The March 5th issue of Kerrang! magazine contains a short interview with Geddy Lee where he talks about Rush's 2112 in celebration of the album's recent 40th anniversary.

... [2112] be­came our most pop­u­lar record. We were just de­lighted that we were still around and still em­ploy­able! We hon­estly thought that this was go­ing to be our last al­bum, it would be the end. But what hap­pened was, 2112 sold like crazy! It sold so well, ac­tu­ally, that we were al­lowed to do what­ever we wanted af­ter that. And that freed us up to re­ally get cre­ative and ex­plore. And now, a lot of bands tell us that it's one of the al­bums that made them want to play mu­sic - Foo Fight­ers, Me­tal­lica, Smash­ing Pump­kins, they all say it had a huge im­pact on them.

You can read the interview online here (thanks RushFanForever).