Exit...Stage Left - The Album

Rush - Exit...Stage Left (1981)

Released in October 1981

Mercury/Polygram

Produced by Rush and Terry Brown

Time/Songs:

(05:12) The Spirit of Radio - From the album Permanent Waves

(06:48) Red Barchetta - From the album Moving Pictures

(07:44) YYZ - From the album Moving Pictures

(03:47) A Passage To Bangkok - From the album 2112

(03:09) Closer To The Heart - From the album A Farewell To Kings

(02:34) Beneath, Between and Behind - - From the album Fly By Night

(08:47) Jacob's Ladder - From the album Permanent Waves

(01:37) Broon's Bane

(05:50) The Trees - From the album Hemispheres

(12:10) Xanadu - From the album A Farewell To Kings

(05:33) Freewill - From the album Permanent Waves

(05:01) Tom Sawyer - From the album Moving Pictures

(09:38) La Villa Strangiato (An Exercise in Self-Indulgence) - From the album Hemispheres

On the cover of Exit...Stage Left

Exit ... Stage Left is probably your most ambitious cover to date, what with it reprising all your previous covers.

"It was shot in a condemned theatre here in Toronto, which shall remain nameless. We decided to go with the girl pulling the curtain back on the front instead of the back. It was originally intended to be the other way around, so when I flipped the photograph over, I had to write "RUSH" on the equipment box in the foreground, and I had to strip out the information on the Stage Door and write in the word "EXIT," because the album was called Exit ... Stage Left."

Is the stage shot actually from a Rush concert?

"Buffalo shot, yeah. We went out to get that, too. We really wanted the band-. Believe it or not, we went to about 15 shows, trying to get the band saying "Thank you, good night," and at the same time, and walking towards the camera."

- 1983 interview with Hugh Syme

Album Notes

Exit..Stage Left reflections against All The World's A Stage

"Such as it is, we're all very proud of this one. Everything has improved so much since our last, somewhat uneven live effort -- that was by a different group. Once again, it's a kind of anthology album; a summation of the live highlights of our previous four studio albums and a couple of older reincarnations."

- Neil Peart from the book Success Under Pressure

Why did the band decide to make another live album?

"I guess there were a whole lot of reasons. One was that we felt our live sound had changed so much that we figured we needed to up-date it on record. I mean, _All The World's A Stage_ was a whole lot different. But doing a live record is also a great device to get a sort of hiatus between albums and we really wanted that. We wanted to have a longer gap before going back in the studio so that we could do some writing on our own."

- Geddy Lee from the book Success Under Pressure

Alex on Exit...Stage Left

"Live albums are always a difficult thing. It's hard to get excited about them. In terms of a live recording, _Exit_ is very good and I'm happy with it in that respect. As an example of our show, it's not as good as it could have been or possible should have been. Live albums give us some breathing space to cleanse ourselves and start on something fresh and new. When we were in the studio doing _Exit_, Geddy and I were in another studio working on "Digital Man" and "Subdivisions" from _Signals_. We were already geared up for another record. I think that had something to do with the fact that we don't go crazy over live records. I don't know if you'll ever hear another live album from Rush. We enjoy the studio recordings much more than we do the live ones."

- Alex Lifeson from the book Success Under Pressure

(Editor Note: As we all know, Rush did eventually do another Live Album)

Geddy Lee/Neil Peart talk about Exit..Stage Left

"I really didn't enjoy doing the first live album and I didn't enjoy doing this one any more. I thought I would, but I didn't. It's a very tedious affair for a guy in a band, and if you notice the credits in the album, we didn't produce the album, we didn't have anything r--, well, we were there and we sortof observed and we, you know, we put our opinion in when we thought we should, but generally, most of the chores were handled by Terry. I don't enjoy it, and I don't think the other guys enjoy it really, either."

- Geddy Lee, 1984 Interview "Yeah, there was an awful lot of difficulty there, first of all because it encompassed two complete tours' worth of material and we wanted to span all of the last four albums, you know, fairly equally, and also the fact that there were some tracks that we had good record- ings of that we weren't able to put on, notably, I can bring to mind, Camera Eye and Vital Signs we really had good versions of, but there just wasn't space, I mean, we had to figure out so many long songs and so many short songs and songs that were almost mandatory to get on there because they were better than the original versions."

- Neil Peart, 1984 Interview

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