) extended the use of the standard three-instrument approach with even less focus on synthesizers than its predecessor. While musically these albums do not deviate significantly from a general pop-rock sound, Rush incorporated other musical styles such as funk and hip hop in "Roll the Bones" and jazz in the instrumental track "Where's My Thing?". "Show Don't Tell" from "Presto" was a No. 1 hit on the US Mainstream Rock Tracks Chart, and while the album reached the Top 10 in Canada, it was less successful in the US (No. 16) and the UK (No. 27). From "Roll the Bones", "Dreamline (No. 1) and "Ghost of a Chance" (No. 2) were successful on US Mainstream Rock Radio stations marking a resurgence of Rush's album sales in the US (No. 3 and platinum), the UK (No. 10) and some other parts of northern Europe.


title: Rush (band)

text: The transition from synthesizers to more guitar-oriented and organic instrumentation continued with "Counterparts" (1993) and its follow-up, "Test for Echo" (1996), both produced in collaboration with Peter Collins. Up to this point, "Counterparts" and "Test for Echo" were two of Rush's most guitar-driven albums. The latter album also includes elements of jazz- and swing-style drumming by Peart, that he had learned from drum coach Freddie Gruber during the interim between "Counterparts" and "Test for Echo". "Stick It Out" from "Counterparts" reached the summit of the US Mainstream Rock Tracks Chart with the album peaking at No. 2 in the US and No. 6 in Canada. "Test for Echo" reached the Top 5 in both countries, with the title track again topping the US Mainstream Rock Tracks Chart. In October 1996, in support of "Test For Echo", the band embarked on a North American tour, the band's first without an opening act and dubbed "An Evening with Rush". The tour was broken up into two segments spanning October through December 1996 and May through July 1997.


title: Rush (band)

text: After the conclusion of the "Test for Echo" tour in 1997, the band entered a five-year hiatus primarily due to personal tragedies in Peart's life. Peart's daughter Selena died in a car crash in August 1997, followed by the death of his wife Jacqueline from cancer in June 1998. Peart took a hiatus to mourn and reflect, during which he travelled extensively throughout North America on his BMW motorcycle, covering . At some point in his journey, Peart decided to return to the band. Peart's book "" is a chronicle of his journey. In the book, he writes of how he had told his bandmates at Selena's funeral, "consider me retired." On November 10, 1998, a three-disc live album entitled "Different Stages" was released, dedicated to the memory of Selena and Jacqueline. Mixed by producer Paul Northfield and engineered by Terry Brown, it features recorded performances from the band's "Counterparts", "Test For Echo", and "A Farewell to Kings" tours, marking the band's fourth live album. After a time of grief and recovery, and while visiting long-time Rush photographer Andrew MacNaughtan in Los Angeles, Peart was introduced to his future wife, photographer Carrie Nuttall. Peart and Nuttall married on September 9, 2000.


title: Rush (band)

text: In January 2001, Lee, Lifeson, and Peart came together to see if they could reassemble the band. According to Peart, "We laid out no parameters, no goals, no limitations, only that we would take a relaxed, civilized approach to the project." With the help of producer Paul Northfield, the band produced seventy-four minutes of music for their new album "Vapor Trails", which was written and recorded in Toronto. "Vapor Trails" marked the first Rush studio recording to not include any keyboards or synthesizers since "Caress of Steel". According to the band, the album's developmental process was extremely taxing and took approximately 14 months to finish, the longest they had ever spent writing and recording a studio album. "Vapor Trails" was released on May 14, 2002; to herald the band's comeback, the single and lead track from the album, "One Little Victory", was designed to grab the attention of listeners with its rapid guitar and drum tempos. The album was supported by the band's first tour in six years, including first-ever concerts in Brazil and Mexico City, where they played to some of the largest crowds of their career. The largest was a capacity of 60,000 in São Paulo. "Vapour Trails" peaked at No. 3 in Canada and No. 6 in the US, while selling disappointingly in the UK where it peaked at No.38.


title: Rush (band)

text: A live album and DVD, "Rush in Rio", was released in October 2003 featuring the last performance of the band's Vapor Trails Tour on November 23, 2002, at Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. To celebrate the band's 30th anniversary, June 2004 saw the release of "Feedback", an extended play recorded in suburban Toronto featuring eight covers of such artists as Cream, The Who and The Yardbirds, bands the members of Rush cite as inspiration around the time of their inception. To help support "Feedback" and continue celebrating their 30th anniversary as a band, Rush launched the 30th Anniversary Tour in the summer of 2004, playing dates in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Sweden, the Czech Republic, and the Netherlands. On September 24, 2004, the concert at The Festhalle in Frankfurt, Germany was filmed for a DVD titled "R30: 30th Anniversary World Tour", which was released on November 22, 2005. This release omitted eight songs also included on "Rush in Rio"; the complete concert was released on Blu-ray on December 8, 2009.


title: Rush (band)

text: During promotional interviews for the "R30" DVD, the band members revealed their intention to begin writing new material in early 2006. While in Toronto, Lifeson and Lee began the songwriting process in January 2006. During this time, Peart assumed his role of lyric writing while residing in Southern California. The following September, Rush chose to hire American producer Nick Raskulinecz to co-produce the album. The band officially entered Allaire Studios in Shokan, New York in November 2006 to record the bulk of the material. Taking the band five weeks, the sessions ended in December. On February 14, 2007, an announcement was made on the official Rush website that the title of the new album would be "Snakes & Arrows". The first single, entitled "Far Cry", was released to North American radio stations on March 12, 2007, and reached No. 2 on the Mediabase Mainstream and Radio and Records Charts.


title: Rush (band)

text: The Rush website, newly redesigned on March 12, 2007, to support the new album, also announced the band would embark on a tour to begin in the summer. "Snakes & Arrows" was released on May 1, 2007, in North America, where it debuted at No. 3 on the "Billboard" 200 with approximately 93,000 units sold in its first week. It also peaked at No. 3 in Canada and No. 13 in the UK, selling an estimated 611,000 copies worldwide. To coincide with the beginning of Atlantic Ocean hurricane season, "Spindrift" was released as the official second radio single on June 1, 2007, while "The Larger Bowl (A Pantoum)" saw single status on June 25, 2007. "The Larger Bowl" peaked within the top 20 of both the "Billboard" Mainstream Rock and Mediabase Mainstream charts, but "Spindrift" failed to appear on any commercial chart. The planned intercontinental tour in support of "Snakes & Arrows" began on June 13, 2007, in Atlanta, Georgia, coming to a close on October 29, 2007, at Hartwall Arena in Helsinki, Finland.


title: Rush (band)

text: The 2008 portion of the "Snakes & Arrows" tour began on April 11, 2008, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, at José Miguel Agrelot Coliseum, and concluded on July 24, 2008, in Noblesville, Indiana at the Verizon Wireless Music Center. On April 15, 2008, the band released "Snakes & Arrows Live", a double live album documenting the first leg of the tour, recorded at the Ahoy arena in Rotterdam, Netherlands on October 16 and 17, 2007. A DVD and Blu-ray recording of the same concerts was released on November 24, 2008. As Rush neared the conclusion of the "Snakes & Arrows" tour, they announced their first appearance on American television in over 30 years. They appeared on "The Colbert Report" on July 16, 2008, where they were interviewed by Stephen Colbert and performed "Tom Sawyer". Continuing to ride what film critic Manohla Dargis called a "pop cultural wave", the band appeared as themselves in the 2009 comedy film "I Love You, Man", starring Paul Rudd and Jason Segel.


title: Rush (band)

text: On February 16, 2009, Lifeson remarked the band may begin working on a new album in the Fall of 2009 with American producer Nick Raskulinecz once again producing. In November 2009, Lee, Lifeson and Peart were awarded the International Achievement Award at the annual SOCAN Awards in Toronto. On March 19, 2010, the CBC posted a video interview with Lee and Lifeson where they discussed Rush's induction into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame on March 28, 2010, at the Toronto Centre for the Arts' George Weston Recital Hall. The band was recognized for the songs "Limelight", "Closer to the Heart", "The Spirit of Radio", "Tom Sawyer" and "Subdivisions". In addition to discussing their induction, Lee and Lifeson touched on future material with Lee saying, "Just about a month and a half ago we had no songs. And now we've been writing and now we've got about 6 songs that we just love ..." On March 26, 2010, in an interview with The Globe and Mail, Lifeson remarked that there was even the potential for two supporting tours. Soon after, Peart confirmed Nick Raskulinecz had returned as co-producer.


title: Rush (band)

text: In April 2010, Rush entered Blackbird Studios in Nashville, Tennessee with Raskulinecz to record "Caravan" and "BU2B", two new songs to be featured on the band's studio album "Clockwork Angels". "Caravan" and "BU2B" were released together on June 1, 2010, and made available for digital download. The Time Machine Tour's first leg began on June 29 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and finished on October 17 in Santiago, Chile, at the National Stadium. It featured the album "Moving Pictures" played in its entirety, as well as "Caravan" and "BU2B". It was suggested Rush would return to the studio after the completion of the Time Machine Tour with plans to release "Clockwork Angels" in 2011. However, Rush announced on November 19, 2010, that they would be extending the Time Machine Tour. The second leg began on March 30, 2011, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and came to an end on July 2, 2011, in Seattle, Washington. On November 8, 2011, the band released "", a concert DVD, Blu-ray and double CD documenting the April 15, 2011, concert at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio. After the tour's second leg was finished, Rush entered Revolution Recording studios in Toronto, Ontario to finalize the recording of "Clockwork Angels." The second single, "Headlong Flight", was released on April 19, 2012. Peart and author Kevin J. Anderson collaborated on a novelization of "Clockwork Angels" that was released in September 2012.


title: Rush (band)

text: "Clockwork Angels" was released in the United States and Canada on June 12, 2012, reaching No. 1 in Canada, No. 2 in the US, No. 21 in the UK and entering the Top 10 in most of Rush's traditional northern European markets. The supporting Clockwork Angels Tour began on September 7, 2012, with the performances on November 25, 2012, in Phoenix, Arizona and November 28, 2012, in Dallas, Texas recorded to make a live CD/DVD/Blu-ray that was released on November 19, 2013. During Rush's European leg of the "Clockwork Angels Tour", the June 8, 2013, show at the Sweden Rock Festival was the group's first festival appearance in 30 years. On August 31, 2011, Rush switched their American distribution from Atlantic Records to the Warner Brothers majority-owned metal label, Roadrunner Records. Roadrunner handled American distribution of "Time Machine 2011: Live in Cleveland" and "Clockwork Angels". Anthem/Universal Music would continue to release their music in Canada. On April 18, 2013, Rush was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.


title: Rush (band)

text: On November 18, 2013, Lifeson said the band had committed to taking a year off, following the completion of the world tour in support of "Clockwork Angels". "We've committed to taking about a year off", Lifeson said. "We all agreed when we finished this ["Clockwork Angels"] tour [in early August] we were going to take this time off and we weren't going to talk about band stuff or make any plans. We committed to a year, so that's going to take us through to the end of next summer, for sure. That's the minimum. We haven't stopped or quit. Right now we're just relaxing. We're taking it easy and just enjoying our current employment."


title: Rush (band)

text: In September 2014, the "Rush R40" box set was announced to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the release of the band's self-titled debut album. It included five previously released live video albums, and various previously unreleased footage from across the band's career. On January 22, 2015, the band announced the Rush R40 Tour, celebrating the fortieth anniversary of Peart's membership in the band. The tour started on May 8 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and wrapped up on August 1 in Los Angeles.


title: Rush (band)

text: On April 29, 2015, Lifeson stated in an interview that R40 might be the final large-scale Rush tour due to his psoriatic arthritis and Peart's chronic tendinitis. He noted that it didn't necessarily mean an end to the band, suggesting the possibility of smaller tours and limited performances. He also said he would like to work on soundtracks with Lee. On December 7, 2015, Peart stated in an interview he was retiring. The following day, Lee insisted that Peart's remarks had been taken out of context, and suggested he was "simply taking a break". Lifeson confirmed in 2016 that the R40 tour was the band's last large-scale tour. The band's latest documentary, "Time Stand Still", was announced in November 2016.


title: Rush (band)

text: On January 16, 2018, Lifeson told "The Globe and Mail" that it was unlikely that Rush would play any more shows or record new material. He said, "We have no plans to tour or record anymore. We're basically done. After 41 years, we felt it was enough." In October 2018, "Rolling Stone" published an interview with Lee, who stated, "I'd say I can't really tell you much other than that there are zero plans to tour again. As I said earlier, we're very close and talk all the time, but we don't talk about work. We're friends, and we talk about life as friends. I can't really tell you more than that, I'm afraid. I would say there's no chance of seeing Rush on tour again as Alex, Geddy, Neil. But would you see one of us or two of us or three of us? That's possible."


title: Rush (band)

text: On January 7, 2020, Peart died at the age of 67 following a 3½-year battle with glioblastoma, a type of brain cancer. A year later, Lee confirmed to "Rolling Stone" that Rush was "over" and expressed the impossibility of the band continuing without Peart: "That's finished, right? That's over. I still am very proud of what we did. I don't know what I will do again in music. And I'm sure Al doesn't, whether its together, apart, or whatever. But the music of Rush is always part of us. And I would never hesitate to play one of those songs in the right context. But at the same time, you have to give respect to what the three of us with Neil did together."


title: Rush (band)

text: In a January 2021 interview with Make Weird Music, Lifeson revealed that he and Lee were in talks of working together on new music: "We're both eager to get back together and kind of get back into that thing that we've done since we were 14 years old that we love to do. And we work really, really well together. So we'll see what happens with that." Lifeson reiterated the status of Rush and the possibility of continuing to work with Lee in a June 2021 interview with Eddie Trunk: "There's no way Rush will ever exist again because Neil's not here to be a part of it. And that's not to say that we can't do other things and we can't do things that benefit our communities and all of that. I have lots of plans for that sort of thing that don't necessarily include Geddy. I get asked this all the time — are we gonna do this, or are we gonna do that? Who knows? All I know is we still love each other and we're still very, very good friends, and we always will be."


title: Rush (band)

text: In August 2022, Lee and Lifeson returned to the stage at the "South Park" 25th anniversary concert in Colorado, with South Park's co-creator Matt Stone on drums to perform "Closer to the Heart" alongside the members of Primus, their first performance since the death of Peart.


title: Rush (band)

text: In September 2022, Lee and Lifeson performed at the London Taylor Hawkins tribute concert with Dave Grohl and Omar Hakim on drums. They performed "2112: Overture", "Working Man", and "YYZ", that latter of which was Hawkins' favourite Rush song. Later that month, Lee and Lifeson played the same set at the second Taylor Hawkins Tribute show in Los Angeles. Grohl once again drummed on "2112", Chad Smith of the Red Hot Chili Peppers joined them for "Working Man", and Danny Carey from Tool drummed for "YYZ".