Exit... Stage Left is the second live album by the Canadian rock band Rush, released as a double album in October 1981 by Anthem Records. After touring in support of their eighth studio album Moving Pictures (1981), the band gathered recordings made over the previous two years and constructed a live release from them with producer Terry Brown. The album features recordings from June 1980 on their Permanent Waves (1980) tour, and from March 1981 on their Moving Pictures tour.

The album received a mostly positive reception from music critics and reached number 6 in the United Kingdom, 7 in Canada, and 10 in the United States. It was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America for selling one million copies in the latter country. A same-titled home video was released in 1982 that documents the band on the Moving Pictures tour. Exit... Stage Left was voted the ninth best live album of all time by Classic Rock magazine in 2004.

Recording and production 
Side two of Exit... Stage Left was recorded from June 10–11, 1980 at The Apollo in Glasgow, Scotland, during the band's tour for their seventh studio album, Permanent Waves. The remaining three sides were recorded on March 27, 1981 at The Forum in Montreal, Canada during the subsequent tour of their eighth album, Moving Pictures.

After the 1981 tour, the band retreated to Le Studio in Morin Heights in Quebec, Canada to edit and mix the recordings they had made on the two tours, which Neil Peart noted totalled over 50 reels of two-inch tape. The band went through the material to find the best performances for inclusion for a live album. Whenever they found a technical fault or a wrong note affecting an otherwise acceptable performance, they replaced it using material from other shows in their collection of tapes. In 1993, Geddy Lee revealed that the band had to add in new sections in the studio to correct passages with out-of-tune guitars. None of the individual band members is credited with the album's production; the duty fell to their longtime producer, Terry Brown. During the production, Rush wrote and recorded "Subdivisions", a new song that would be released on their following studio album, Signals.

Upon the album's completion, Peart said the group were happier with Exit... Stage Left than with their first live album All the World's a Stage, noting that the latter suffered from uneven sound quality. In subsequent years however, Lee developed a more critical view of Exit... Stage Left, noting that the group tried to make it sound "too perfect" in part by reducing the levels of audience noise, while Alex Lifeson for his part thought the album sounded too clean and not as raw as All the World's a Stage, and as a consequence the band aimed to reach a "middle ground" between the two with A Show of Hands, Rush's third live release. Nevertheless, the album remains a fan favorite.

Rush performs a short rendition of "Ebb Tide" before "Jacob's Ladder". "Broon's Bane" is a short classical guitar arrangement performed by Lifeson as an extended intro to "The Trees." The song is named after Terry Brown, nicknamed "Broon" by the band. The song is not featured on any other live or studio recording by Rush. Also on the album, Lee refers to Brown as "T.C. Broonsie" when introducing "Jacob's Ladder".

The original CD issue removed "A Passage to Bangkok", as CDs could only hold 75 minutes at the time. It was included on the 1997 remaster, as CD capacity had increased to 80 minutes by that time. Before the remastered version was released, the same live version of "A Passage to Bangkok" was released on the compilation Chronicles in 1990.

The second verse of "Beneath, Between, & Behind" is omitted. On "La Villa Strangiato", the introductory classical guitar solo from the original recording is played on electric guitar and doubled in length, Lee sings part of a nursery rhyme in Yiddish during the "Danforth and Pape" section (the liner notes include a translation of his words), and a short bass and percussion solo is added before the "Monsters! (Reprise)" section.

Title 
The title comes from the catchphrase of the Hanna-Barbera cartoon character Snagglepuss. The term "stage left" is a stage direction used in blocking to identify the left side of a theater from the point of view of the performer, as opposed to the point of view of the audience.

Artwork 
An item from each of Rush's previous eight studio album covers can be seen on the front and back cover of this live album, though each has been modified in some way. The snowy owl from Fly by Night flies above Apollo, the man in the suit from Hemispheres, who stands next to Paula Turnbull, the woman from Permanent Waves. On the back cover, the puppet king from A Farewell to Kings sits atop a box stenciled with the band logo from Rush. Next to him is a painting of the Caress of Steel album cover, held by one of the movers from Moving Pictures, with another mover standing behind. Next to this is Dionysus, the nude man from Hemispheres. Behind this scene, the starman from 2112 hangs in the background, next to an "EXIT" sign. The scene was shot in Toronto's then-abandoned Winter Garden Theatre.

Rush's first live album, All the World's a Stage, is also represented by the cover's background image, taken at a concert at the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium in Buffalo, New York. Both album covers show Rush's live setup on an empty stage, although the band no longer used the white carpet by the time of Exit... Stage Lefts release.

Reissues 
A limited-edition promotional 6-track vinyl sampler: Rush 'N' Roulette, included excerpts of six tracks from Exit...Stage Left. The promotional album used a unique mastering process in which concentric grooves were inscribed so that different material would be played depending on where the stylus was put down on the record's surface.

Exit... Stage Left was re-released on CD in 1997 as part of the "Rush Remasters" series.
 The tray has a picture of three fingerprints, light blue, pink, and lime green (left to right, mirroring the cover art of Retrospective II) with "The Rush Remasters" printed in all capital letters just to the left. All remasters from Moving Pictures through A Show of Hands are like this.
 Includes the track "A Passage to Bangkok" which was left off the original CD issue due to time constraints.
 On some copies, each of the band members' photos are reversed from the original. This error has since been corrected on post-1997 reissues of Exit... Stage Left.

Exit... Stage Left was remastered again in 2011 by Andy VanDette for the "Sector" box sets, which re-released all of Rush's Mercury-era albums. It is included in the Sector 2 set.

Exit... Stage Left was remastered for vinyl in 2015 by Sean Magee at Abbey Road Studios as a part of the official "12 Months of Rush" promotion. The high definition master prepared for this release was also made available for purchase in a 24-bit/48 kHz digital format at several high-resolution audio online music stores. These remasters have significantly less dynamic range compression than the 1997 remasters and the "Sector" remasters by Andy VanDette. Sean Magee remastered the audio from an analog copy of the original digital master, using a 192 kHz sample rate. But since Exit... Stage Left was originally mixed on digital equipment at 16-bit/44.1 kHz, no audio above 22 kHz exists in the original digital master or any of the remasters, which is why many digital music stores are only selling the album at a maximum sample rate of 48 kHz.

Track listing 
">" indicates a segue directly into the next track.

Personnel 
 Geddy Lee – lead vocals, bass guitar, synthesizers, keyboards, Moog bass pedal synthesizer, rhythm guitar on "A Passage to Bangkok" and "Xanadu"
 Alex Lifeson – electric and acoustic guitars, Moog bass pedal synthesizer, backing vocals
 Neil Peart – drums, percussion

Charts

Certifications

References

External links
 

1981 live albums
Anthem Records live albums
Rush (band) live albums
Mercury Records live albums
Albums recorded at the Montreal Forum
Albums produced by Terry Brown (record producer)
《Exit... Stage Left》는 캐나다의 록 밴드 러시의 두 번째 라이브 음반으로, 1981년 10월 앤섬 레코드에서 더블 음반으로 발매되었다. 여덟 번째 스튜디오 음반 《Moving Pictures》 (1981년)를 지지하는 투어를 한 후, 밴드는 지난 2년 동안 만든 음반들을 모아서 프로듀서 테리 브라운과 함께 라이브 음반을 프로듀싱했다. 이 음반은 1980년 6월부터 《Permanent Waves》 (1980년) 투어에 이어 1981년 3월부터 《Moving Pictures》 투어에 녹음된 음반을 수록하고 있다.

이 음반은 음악 평론가들로부터 대부분 긍정적인 반응을 얻었고 영국에서는 6위, 캐나다에서는 7위, 미국에서는 10위에 올랐다. 이 음반은 미국 음반 산업 협회로부터 100만 장이 팔린 것으로 플래티넘 인증을 받았다. 1982년 《Moving Pictures》 투어에서 밴드를 기록한 같은 제목의 홈 비디오가 출시되었다. 《Exit... Stage Left》는 2004년 《클래식 록》 매거진이 선정한 역대 아홉 번째 베스트 라이브 음반이다.

녹음 및 제작 
《Exit... Stage Left》의 2편은 1980년 6월 10일부터 11일까지 스코틀랜드 글래스고의 아폴로에서 일곱 번째 스튜디오 음반 《Permanent Waves》를 위한 밴드의 투어 동안 녹음되었다. 나머지 3면은 1981년 3월 27일 캐나다 몬트리올에서 열린 포럼에서 여덟 번째 음반 《Moving Pictures》의 후속 투어 중 녹음되었다.

1981년 투어 후, 밴드는 캐나다 퀘벡의 모린 하이츠에 있는 르 스튜디오로 후퇴하여 두 투어에서 녹음한 녹음을 편집하고 혼합하였다. 그 밴드는 라이브 음반에 넣을 수 있는 최고의 공연을 찾기 위해 자료를 검토했다. 그들은 기술적 결함이나 잘못된 노트가 다른 허용 가능한 성능에 영향을 미치기에 충분하다는 것을 발견했고, 그래서 그들은 테이프 컬렉션의 부품을 사용하여 결함을 편집하기로 선택했다. 1993년, 게디 리는 밴드가 음이 맞지 않는 기타가 없는 통로를 수정하기 위해 스튜디오에 새로운 섹션을 추가해야 한다고 밝혔다. 두 멤버 모두 오랜 프로듀서인 테리 브라운에게 임무를 맡긴 이 음반의 제작에 기여하지 못했다. 제작 기간 동안 러시는 〈Subdivisions〉를 작곡하고 녹음했는데, 이 곡은 그들의 다음 스튜디오 음반인 《Signals》에서 발매될 것이다.

음반이 완성되자마자, 닐 피어트는 첫 번째 라이브 음반인 《All the World's a Stage》보다 《Exit... Stage Left》가 더 행복했다면서, 후자의 음질이 고르지 못한 것에 주목했다. 그러나 이후 몇 년 동안, 알렉스 라이프슨은 《Exit... Stage Left》에 대한 비판적인 시각을 발전시켜, 이 그룹이 관객 소음의 수준을 낮추어 부분적으로 "너무 완벽한" 사운드를 내려고 노력했고, 라이프슨은 음반이 《All the World's a Stage》만큼 신선하고 생동적이지 않게 들리며 결과적으로 밴드를 목표로 삼았다고 생각했다. 러쉬의 세 번째 라이브 음반인 《A Show of Hands》로 두 사람 사이의 "중간 땅"이 되었다. 그럼에도 불구하고, 이 음반은 여전히 팬들이 가장 좋아하는 음반으로 남아 있다.

삽화 
러시의 이전 8개 스튜디오 음반 커버의 각 항목은 이 라이브 음반의 앞면과 뒷면 커버에서 볼 수 있지만, 각각의 항목은 어떤 식으로든 수정되었다. 《Fly by Night》의 흰올빼미가 《Permanent Waves》의 폴라 턴불 옆에 서 있는 《Hemispheres》의 남성 아폴론 위로 날아간다. 《A Farewell to Kings》의 꼭두각시 왕은 《Rush》의 밴드 로고가 새겨진 상자 위에 앉아 있다. 그의 옆에는 《Moving Pictures》의 이삿짐꾼 중 한 명이 들고 있는 《Caress of Steel》 음반 커버 그림이 있고, 뒤에 또 다른 이삿짐이 서 있다. 이 옆에는 《Hemispheres》의 누드남인 디오니소스가 있다. 이 장면 뒤에는 《2112》의 스타맨이 "EXIT" 간판 옆에 걸려 있다. 이 장면은 토론토의 당시 버려진 윈터 가든 극장에서 촬영되었다.

러시의 첫 번째 라이브 음반인 《All the World's a Stage》는 뉴욕주 버펄로의 버펄로 메모리얼 오디토리움에서 열린 콘서트에서 찍은 커버의 배경 이미지로 대표되기도 한다. 두 음반 커버 모두 러시의 빈 무대에서의 라이브 무대를 보여주지만, 밴드는 《Exit... Stage Left》가 발매될 때까지 더 이상 화이트 카펫을 사용하지 않았다.

곡 목록 
모든 곡들은 특별한 언급이 없는 한 게디 리, 알렉스 라이프슨 그리고 닐 피어트에 의해 작사/작곡하였다.

각주

외부 링크 

1981년 라이브 음반
러시의 라이브 음반
머큐리 레코드 음반