Exit...Stage Left - Title and Cover Art

Title and Cover Art

The title is from the signature catchphrase "Exit, stage left!" of the Hanna-Barbera pink mountain lion cartoon character Snagglepuss (coincidentally, Time Warner, former owners of Rush's later label Atlantic Records, owns the H-B properties today). 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.

The whole title came from a character in an American cartoon called Snagglepuss. He's a great little creature, a lion, and every time there's trouble he flees, uttering 'Exit...stage left' or 'Exit...stage right'. But the fact of the matter was that the album cover picture was taken from stage left. And coincidentally that's the direction in which Snagglepuss runs most of the time. —Geddy Lee, Sounds magazine #66, November 1981 We wanted to have Snagglepuss's tail on there. You know, 'Exit Stage Left', with a picture of just his tail. Forget it! They wanted all kinds of legal hassles and tons of money. —Neil Peart, Jam! Showbiz, October 16, 1996

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 owl from Fly by Night flies above Apollo, the man in the suit from Hemispheres, who stands next to the woman from Permanent Waves. The puppet king from A Farewell to Kings sits atop a box stenciled with the "Rush" 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. This entire foreground scene, shot in Toronto's then-abandoned Winter Garden Theatre, is on the left side of the stage (from the point of view of the artist), thus "Exit...Stage Left".

Rush's prior live album, All the World's a Stage, is also duly represented via the cover's background image - a photo of a concert in Buffalo, New York at the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium. Both album covers show Rush's live setup without anyone on-stage, including their white shag carpet, which they actually stopped using prior to the release of Exit...Stage Left.